Breaking News

There’s no fine line between right, wrong

The anti-ICE protests continue outside the Delaney Hall ICE facility in New Jersey. Protesters are now mostly out of state professionals. It all began on May 22, after detainees at the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark launched a hunger and labor strike over alleged poor living ...

Two decades of madness raging on

Most weeks, I like to write about personal experiences that other people can relate to, and imbue them with humor, snide comments, or everyday frustrations. This week is different. I’m mad. It is an anger still festering after 20 years Tom O’Brien, my late husband, died of esophageal ...

Time working against water system

Let’s talk about the Fredonia water project, which we have recently begun, to switch our water source from the village’s own reservoir to Lake Erie water purchased from Dunkirk. The project is projected to run about $13 million. So far we have received grants totaling a bit more than $7 million for it, and we are bonding the rest over a 30-year period while continuing to seek additional grants. A small but vocal group has been screaming that this water is going to cost more than what you are currently paying for water. I agree, this is true, although I will point out that even if ...

The politics of data centers

Recently, the New York State Legislature passed a one-year moratorium on building new data centers. That tends to be the way in New York. If it is controversial, let’s punt the issue down the road and deal with it later. Of course, no one voting for the proposal agreed to give up their cell phones or other devices. Everybody wants those. That’s where we get our news, weather, messages and virtually everything these days—navigating your car, streaming football games, asking “Siri” who was President 50 years ago. We can get it all—welcome to the world of data! Admittedly, ...

Musk’s ‘trillionaire’ status is a good thing, actually

I am not a huge fan of Elon Musk as a political activist or commentator. I think he's made Twitter -- sorry, X -- worse. His support for the nationalist right in Europe has been ugly. His tenure leading the Department of Government Efficiency mostly amounted to a missed opportunity and often descended into little more than performative vandalism. His personal life is not exactly consonant with my preference for bourgeois family values. Though, one can hardly accuse him of being a deadbeat dad. On the other hand, I am a huge fan of his accomplishments in business and engineering. He ...

Bulldoze the Statue of Liberty?

President Trump’s lawyer is trying to convince a judge that not only did President Trump, as a tenant, have the power to tear down a large part of the White House, but that President Trump has the power to “bulldoze the Statue of Liberty.” As we approach July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the 13 British colonies declaring their independence from the King of England, has Trump declared our independence from what the Statue of Liberty stands for? Here is the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe ...