Opinion

Suspicions that might arise in this election year – after another census resulted in yet another undercount of minorities – are understandable, even expected. Generally, black and Latino voters lean toward Democrats.

Some April 5 elections will not be on the ballot. There will be no story about Hardin-Central or Orrick boards of education candidates and their views on wearing masks, critical race theory, teacher pay and sexual identity.

Josh Hawley, Missouri’s firstterm junior U.S. senator, works overtime to try to make himself sound like a big deal.

From its beginning in 1918, Russian Communists led by Lenin and then Stalin sought to control populations by intimidation, brutality and death. Lenin murdered 6 million people and Stalin three times as many. During Stalin’s reign from 1925 to 1953, Communism spread to Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. President Reagan referred to the USSR as the “evil empire,” and President Eisenhower stated the Soviet government believed in the “force of huge armies, subversion and rule of neighboring nations.”

I hear a lot on TV about rising gas prices and have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, Missouri has some of the lowest gasoline taxes in the United States, so that saves me money.

Our Missouri legislators really do not seem to care for the poor or the will of the people. We the people voted to expand Medicaid to cover about 200,000 more poor Missourians.

The right to redress government is part of the U.S. Constitution and is practiced with vigor in Missouri, but some Republicans want to change that and are meeting opposition rightly from conservatives within their own party.

Missourians in 1973 could have felt secure that the then-newly approved state Sunshine Law made public records and meetings easy to access, but today’s lawmakers often bare their hairy assertions of ignorance, if not outright contempt for the Sunshine Law.

Proposed bill would gut Mo. Sunshine Law It has been almost 50 years since the original Missouri Sunshine Law was adopted by Missouri.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are two of the greatest men this nation has produced. Both had flaws, too. Scratching the surface, Washington had faults as a military tactician and Jefferson in dealing with trade. But the most obvious stain on their legacies is that they owned slaves.