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Environmental about face

President Joe Biden has turned America’s environmental policy about face in the first days of his administration. He has ordered the nation back into the Paris Climate Agreement, after Donald Trump had pulled us out. He also revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline project, a controversial plan to build a pipeline to carry Canadian crude oil to Nebraska, and from there to the Gulf Coast. These actions show Biden is serious about global warming and climate change. Rejoining the Paris accords will subject the U.S. to emissions standards that some say unfairly target a country ...

Cutting the pandemic pandemonium

Last week’s Minnesota pilot program to open up COVID-19 vaccinations to people 65 and older ran into typical rollout problems. People had to go online at noon on Tuesday to sign up for an appointment at one of nine vaccination sites throughout the state. Thousands of people tried to log in at noon, crashing the system. About 6,000 doses of vaccine were available, not enough to begin to meet the demand. Those who waited hours online to sign up for an appointment were disappointed that they were too late, and they would have to go through it all again this week. Monday, Gov. Tim Walz ...

GOP’s future has little to do with Biden

Joe Biden today has taken over as the 46th president of the United States. The 45th president, Donald Trump, continues to sulk over his electoral repudiation (and, presumably, frets over his looming legal problems). One-term presidents seldom shine in historical retrospect, and Trump — who spent his four years as president defying traditional norms and battering the integrity of our institutions — is almost certainly destined with the passage of time to be regarded as one of the worst, if not the worst, chief executives in the nation’s history. How long it will take to repair ...

Take time to get Census right

Every 10 years the U.S. government takes a census of everyone in the country. The nation has been doing this a long time, and usually it follows well-established procedures. Usually by this time of year, the Census Bureau is releasing its results. Cities, counties and states around the country are learning if they have grown or shrunk. This information is vital in apportioning government program aid, and especially in deciding how to divide up the country’s congressional districts. But this year the information is delayed, held up by confusion and challenges to the process this ...

Expanding the vaccine eligibility list

It may be a small step, dependent wholly on the limited availability of COVID-19 vaccines, but the state of Minnesota is expanding the list of people eligible to receive the vaccine. A pilot program, being held in nine sites throughout the state, will begin taking appointments this week to vaccinate teachers, child care workers and people over 65, as vaccine supplies will allow. Marshall has been targeted as one of the nine pilot sites in Minnesota for this COVID-19 vaccination program. How many people can actually be vaccinated depends on supplies, which are much lower than had ...

King’s dream

Martin Luther King Jr. would be 92 this week. He was 39 when he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee for his leadership in the Civil Rights movement. In the 53 years since his death, one would hope we have taken steps, made some progress, toward achieving his goal expressed in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech — “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…” Over the years, certainly some progress has been made, but in the past few years we have ...