Tribune Opinion
Primary tabs
Author Content
The significance of the bird flu danger shocked many of the Minnesota business and health care leaders attending a meeting Tuesday in St.
In regard to the marriage amendment issue, I find it ironic that there are those who are asking Sen. Dean Johnson to "be the leader you were elected to be" by letting the people vote. Isn't this a contradiction? How is putting an issue to the vote of the people being a leader? Is our system of government a direct democracy or a representative democracy? If some are so eager to have the people decide, why not get rid of the Legislature altogether?
The Bush administration is partly responsible for declining poll numbers and the growing public disapproval of the war in Iraq. Instead of responding immediately to questions concerning the reasons for the war and the honesty of top-level members of the administration, it allowed these allegations to fester until they became accepted, in many quarters, as fact.
A line is forming outside the Iraq confessional. It consists of Democratic presidential aspirants -- Where's Hillary? -- who voted for the war in Iraq and now concede that they made a "mistake." Former Sen. John Edwards recently did that in a Washington Post op-ed article and Sen. Joseph Biden uttered the "M" word Sunday on "Meet The Press." "It was a mistake," said Biden. "It was a mistake," wrote Edwards. Yes and yes, says Cohen. But it is also a mistake to call it a mistake. Both senators have a point, of course.
Not too long ago I was watching a late-night investigative report on the people who prey on our children. What the investigative team did was to pretend to be a 13-year-old boy in an Internet chat room. The supposed 13-year-old was propositioned for sex by at least four different men who would come to the house of the boy for sex. All of these men knew this was a 13-year-old but proceeded to try to engage in sexual intercourse with the boy. The first adult male showed up for sex at the house and instead of finding a willing 13-year-old, he found a news reporter who tried to question him.
A letter by Patricia Carter Harding published Nov. 18 was inadvertantly edited. The final sentence of the letter should have read "The constant support of the New Testament is great because it keeps telling you that with your choice of Jesus Christ comes the best fire insurance you will ever have."
Hats off from Donna Rime to all involved in the Willmar Senior High School musical, "South Pacific." It was a spectacular performance.
WASHINGTON -- Decades ago, Walter Reuther, the storied head of the United Auto Workers union, was taken on a tour of an automated factory by a Ford Motor Company executive. Somewhat gleefully, the Ford honcho told the legendary union leader: "You know, not one of these machines pays dues to the UAW." To which Reuther snapped: "And not one of them buys new Ford cars, either." The historian William L.
INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana likes having the nation's highest portion of workers -- 20 percent -- in manufacturing, so five days before Delphi, the Michigan-based automobile parts manufacturer, entered bankruptcy, Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican who believes that "conservatism can be active," called Delphi. He praised Indiana as a paradise for even more Delphi operations than are already there. Michigan's Democratic governor, Jennifer Granholm, responded to Delphi's travails differently, denouncing Delphi's executives, Washington and globalization.
WASHINGTON -- A decade ago, just after Thanksgiving, my son James was diagnosed with Kawasaki syndrome, an unusual immune disorder that affects the heart and the heart arteries. My wife and I had never heard of this strange disease, and we were scared. We took James to the Children's National Medical Center in Washington where we encountered Dr. Gerard Martin, a lanky pediatric heart specialist who combines a matter-of-fact honesty with a playful attitude toward kids. It didn't surprise me to learn that he and his wife have five of them.