Good morning, it’s Monday, Feb. 1, 2021. The snow covering the ground in much of the country (here in the East, more is on its way) raises a variation of the famous philosophical question about a tree falling in the forest when no one is there to hear it. This one has a more practical implication: Do kids consigned to remote schooling during a pandemic still get snow days off?
I’m not on any school board, but I covered several school districts as a young reporter, and if it were up to me I’d vote a resounding yes. It also brings to mind New York newspaperman H. Allen Smith’s timeless opening to a local weather story, altered only slightly here:
Good morning, it’s Monday, Jan. 18, 2021. Over the weekend, the human race hit a grim milestone: The novel coronavirus that spread rapidly out of central China a year ago has now claimed 2 million lives. That’s the official tally compiled by Johns Hopkins University. When you think that China’s government still admits to only 4,800 deaths in the world’s most populous nation and where this contagion originated the true number is almost certainly significantly higher.
In two days, when Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes the oath of office as the 46
th U.S. president, the number of Americans felled by this pandemic will have surged past 400,000. Biden has vowed to vastly bolster the government’s vaccination efforts. I pray that he follows through on that promise.
January 12, 2021
Americans are right to be concerned about the power wielded by tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. The permanent banning of Donald J. Trump from Twitter and Apple and Amazon’s removal of Parler from their respective app store and AWS servers has led to calls for action, fueled by the fear that all non-leftist voices may one day be forever barred from social media.
The current state of banning, stifling, and removal of voices who dissent from leftist or woke orthodoxy is bad for America, bad for open debate, and bad for liberty. Of all the possible responses to this dilemma, however, getting the government involved would turn a deeply worrisome situation into something far worse and likely irreversible.
Good morning, it’s Monday Jan. 11, 2021. The sun is up in the nation’s capital as I write these words, but the dark fallout continues from the mob violence wreaked by President Trump’s supporters in the hallowed halls of Congress last week. Another member of the U.S. Capitol Police has died, for one thing. Meanwhile, official Washington is wrestling with how to get through the next nine days.
This is not what presidential transitions are supposed to look like. All of Donald Trump’s predecessors from George Washington through Barack Obama realized it had to be done peacefully. Not this guy.
Daines Flips on Election Certification, Rosendale Stands Firm
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Here s an update to the story we brought to you earlier in the week, Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) now says he will support the certification of the presidential election results.
Daines spokeswoman Katie Schoettler released this statement from the senator s office late Wednesday:
As stated from the beginning, the Senator s goal was to raise concerns for Americans who lack confidence in our elections, and to drive reforms to restore integrity, confidence and trust into our electoral process. It was never an attempt to overturn the election. Congress role to count the electoral vote was a platform to raise these priorities - that s why he objected to Arizona. In light of the deplorable violence, and the assault on our constitution and law enforcement, the Senator believed it was best for our nation to move forward with as much unity as possible, and affirm the results