Tag: Stratton

The term “woke” is being bandied about a lot lately, and several people that I have talked to have no idea what it even means. I know just enough about it to know that I would like to never have to hear of it again, just like I would prefer never to have to deal with political correctness.

In the late 1700s, Congress passed the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, dealing with “cruel and unusual punishment.” Over the years, numerous lawsuits have been filed about just what violates that mandate, such as the death penalty and corporal punishment in schools, both of which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled did not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition.

A recent column in this newspaper by Robert Reich, titled “Get democracy back in elections,” presented a pretty convincing case for eliminating, or at least subverting, the Electoral College.

I am basically a Luddite who was dragged, somewhat unwillingly, into the world of modern technology. I only did it out of necessity, and now technology has rapidly become almost impossible to live without. I recently found out the hard way that when technology fails, our own mistakes can quickly exacerbate the situation.

If you are like me and think that government interference in our lives is a little bit too much, then the next time you go to buy a container of margarine at the grocery, just think about this — 120 years ago, you could buy cocaine in drug stores, saloons and by mail order, but in some U.S. states and in Canada you could not buy margarine at all. Additionally, even if a state didn’t consider it to be contraband, margarine could not be dyed yellow to make it look like butter. The period is known as the great margarine war.

The recent election of Rep. Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House of Representatives brought out the use of the latest buzz phrase for...

As you may have seen, The Lima News is currently conducting a survey about columnists and requesting your opinions about which writers, both currently and in the future, should be published by your newspaper. As I look online at the list of possible future columnists at LimaOhio.com/survey, many of whom I never heard of, I keep thinking of one name that is not there.

Let me begin by saying that I am not against electric cars. They probably are the future of personal transportation, but the key word there is “future.” The Biden administration and the nut-job government of California are trying very hard to do way too much, way too soon.

Some recent incidents in the news have brought to the forefront the subject of selective enforcement by law enforcement agencies. Selective enforcement simply means deciding which laws to enforce in a given situation. Since there are just too many laws, and too many violations, it is not possible to enforce all laws all the time. So, selective enforcement decisions have to be made. The potential for problems lies in the reasoning behind the decisions.