Opinion

Rebuttal to "Pointed Questions"

This letter is a rebuttal to a letter published on Aug. 10, 2026. The letter titled "Pointed questions posed" contains a laundry list of allegations, assumptions, and political rhetoric that Mr. Rich Clark presented as though every accusation were established fact. It isn't. Some examples are highlighted below: The most obvious problem is the repeated leap from “this happened” to “therefore Trump did it for corrupt or murderous reasons.” Those are entirely different propositions. The Iran accusation is a perfect example. You can oppose the military action, but calling it a ...

Almanac for Aug. 13, 2026

Today is Thursday, Aug. 13, the 225th day of 2026. There are 140 days left in the year. Today in history: On Aug. 13, 1961, on what would become known as Barbed Wire Sunday, East Germany sealed the border between Berlin's eastern and western sectors before building a wall that would divide the city for the next 28 years. Also on this date: In 1521, Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez captured Tenochtitlan (teh-natch-teet-LAHN'), present-day Mexico City, from the Aztecs. In 1792, French revolutionaries arrested and imprisoned King Louis XVI; he would be executed by guillotine the ...

Don't malign the U.S. economy

The United States of America may be the greatest place for functionally illiterate people to live in all of human history. An eye-popping column in the Financial Times the other day noted how people in the U.S. with very low literacy make about as much per hour as the average worker in the ...

Editorial cartoon for Aug. 13, 2026

Almanac for Aug. 12, 2026

Today in History: August 12, Charlottesville car attack By The Associated Press undefined Today is Wednesday, Aug. 12, the 224th day of 2026. There are 141 days left in the year. Today in history: On Aug. 12, 2017, a driver sped into a crowd of people peacefully protesting a white nationalist rally in the Virginia college town of Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than a dozen others. (The attacker, James Alex Fields, was sentenced to life in prison on 29 federal hate crime charges, and life plus 419 years on state charges.) Also on this ...

Summertime political reruns

When I was younger, so much younger than today (credit The Beatles for that lyric from “Help”), television networks would rerun programs that had originally been broadcast the previous fall and spring. A few still do, like “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy,” but those are syndicated ...