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Other voices: Democracy doesn’t require truth police

It became fashionable a few years ago for people to blame “misinformation” for others holding views they find wrongheaded. Social media platforms, sometimes jawboned by the federal government, invoked this supposed crisis to justify censorship, especially during the pandemic. This insulted the intelligence of the American people, who can make up their own minds without being told what to think. A new study explores how exposure to “misinformation” on social media affected voters in 2020. The answer, drawn from a three-month experiment on nearly 16,000 users, is very ...

Reagan movie superbly made, worth seeing

CHAUTAUQUA — After seven decades of tyranny, the Soviet Union and its empire collapsed due in no small measure to the efforts of two former actors and a grocer’s daughter. One actor—named Karol Wojtyla—grew up in Wadowice, Poland, and later moved to Krakow, where he eventually became a Roman Catholic priest, bishop, archbishop, and cardinal. The other actor—nicknamed Dutch—was born in Tampico, Illinois, grew up in nearby Dixon, and became a sports announcer at WOC in Davenport, Iowa, and WHO in Des Moines before moving on to acting. The two, of course, are John Paul II, ...

The marauding creatures of the night

They are thieves. The bigger ones are bandits. What’s more surprising is that they are assisting our housekeeping efforts. I’m talking about the fact that we seem to be hosting a mini traffic jam on our deck in the middle of the night. They are eaters, but so far, the good kind. Two nights ago, as darkness set, Dear Richard was heading inside from our dinner on the deck. Since we had chomped down two luscious cobs of corn each, he was carrying the butter dish along with his dishes. Somehow, between the table and the living room door, he tipped the butter dish and the ...

Strong trio put nation, not party first

The passing of Sen. Lindsey Graham got me wondering about political alliances he made with two other senators. They were John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, and the 2008 presidential nominee and Joe Lieberman, an Independent senator from Connecticut and former Democratic 2000 vice presidential nominee. McCain was a Naval hero, and a two-time presidential contender. He was born into a military family where both his father and grandfather were four-star Navy admirals. McCain became a Navy attack pilot. In 1967, during the Vietnam War his plane was shot down over Hanoi. He ...

1969 Ripley grads still enjoying the journey

The Ripley Central School Class of 1969 members turned or will turn 75 this year. To celebrate this three-quarter century event, I decided to have a birthday party for us, aided by Patricia Hunt Albaugh. How cool, eh? From a class of less than 40 people, on July 18 22 classmates and spouses ...

On the matter of people who are homeless

There have been several news articles recently about the problems faced by people who are homeless in Chautauqua County. Much of the news has been about where they are being housed...usually in older and underused hotels. Whether we like it or not, the provider of last resort is the county ... that means county taxpayers are “on the hook” for paying for it. There is some state aid to assist—but the burden of addressing the problem falls on the county. “Homelessness,” of course, is a broad term. In some cases, people become homeless when they can’t afford to pay their rent. ...