Articles

Abortion, health care reform arguments get very peculiar

California Rep. Lois Capps, a pro-choice Democrat, did not thrill the pro-choice community with her bid to remove the abortion issue from the health care debate.

Ahlin: Flawed gun-owner philosophy leads to tragic consequences

Note to the folks who keep loaded guns in their houses: that stranger rustling around in your bushes or lurking by your garage may be a teenager playing a game. Don’t shoot.

Ahlin: All that "stuff' in the closet doesn't tell a mother's story

Planning for Mother’s Day, I empty a closet. I do this in my mother’s memory – She-who-could-part-with-nothing. My mother always was emptying closets, although what she put back most often was a better arranged version of what she’d removed. Saving was her weakness; that said, everything she saved was well-organized and labeled. (My accumulation, on the other hand, is neither.)

Ahlin: The arrest of Roxana Saberi: nightmare, moment of clarity

That Roxana Saberi was snatched off a street in Iran and put in a prison, supposedly for buying a bottle of wine, offends all our sensibilities. Her arrest is as infuriating as it is unjustifiable. We want her freed.

Ahlin: March: No time for idealism, but no time to lose hope, either

March: On the surface, the month doesn’t appear to have much going for it, but dig a little deeper and doggoned if it doesn’t look even worse. An old bumper sticker comes to mind: “North Dakota: It’s cold, but it’s flat.” So it is with March: It’s miserable, but it’s windy.

Banks, baseball and babies: morality plays all around us

Which breach of ethics and morality is more dangerous: good old-fashioned greed, or the brave new world of performance-enhancing drugs and fertility medicine that distort our ideas of normal and natural?

Concealed guns on campus: a problem ND does not need

Allowing concealed weapons on North Dakota college campuses: now, there’s the answer to a problem that doesn’t exist. Oh wait, in the spirit of the legislative session, let me amend that: You see, the way the bill is written, concealed weapons would be allowed many other places, too, including athletic events, political rallies, concerts, and – my personal favorite – churches.

A weave of cultural threads comes together in president

An article in the New York Times by Jodi Kantor describes “the family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama” as “black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish,” speaking “English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry.”

Longtime Clay commissioners enjoy new pursuits

Two men who served a combined two decades on the Clay County Commission are now off the board and pursuing their own versions of getting away from it all.

• Brunsvold
• McCarthy

Mayhorn gets nearly 29 years after admitting role in 2003 drug-related murder in Moorhead

A 30-year-old Chicago man was sentenced to nearly 29 years in prison Friday after he admitted to his role in a drug-related murder in Moorhead in 2003.

• Troy Mayhorn

Columns

Ahlin: Radicals in Legislature push ‘personhood’ bills

Not one, not two, but three “personhood” bills have been introduced in the North Dakota Legislature. Actually, altogether there are seven bills that are abortion related.

• Jane Ahlin

Ahlin: As poet said of winter: ‘a certain Slant of light …’

On a brutally cold afternoon, ground blizzard greets my husband and me on our drive in from the lake – gauzy, scudding snow-clouds, wind-propelled and unending although not quite hypnotic.

• Jane Ahlin

Ahlin: Looks like right-wingers rolled NDSU’s president

What happens when two hardworking young North Dakota State University faculty members apply for a competitive federal grant?

• Jane Ahlin

Ahlin: In the wake of Newtown, Heitkamp is tone-deaf

Pardon the bad pun, but Heidi misfired. When Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., appeared on the Sunday ABC news show “This Week” and gun control came up, she used language more apropos to an National Rife Association press release than to the common sense she usually shows – common sense and down-to-earth thinking that make her the appealing politician she is.

• Jane Ahlin

Ahlin: Wisdom of the Durants as the new year begins

Before embarking on the new year of 2013, the following words of 20th- century philosopher Will Durant are worth considering: “Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing things historians usually record – while, on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happens on the banks.”

• Jane Ahlin

Ahlin: Irrational fear prevents us from acting rationally

The adult church choir sits in the east transept of our church’s chancel area facing west.

• Jane Ahlin

Ahlin: Facts explode the myth about holidays, suicide

In the 1993 romantic comedy “Sleepless in Seattle,” the characters Annie (Meg Ryan) and Becky (Rosie O’Donnell) are in a meeting with male co-workers when one of the co-workers says, “It’s easier (for a woman) to be killed by a terrorist than it is to find a husband (if she’s) over the age of 40.”

• Jane Ahlin

Ahlin: Trying to find meaning in sea of meaninglessness

One of the first remarks made by people leaving the movie “Lincoln” is a variation of this: “He’d never be able to keep his dealings secret in today’s world.”

• Jane Ahlin

Ahlin: When religious priorities harm the care of patients

When Dr. Savita Halappanaver, a dentist pregnant with her first child, died unnecessarily in an Irish hospital, Ireland erupted in demonstrations against the nation’s strict abortion laws – laws blamed for the postponement of medical care that caused her death.

• Jane Ahlin

Ahlin: Death of Thanksgiving as we know it? Maybe …

On my way to the store to buy Thanksgiving groceries, I found myself smiling. I love Thanksgiving.

• Jane Ahlin