Let’s pick up where we left off 12 weeks ago. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was before the U.S. Supreme Court again, this time in Louisiana v. Callais. * * * Writing for the six-justice majority, Justice Samuel Alito ...
At a time when our need for electricity is growing rapidly, why are we creating a system based on intermittent wind and solar generated power? In 2025 U.S. spending on renewable energy generation primarily wind and solar was $108.7 billion. Unfortunately in the same period the U.S. spent a paltry $2.64 billion on power generation by nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is the same process that powers the sun and all other stars. It is a process where two light hydrogen atoms under extreme temperatures and pressure combine to form a single helium atom releasing massive amounts of ...
Editor’s note: Marcy O’Brien is in New England with family graduation festivities. Parts of this column have appeared previously. Memorial Day was a particularly important day of remembrance for my mother. Every year, she made sure we wore commemorative red poppies to honor her youngest brother, the family hero. Kenneth Arthur MacMillan was the youngest of four children. When their mother died, my mother, Alberta, was 6 and the siblings were 4, 2 and baby Kenny was months old. He never knew his mother who spent the last months of her life in a tuberculosis sanitorium. Alberta ...
A threat lurks in our world. It is bigger than our culture. It is bigger than our economy, but will include them both. From the beginning, humans have used technology to replace us: human labor cut short by a machine that did the job. It was convenient. It was economical. By this means, humans created civilization, but we have never been in control of this process, and it was an illusion that humans ever were. Technology is a thing that happens to us. The machine will use us up, and we will expend bodies and resources. So long as the progress continues, no cost will appear too high. ...
We have had a year of confrontations under Donald Trump — the humiliation of the President of Ukraine in the Oval Office, the put-down of the Prime Minister of Canada, threats against our ally Denmark to take over Greenland...I could go on. Thus, it was with a sigh of relief that we watched the unfolding of the President’s recent visit to China. The White House played down having any great expectations about issues like access to rare earth metals, tariff relief, the status of Taiwan, and even of the Iran War—and there were no major breakthroughs announced on these ...
The OBSERVER that at the last Fredonia Board of Trustees workshop session this past Wednesday (May 20) that the Mayor and Trustee Esperson intend to impose as soon as possible a suspension of the public comment period at Village Board meetings. The allegation made by the mayor was Fredonia citizens were threatening the mayor and board members. Not true. I observe or attend most Village Board meetings and this allegation of threats or harm to Village officials are not true. There is nothing that has happened at Village Board meetings to justify the claim it’s unsafe to the ...
