Breaking News

Opinion

Crunch time for Minnesota Legislature

Local Editorials

Rep. Chris Swedzinski, R-Ghent, called it the homestretch in his weekly legislative newsletter that he emailed out before the Easter break. There’s about five weeks left in 2022 session for the Minnesota Legislature. And like sessions of the past, members of the House and Senate are leaving all the big decisions to the bitter end. The Associated Press reported this weekend that there’s been little meeting of the minds between the House Democrats and Senate Republicans. Translation: A house divided. Here in southwest Minnesota, there are two items of interest that deserves major ...

Readers' Views

Letters to the Editor

We all take tax breaks To the Editor: Don’t bite the hand that feeds you Mr. Editor. Might I remind you, the owner of the Ogden press is among the ultra rich. Last century the titans of industry, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Ford and McCormick, modernized things we utilize everyday. Today’s titans, Bezos, Musk, Gates and a long line of others, make our lives easier. These people gave us our internet, our ability to shop from home and our long needed Space program. True, they don’t use their own money, they borrow from banks just as the rest of us do. Home loans, car ...

Ukraine War dilemmas

Local Editorials

Thousands of civilians, including many children, were waiting to be evacuated to safety in the Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine on Friday morning when two missiles, later reported to be cluster weapons that are banned under international law, exploded in their midst. At least 50 people died, and more than 100 others were injured. A message in Russian on the surviving casing of one missile read “For the children”. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, understandably described the attack as the action of “an evil that has no limits”. Even amid so many other ...

Et. Cetera

Local Editorials

Speech students advance to state Last week at the section 2A speech meet, the Fairmont High School Speech team advanced ten students to the state tournament which will take place on April 23. Fairmont’s speech program has had a very successful track record and we’re proud of this year’s team for continuing with tradition. Good luck and have fun at state! Council hears from Foundation, YMCA Earlier this week at the Fairmont City Council meeting, members of the YMCA presented information on the programming they could bring to Fairmont. It was great to hear from the management ...

Banning books a pathetic ploy for control

Local Editorials

The barrage of attacks on books in the last year is another example of trying to deny reality by clamping hands over eyes — in this case to keep them from reading. A State of America’s Libraries Report says the number of requests to ban books is the highest reported in the 20 years of the survey. The new report released by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom found 729 challenges — affecting nearly 1,600 books — at public schools and libraries in 2021. That number is more than double the previous year. The report includes only the known ...

‘Not Real News’ trumps real news

Local Editorials

It’s a disheartening sign of the times when The Associated Press, the gold standard of reporting real news for the better part of two centuries, is compelled to publish a regular feature called “Not Real News.” This is what the digital medium has wrought: a dystopian hellscape of savage liars and propagandists where anybody can say anything, and any number of people will believe them. It’s incredible, literally, what ridiculous and utter nonsense is being passed off as news, and with the latest version of culture war being waged, an alarming number of people fall victim. Most ...