IT LOOKS AS IF SOMEBODY disposed of our lawn sign last weekend without our permission. It’s not the first time, but the earlier disappeared signs supported candidates for political office. This most recent sign was what you might call aspirational, affirming our beliefs in science, the power of love, that sort of thing. It was creepy to think that somebody disliked the candidates we supported so much that they stole cardboard signs with our candidates’ names. It’s worse than creepy now.

Who can tell whether a missing sign continues a nasty tradition of political vandalism. How would we know it’s not the way a poisoned mind prepares to engage in mass murder.

I have no special insight into the murders in the Buffalo suburb Saturday, May 14. I tried to sort out what I should feel given that I was hundreds of miles away and have no family or friends there. I thought of sympathy for the victims, and relief that it was not happening to my family or neighbors. It was not a reassuring assessment our safety. Read more…

IF YOU’RE A LAWYER you can read the “initial draft majority opinion” written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and draw your own conclusions. The case before the Court is called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. If you don’t have a law degree you’ll have to join the rest of us depend on experts to interpret the arguments and what they mean… unless you can make it to Page 5 of the opinion.

That’s where Justice Alito’s 90-page opinion comes to a conclusion about two other Supreme Court cases, one of which is a household term. That case would be Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, which has essentially guaranteed a woman’s right to have an abortion until the fetus reaches the point of “viability” for the last 50 years. The other case is “Planned Parenthood v. Casey” in 1992, which supported Roe v. Wade.

Here’s what Justice Alito wrote on Page 5 of his draft opinion: “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” Read more…

THERE’S NOTHING THAT SAYS we have to write ourselves an annual birthday letter, but now that The Columbia Paper and the www.columbiapaper.com are officially teenagers that’s reason enough to offer ourselves some advice.

The newspaper and website were born into bad times. It was the late winter of 2009 and the number one domestic problem was the huge loss of jobs as the economy imploded. Thousands of people were laid off each week and it seemed it would never end. But not so much here. Columbia County apparently had a stronger job market to begin with and the unemployment data suggested that many people who wanted to work could find a job.

There was one exception as far as I could tell: the newspaper business. In early 2009 the newspaper chain that owned the twice-weekly Independent newspaper summarily closed it and laid off all but one employee. Many of the rest of us weren’t having any luck finding gainful employment using the skills we’d honed at The Independent. I get that. If you’re a big company you don’t necessarily want to hire people whose previous job experience includes writing about the shortcomings of of big companies. Read more…