COVID-19 1 year later

March 20, 2021

Once it pulled the plug on sports, entertainment and travel, the coronavirus pandemic was free to dominate the news cycle. And dominate it did. Apart from a hotly contested presidential election, an insurrection at the Capitol and a summer of Black Lives Matter rallies protesting police violence, the lion’s share of media stories over the past 12 months have dealt with COVID-19 and its impacts. Looking back through the pages of this newspaper, the coronavirus evolves quickly from vague threat to economic and social juggernaut. On March 5 of last year, a cruise ship was anchored ...

Filibuster rule must stay

March 19, 2021

The biggest question in Washington for the next two years isn’t about a single policy. It’s whether Democrats use their narrow Senate majority to kill the legislative filibuster rule requiring 60 votes in order to ram a radical agenda into law with a mere 50 votes plus Vice President Kamala Harris. Two Democrats — Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — promised that they wouldn’t vote to do so. But progressive and media pressure is building on the pair to renege on their pledges, as legislation passed by the House piles up at the Senate. Democratic ...

Stop voter suppression

March 16, 2021

Iowa’s Republican state lawmakers have apparently won so big they’re tired of winning. Why else would they insist on tinkering with Iowa’s election system? It is the system that recently delivered the GOP stronger majorities in the Iowa Legislature, five out of six seats in the U.S. Congress and six Electoral College votes, in consecutive elections, for former President Donald Trump. Yet the legislative victors insist — again this session — that voting reforms are needed. So lawmakers pushed through legislation that would shorten Iowa’s early voting period, reduce ...

Storms will only worsen

March 13, 2021

Haiku residents know a thing or two about rain. In a community where downpours are a part of life, Monday’s storm sounded and felt different. The 13.2 inches of rain that fell in eight hours left old-timers in the lush green community claiming they had never seen it come down so hard. One described a curtain of rain too thick to see through. Another said the giant drops seemed to be coming from every direction at once. Little streams and dry creek beds suddenly morphed into raging brown torrents. Before long, roads and lawns were awash with running water. What once seemed like safe ...

Migrant kids a test for Biden

March 12, 2021

President Biden is facing a critical test as a surge of migrants, emboldened by the end of the Trump era, is arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. One challenge in particular is the sharp increase in unaccompanied minors. Federal agents encountered 5,871 unaccompanied minors at the border in January, up from 3,076 in January 2020. How Biden handles this surge could become a defining moment in his administration. The federal government has been wrestling with this complex problem for years. During the Obama administration an influx of unaccompanied minors overwhelmed the system, leading ...

Free speech vital for youth

March 9, 2021

A bill being considered by the Nebraska Legislature Judiciary Committee, LB88, seeks to protect free speech rights of student journalists and student media advisers. Currently, it is up to individual school districts how much autonomy student publications and their advisers have in reporting and in providing editorial comment. Many districts have policies that allow principals to review material before it’s published. The bill, introduced by state Sen. Adam Morfeld of Lincoln, originally was proposed in 2018. But it has enhanced relevance this year because of a situation at ...