We, as Americans, enjoy a great many rights in this country – the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, freedom of religion, trial by jury, and so forth. Not counted among these rights, for which so many sacrificed so much for our benefit, is the right to not be offended. While our […]

For residents of the Rockton Thruway, Middlesix and surrounding Winnsboro communities, who for weeks now have been fighting to keep Winnsboro Crushed Stone from crushing any stone in the hills beyond their back yards, the prospect of a new granite quarry in their neck of the woods is looking more and more like a foregone […]

Laws, rules and regulations are not always easy to follow. There are all sorts of prohibitions on the books that, unless one devoted significant time researching them, one would not know they exist – washing your mule on Sunday, for example, or keeping squirrels for gambling purposes or when and where to publicly flog one’s […]

There is a common misconception among some consumers of mass media that news comes in two flavors – “Good” and “Bad.” And while it may be true that some purveyors of news overly sensationalize the gritty tales of corruption, murder and violence, it is also true that those same stories attract more eyeballs, move more […]

Choosing the right leadership is no walk in the park, and as the Fairfield County School District proved last fall when the football team’s defensive coordinator was popped on marijuana charges, even apparently good choices can have an overlooked past that catches up to them. When that sort of thing happens, the blowback always lands […]

The public airing of grievances may not quite be the linchpin of our democracy, but it certainly can be one of its vital and more vibrant aspects. It is, of course, no replacement for the ballot box or the jury box when it comes to affecting genuine change in our governments, but it absolutely is […]

A preemptive strike is only ever any good if: A) It hits its intended target, and B) There is actually something there to preempt. Anything else is just going off half-cocked. The necessity of a preemptive strike, meanwhile, is almost always negated when avenues of communication are open and clear and free of the debris […]

Of all the things politicians should not be allowed to do – profit, either generously or modestly, from their positions; use the influence of their power to obtain an economic benefit for a family member; make laws that benefit only themselves, family members or business associates; employ mistresses in high-wage, low-labor government jobs – the […]

Once upon a time (and a very fine time it was, for newspaper editors), in a county not so very far away, there was a school board of trustees whose behavior redefined the word ‘deplorable.’ The results, of course, were predictable. Failing or floundering schools, facilities fallen into disrepair, test scores that disappeared off the […]

The decline of Fairfield Memorial Hospital has been agonizing to witness, and over the last three years that decline has, under the leadership of its Board of Directors, accelerated at an almost sickening pace. No one single factor is solely to blame for the hospital’s state of affairs, but among them certainly are politics. Ruthless […]