Archive for ‘Opinion’

  • Small World: Laws, rules and Hillary

      By Henry Precht BN Columnist The debate would appear to be ended. The highly respected director of the FBI, James Comey, has said Mrs. Clinton and her team were “extremely careless” in using a private e-mail server for official business. His judgment is that no crime was committed and there should therefore be no […]

  • Uppermost House: Out standing in the road

      By S. Peter Lewis BN Columnist I was a total mess when we dropped our daughter Amanda off at college in Virginia in August of 2010. After endlessly hugging her, with her new roommates and their parents standing around awkwardly while I wept, I walked out into the rainy night, got in the car, […]

  • Earth Notes: Our ability to live on Earth

    By Rev. Robert Plaisted Oh no, not again! Why another “Earth Notes” column about climate change? Aren’t there other topics worthy of consideration? Sure there are — lots of them — but none of them will matter a century from now unless we solve our existential dilemma of rapidly destabilizing climatic conditions. We created the […]

  • Small World: The history trap

      By Henry Precht BN Columnist It’s a great and tragic mistake that whoever it was who designed the Holy Land and the surrounding region did not equip its inhabitants and meddlers therein with a huge time erasure mechanism so that when history goes wrong it can be undone and restarted. If we could just […]

  • Small World: The new sexual politics

      By Henry Precht BN Columnist It used to be that national elections were concerned with important issues like the nation’s security abroad and the prosperity and wellbeing of the home front. Or at least, looking back and trying to remember, that was what the campaigns seemed like. With the present national agenda — what every […]

  • Uppermost House: Shouting into the fog

      By S. Peter Lewis BN Columnist Each morning, I awake and sit up and swing my feet over the side of the bed and stomp them onto the floor and rub the sleep from my eyes and stand up and stare into the horrible face of dementia. It was the last thing I was […]

  • Small World: Wordsmiths to the rescue

      By Henry Precht BN Columnist A friend of mine, one who had risen through the ranks from bottom to top, once said, “I never delivered a speech I wrote and I never wrote a speech I delivered.” That sentence almost certainly could be spoken by most of our national politicians today. In fact, who was […]

  • Earth Notes: We are failing to preserve Mother Earth

    By Rev. Robert Plaisted                                                     My wife Sue and I recently traded our old gasoline-powered automobile and bought a hybrid. We went from about 25 miles per gallon to over 50 mpg in one jump. That’s not only good for our finances, but also good for the earth. How much difference will our decision make in […]

  • Small World: Hands in the official cookie jar

      By Henry Precht BN Columnist The subject for today’s inquiry is corruption — the official variety. A recent Gallup poll survey reported three-quarters of the citizenry believe corruption is widespread in the government. Not the Brazilian government, nor the Afghan, Russian or Nigerian regimes (where in some cases the percentage of accusers might be even […]

  • Small World: A word or two for Donald Trump

      By Henry Precht BN Columnist Uninformed and incurious, arrogant and scornful, untruthful and unapologetic, ill-advised and declining advice, wealthy and uncharitable, disrespectful of religion, nationalities and other vulnerable groups — let’s put aside for a moment Mr. Trump’s “personal flaws and political shortcomings that would have once derailed would-be presidents.” (NY Times) Just for […]