Columns

By Sheriff Mike Brown
Bedford County

    My primary duty as Sheriff of Bedford County is to see that our citizens are protected. This means that I, along with my fellow law enforcement officers, must constantly be on the lookout for emerging threats.

    So far it seems like one of the few wise foreign policy decisions President Barack Obama has made was the decision to stay out of the conflict in Ukraine, including the decision to not supply heavy weapons to the government in Kiev. As things stand now, a fragile cease fire is still holding and Russian troops are pulling back from the Ukrainian border. There also seems to be progress on an agreement on the resumption of sales of Russian natural gas to Ukraine.

With the days getting shorter and the air crisper, families and businesses in the Sixth District are likely starting to use a little more electricity. As folks start to see electric bills tick up during the winter months, it’s hard to imagine the cost of electricity getting much higher – but consider this.

“Why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force?”
    That was President Barack Obama in April, when the pressure to intervene militarily against the latest terrorist organization, ISIS, first began to build.
    His question is one that could have been posed so many times in the post-World War II era. We’ve become a national security state since then, one buffeted by the great powers of the military-industrial complex.