Jeb Bladine: Memories emerge from vintage photos
Margaret Carriker Assmussen told me we must continue printing the weekly Vintage News-Register photos, saying she regularly mails them to a family member who enjoys the nostalgia triggered by images from ...
Others say: NEW DHS boss faces a tough task
Is there a tougher, more frustrating job in all of Oregon state government than serving as the head of the Department of Human Services? If so, we’re not sure we want to hear about it, considering ...
Alene Jacobs: Glimmers of hope
Drug courts make significant difference in community battles with drug addiction
Jeb Bladine: The great gift of a second chance
Second chances are great to get, but even more important to give. Our newspaper received a second chance from a long-time reader who had let her subscription lapse due to negative reporting and commentary ...
Jeb Bladine: A ‘disorderly mind’ ponders Civil War
Every day, it seems, we confront the mental gymnastics of President Donald Trump. George F. Will provided presidential perspective this week in his column entitled, “We have a president who does ...
Others Say: Trump, timber and trade
Many Americans in extractive industries, and in the regions dependent on them, voted for Donald Trump. These regions — whether in Appalachia or Southern Oregon — are among the poorest in the ...
Others Say: Richardson's redistricting idea deserves a look
There’s almost nothing more partisan than deciding the boundaries of Oregon’s political districts. The boundaries of 30 state Senate seats, 60 state House seats and Oregon’s congressional ...
Gene Policinski: When it comes to our core freedoms, is a “C+” grade good enough?
A new “First Amendment Report Card,” unveiled today by the First Amendment Center of the Newseum Institute, gives our First Amendment freedoms — religion, speech, press, assembly and ...
Jeb Bladine: Syria a reminder of ‘moral inertia’
Near-unwatchable images from Syria last week showed children burned and strangling to death after rockets dropped by Russian/Syrian jets smothered them with the chemical agent Sarin. The phrase “moral ...
Others Say: Health insurance savings could help heal the state
A legislative proposal to move the state’s public employees’ health care into coordinated care organizations makes sense on multiple levels: It would save hundreds of millions of dollars at ...
Scott Gibson: School competition
Our new Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is a strong advocate of school choice for kindergarten through 12th grade students by using school vouchers and for-profit charter schools. The basic selling ...
Andrew Moss: Why ICE raids imperil us all
A restaurant worker and father of four daughters in Southern California is arrested while dropping his youngest daughter at school. A young woman in Mississippi is taken into custody after speaking at ...
Jeb Bladine: Reckless moments can devastate lives
Last month, nine months following his graduation from McMinnville High School, a young man walked out of WinCo Foods with $3 worth of stolen candy bars. When confronted by the loss prevention officer and ...
Rick Lowry: The Crisis of Trumpism
Trumpism is in crisis. This isn’t a function of poll numbers, or any melodrama of the past months, but something more fundamental: No officeholder in Washington seems to understand President Donald ...
Jeb Bladine: "Obamacare' is a toxic label for American health care policy
We know that labels can be shorthand instruments of racism, sexism, idiologisms of all kinds. Labels created to be cleverly descriptive can become verbal sledgehammers that penetrate our psyches and threaten ...
