The biggest surprise of 2021 is that the COVID-19 pandemic is still with us despite the wide availability of free vaccines and booster shots.  Unbelievably, our politics have bifurcated what should be a united response…

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly is politically smarter than you. Before you object, answer this question: Did you run for governor in Kansas as a Democrat in 2018 and win? And before you brush off that…

Amid the chaos of 2020, I reached a point when I needed to get away: from people’s anger and fear, the suffocating cluttered skyline, even the lush vegetation where I live. Open space was what…

Twelve months ago, Americans could indulge in optimism. For a bright, shining moment, 2021 promised to be a year of recovery. The first vaccines for COVID-19 were going into health workers’ arms. The economy was…

As a former teacher, I strongly oppose the use of CRT in public school classrooms — but I’m not talking about critical race theory. I’m talking about Crappy Rejection Teaching, the concerted effort of self-serving…

Among the effects of the COVID pandemic on the U.S. is a serious labor shortage. It contributes to the delivery problem which adds to price inflation. It contributes to production shortages which also aggravate inflation.…

My Christmas wish would be to have Iola officials hop on board the recycling wagon to prevent our Allen County Landfill from filling up with recyclable materials. As a business that handles voluminous amounts of…

This holiday season, as Kansas receives from the national government a Christmas present of $2.6 billion dedicated to infrastructure spending, my wish for 2022 would be for elected leaders, city planners, and traffic engineers alike…

The massive tornadoes that struck in mid-December claimed the lives of more than a dozen workers at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois and the Mayfield candle factory in Kentucky. Some of the surviving workers said…

Thirty years ago this month, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Ukraine broke away from Moscow’s control. Russian President Vladimir Putin has never gotten over it. That, more than anything, underlies the current crisis in which…