Opinion

I’m proud when the Missourian digs deep to find stories others would just as soon keep quiet. I worry, though, that journalists haven’t done enough to stand up to the avalanche of sound bites coming from Washington, and we citizens don’t demand enough from our politicians and our media.

I appreciate our indoor smoking ban as much as the next person, assuming the next person isn’t a bar owner or a tobacco heiress. But when I heard that adult smoking could potentially give a movie an R rating, I confess I snorted.

Good health care policy is good politics.

Please urge Governor Blunt to veto HB 1055. Missouri is beginning to move backward instead of moving forward, and, at a minimum, we are barely maintaining status quo.

It’s a logical statement. I write political editorials. I teach at a local college. Therefore, I am an expert on the nominations for president of the University of Missouri System. Right? Not really, though friends and colleagues do not hesitate to ask my opinion about Congressman Kenny Hulshof’s nomination. Here it is …

When I was growing up in southwest Missouri, we decorated the graves of everyone on Memorial Day. That was just after World War II, so we understood well the debt we owed to our soldiers.

Just south of Stadium Boulevard, where it is bisected by Providence Road, we can get a glimpse of the Mizzou of the future. The athletic complex is a welcome symbol of the university’s direction. North of Stadium, the campus looks much like it always did, except for new hotel-like dorms and the journalism school’s extension under construction rising beside the Sociology Building. What has become a vast seven-building journalism complex at the northeast edge of the Quad will doubtless spur more building activity in the sports complex.

From the beginning, the U.S. military attack on Iraq was a dangerous folly. The Bush administration misled the American people and, most importantly, Congress, with what Jimmy Carter described as “lies and misrepresentations.”

How history will treat President Bush’s administration won’t be determined for a number of years. Nevertheless, it is a dead-bang certainty that in 2008 syndicated columnists and local editorialists will lose a convenient punching bag in that bashing the president has been a welcome substitute for original journalistic thought or initiative since his 2000 election.

Frankly, I was relieved that there were no high school graduates among my family members this year; I would have been hard-pressed to offer them any degree of encouragement.

My dad is a World War II hero, a winner of the Distinguished Flying Cross, so not much scares him. He does not, however, talk about politics.

The citizens of Missouri, especially those who love freedom, should laud John Loudon. Sen. Loudon is the architect of the recently enacted substitute legislation that will permit midwifery in Missouri.

With the current sentiments of the American people toward the war in Iraq, I feel that the Republican Party is headed down a dangerous path.

In response to the May 11 article on the Tiger Spot: Those of us who walk past that sad eyesore on the way to work have a twice-daily opportunity to contemplate what it symbolizes, namely:

With the legislative session safely in our rearview mirror and best forgotten, let’s look ahead. Is that President Hulshof just over the horizon?

The WNBA season has opened again, and it’s a different ballgame from the six-on-six game foisted on girls 40 years ago – a game of limits.

Go figure: A student-soldier is called up to active duty, spends a year serving his or her country, and returns to MU to find the welcome home involves a mess of paperwork and pleas to professors and officials before picking up an education again.

This quote below is from the President Bush’s radio speech on Saturday.

OK, enough is enough. I urge every citizen to contact our Missouri state legislators and the governor and lieutenant governor and demand that state, county and city petroleum taxes be suspended for a period of six calendar months beginning July 1.