Last Word

Farewell statement from Senator John McCain

August 28th, 2018

by Senator John McCain - from Facebook page

“My fellow Americans, whom I have gratefully served for sixty years, and especially my fellow Arizonans,

“Thank you for the privilege of serving you and for the rewarding life that service in uniform and in public office has allowed me to lead. I have tried to serve our country honorably. I have made mistakes, but I hope my love for America will be weighed favorably against them.

“I have often observed that I am the luckiest person on…

What To Do About A Bridge That Shouldn’t Be There

August 22nd, 2018

Here’s a piece of the Dunn County Atlas that Wylie Bice submitted to the Corps of Engineers, showing the location of the bridge he planned to build on federal land

The Bismarck Tribune’s Amy Dalrymple’s wrote a good story recently about a marathon Little Missouri Scenic River Commission meeting. I’m going to write more about that later. I’ll just say, for now, be careful what you wish for.

What I’m writing about now is one of the things the Commission discussed—the illegal bridge over the Little Missouri State Scenic River on the Wylie Bice Ranch in Dunn County.

I’ve written about this a few times, but there are new developments and…

A bridge to nowhere

August 15th, 2018

Photograph provided by Jim Fuglie

Well, after nearly a dozen years of delay, it looks like Billings County is finally going to build a bridge over the Little Missouri State Scenic River north of Medora. The county posted a notice in the Federal Register on October 12, 2006, that it was beginning an Environmental Impact Statement process “for a proposed roadway project and river crossing over the Little Missouri River.”

In late July of 2018, almost 12 years later, the county presented its Draft EIS to the public and…

Putin’s Plutocratic Puppet and the Specter of an American Gulag

August 15th, 2018

Comic courtesy of Daily Trump Cartoon

“Liberty is a strong food, but a difficult one to digest; it needs a healthy stomach. I laugh at those degraded people who, letting conspirators incite them to rise in arms, dare to speak of liberty, without having even a notion of what it is; who, with hearts a prey to all the vices of slaves, imagine that to be free they need only be rebels.”
– Jean Jacques Rousseau

“If…If…We didn’t love freedom enough.”
– Alexsandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“He would never…

High Plains Radicals

August 8th, 2018

By Gary Olson
olsong@moravian.edu

"The sun was shining as I was strolling
The wheat field waving the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice was chanting
This land was made for you and me"
— Woody Guthrie

With socialism, even in a diluted and inchoate form, assuming a higher profile, I’m reminded of my early years in North Dakota during the 1950s. On the one hand, it wasn’t the Gestapo-like scenes from Standing Rock, today’s widespread sex trafficking in the booming oil fields…

Obituary: The Show Hall in Rocklake, North Dakota

August 8th, 2018

By Mark Rodenbiker
mrodenbiker@gmail.com

The first brick building had just gone up on the corner of the block. The government built that to house the post office, so it didn't mean so much. Not like this one; for a person to have the ambition to build a brick building of that size was an acknowledgement that Rocklake was no longer a railroad siding. Now, in 1907, Rocklake was a town.

The post office may have made it government-official before that, but the show hall made it…

Trump to Republicans: “Wave the Flag, and Waive Your Conscience”

August 8th, 2018

“Hell… is the suffering of being unable to love.”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I and the public know, what all school children learn; those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.”
– W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939

“To my knowledge, America has never known any enemy children.”
– Senator William Langer (R-ND), March 29, 1946

“We ask ourselves what kind of world we live in, but it’s too painful to face the truth. Maybe our worst fears have already been realized -- maybe the…

More on the ‘Families Belong Together’ Rallies

July 11th, 2018

By Gary Olson
olsong@moravian.edu

Recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.
- The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Good on everyone who rallied in such large numbers on behalf of keeping families together. I will generalize and break down the participants into three groups. The first was composed of folks who may have participated in their…

Davis Refinery update

July 11th, 2018

“Davis Refinery permit approved.”

That was the headline in the paper last week, telling us that the North Dakota Department of Health has approved an air quality permit and issued a permit to construct an oil refinery three miles from Theodore Roosevelt National park.

Yikes! What kind of monsters would want to do this—put an oil refinery right next to Theodore Roosevelt National Park? And what kind of state regulators would permit that to happen?

And who, at the highest level of North…

A new watchdog group for the Badlands

June 27th, 2018

Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands

North Dakota has more than a million acres of public land, most of it in western North Dakota, our Little Missouri National Grasslands, managed by the United States Forest Service.

Most of it is grazing land, although it’s grazed by more than cattle. Pretty much every creature that lives in North Dakota has a presence there. For some—mule deer, sharp-tailed grouse, sage grouse, prairie dogs, coyotes, bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, and countless species of birds, including our state…

Page 15 of 26 pages ‹ First < 13 14 15 16 17 > Last ›

Recently in: