“The public will no doubt be surprised at the economic importance of this industry as (we measure) the impact of activities like boating, fishing, RVing, hunting, camping, hiking and more.” The speaker is U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. The industry goes under the broad name of outdoor recreation. It was a $374 billion business in […]
Op-Eds
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
EPA would be better off without Pruitt
It’s time to test the proposition whether it’s possible to roll back the Obama regulatory agenda without using government employees as glorified personal assistants. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt long ago acquired the moniker “scandal plagued” in the press. None of his offenses are criminally corrupt — no one has found cash stuffed in […]
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Presumptions have elevated ethnic tension in Lewiston
A dozen or more messages have floated into my inbox since Friday, all saying exactly this: I’m concerned about the way you reported on the fight in Kennedy Park on Tuesday night. Why didn’t you interview people from both sides of the altercation? This put vulnerable people at risk because it offered legitimacy to one […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
A tribute to Charles Krauthammer
I have often thought that tributes to those we love are best made when the object of our affection is still with us, rather than at their funerals. I do not know Charles Krauthammer well, though we would occasionally see each other at Fox News when I worked there and at Washington Nationals baseball games. […]
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Work it all out
There are two kinds of people, those who . . . You’ve heard those words a hundred times, spoken by someone who wants to distinguish between, say, Type A (driven) and Type B (laid back) people, or between those who, say, get up early and those who would pummel those who rise early. Around here, […]
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U.S. has sunk to state-sponsored cruelty
What if God were one of us? Singer Joan Osborne famously asked that question in 1995. In her Grammy-nominated hit, “One Of Us,” she envisions the author of all creation as “a slob like one of us, just a stranger on a bus trying to make his way home.” The idea of eternity contained in […]
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China the biggest winner from Trump-Kim summit
LONDON — “America will remain the world’s dominant power in the 21st century only if it is the dominant Pacific power,” the late Lee Kuan Yew often said to me. Lee, the founder of modern Singapore and one of the smartest strategic minds I have ever encountered, spoke about this issue late in life as […]
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Give Trump’s team a chance to work on North Korea deal
WASHINGTON — Well, that didn’t take long. President Trump had barely departed Singapore when Democrats in Washington unleashed scathing attacks over his meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. “What the United States has gained is vague and unverifiable at best. What North Korea has gained, however, is tangible and lasting,” Senate Minority Leader […]
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Who will fill the global power vacuum?
WASHINGTON — The commentariat is bursting with speeches, diatribes, essays, analyses, stories and tweets about the impending collapse of the post-World War II international order. This threatens global peace and prosperity, even if we’re not entirely sure how the threat might actually materialize. When we say “the post-World War II international order,” we mean a […]
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Beijing, not Ottawa, is America’s enemy
Justin Trudeau may be the annoying, youthful avatar of chic progressivism — but he’s not our adversary. After leaving the G-7 summit, President Donald Trump blasted the Canadian prime minister on Twitter as weak and dishonest, in the kind of invective once reserved for “Little Rocket Man.” The Trump presidency routinely produces unprecedented events, and […]