Stories from Saturday, August 25, 2007

We were sad to hear that the first and only warden of the Work Ethic Camp, Raleigh Haas, had announced that he would resign no later than Oct. 6. A progressive institution designed to give nonviolent first-time offenders a chance to learn personal responsibility -- as the name implies, a good "work ethic," the facility has triumphed over judicial neglect and direct legislative opposition...

A while back I wrote concerning our republic type of government, differentiating it from a true democracy. In a pure democracy, decisions are made strictly by majority vote. Merrill Ream wrote that I should mention that a republic form of government, by thinking representatives with moral backgrounds, will avoid the pure democracy's "tyranny of the majority" flaw. I think that the upwelling water fuss with Kansas makes a great illustration of that tyranny...

I think I was 6 or 7 years old the first time I heard the statement in the first part of this week's column title. I wanted to go somewhere or do something and my mom told me I couldn't and I started crying. And as soon as the crying started, my mom said it...

The calendar will soon turn to September and the McCook Area Chamber of Commerce has released the schedule of activities for the Heritage Days Celebration on Sept. 26-30. More complete schedules will be available at area businesses as well as at the Chamber office. The deadline for parade entries is rapidly approaching...

Back in 1983, a group of retirees started getting together every morning for coffee and conversation. There were only four couples at first, but very quickly the group grew. "Any time anyone stopped by, we invited them to join us," Gwen Prell said. "Pretty soon, we had quite a group."...