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Category: Opinion

Pills

~by Colleen O’Brien Before his tearing down the East Wing, before his renaming the Kennedy Center, before his bombing of fishing boats in the Caribbean and stealing a sovereign country’s leader and wife, before his posting a photo of Obama and Michelle as gorillas, before his “excursion” into the Middle East – actually, before he was elected – Trump promised…

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View from my window: My garden

March 29, 2026 You know that nursery rhyme, MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY, HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? Well, historically mine has not had silver bells and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row! Last fall, as I was lifting the tomato cages off the dead plants, I vowed not to try a garden again. Weeds had engulfed the…

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We DO know

~Colleen O’Brien “You know that. And everybody knows that.” This is an oft-spoken collection of words from a president who in the wee hours of every morning Tweets or Xs lies about any number of things medical, military, historic, artistic. He’s a blabbering mouth and the sheer repletion of lies shuts our brains down. For four years of the Biden administration,…

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‘And make America again!’

~a column by Colleen O’Brien My good friend Chris sent me a gift that is nearly a century old, a copy of a poem I read many years ago but forgot. It was written by Langston Hughes, published in 1936 in New York during the Harlem Renaissance. Because it is in the Public Domain, it is history; it is also…

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View from my window: Balance

March 15, 2026 When I see my primary care practitioner for my Medicare annual physical, one of the preliminary questions is “Have you fallen this past year?” So far, I have been fortunate to say I have not, but I continue, “I am very careful.” In living with cohorts of my gender and age, it seems many of us have…

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Our government is alphabet soup

Below is a list of governmental branches within our republic – administrations, agencies, departments, bureaus, commissions : Executive Branch, Judicial Branch, Legislative Branch; Departments of Justice (DOJ), Defense (DOD), Agriculture (USDA), Commerce (DOC), Education (ED), Energy (DOE) Health and Human Services (HHS), Homeland Security (DHS),  Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Labor (DOL), State (DOS), Transportation (DOT), Interior (DOI); Affairs: Veterans Affairs…

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One more thing we need to know everything about

~a column by Colleen O’Brien AI is on the march. I’ve come across five “news” items that were real ‘fake news’, to cop a phrase from an inveterate faker. The first two fakes were hour-long videos by Rachel Maddow talking about Canada essentially ghosting the US and never dealing with them again; and another one of Maddow explaining how Walmart had…

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Do I dare think things are looking up?

~a column by Colleen O’Brien After a two-week hiatus from the political news in America, I return to being informed in a mind-blowing way. . . almost literally, the eerie light-headedness being very close to feeling the top of my head opening up and all logical thoughts flying off. For as lazy a president as he is said to be,…

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Let’s put things in perspective

~Sue Richardson of Jefferson, retired school teacher There were several statements made at the town hall gathering with legislators in Jefferson on Saturday, Feb. 14, that needed more context to give an accurate account of the bills currently being proposed. When talking about school funding, it was stated that the Democrats decreased funding   when they controlled the legislature and the…

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View from my window – The SAVE Act

It sounds so simple and reasonable. Persons voting in an election should be citizens. I think we all agree with that rationale. Iowa, along with the other states, has been given the right in the United States Constitution to have its own voting laws including registration, voter identification, early voting, mail-in voting, and polling hours. You may recall last year’s…

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