Opinion

With spring underway, warmer weather is slowly returning, the days are growing longer, and everything is in bloom.  Unfortunately, the arrival of spring also kicks off a second and largely unwelcome season.  This season is marked by piles of forms, confusing instructions, and the prospect of turning your hard-earned money over to the government - tax season.

    Alas, we must pity the poor individual. The American individual, that rock of our very fabric, is now under dire threat from a new and relentlessly socialist assault by the policies of President Barack Obama.

    Gone, or at least soon to be gone, is the individual’s ability to make choices for himself, or direct his life in any serious way outside the bitter tyranny of a leftist government bent on destroying his freedoms.

The cost of doing business with the government became clear last month and everyone should take a long hard look at those consequences: Bailout-mania comes with a heavy price tag. Just ask Rick Wagoner.

    Burial in a national cemetery is open to all members of the armed forces and veterans discharged under conditions other than dishonorable, as well as their spouse, un-remarried widow or widower, minor children and (under certain conditions) unmarried adult children.

    Also eligible for burial are members of the reserve components of the armed forces, the Army and Air National Guard and the Reserve Officer Training Corps who died while on active duty for training or performing their services.

    In a jail cell in Lima, Peru, a 39-year-old American woman waits to give birth to her child. She’s eight months pregnant, but is not in particularly good health, and must have back surgery at some point after the birth.

    For American Lori Berenson, most of those facts represent progress. The baby, of course, is good news. So is the modern, well-equipped facility in Lima, unlike the other remote and rustic prisons where she has lived since 1995.

    My trip around Liberty Lake a couple of weeks ago proved enlightening.

    I had dropped my son off for baseball practice and decided to get a little exercise myself. So I took advantage of the warm Tuesday afternoon to take a walk around the Lake. Along the way I stopped to talk to a couple of anglers who were dangling some bait in the water. One conversation was especially helpful.

    “So when will they stock here again?” I asked.

New mentoring program

    Staunton River High School is establishing a mentoring program entitled Gentlemen by Choice. 

    This program designed to serve as a system of support to high school males in grades nine through twelve.  It exists to build self esteem, promote and improve academic success, and encourage social awareness.  Through participation in this program, many of the young men involved are given a proactive opportunity as opposed to a remedial strategy to enhance their self-esteem. 

This past week House Democrats presented their $3.6 trillion budget resolution – a budget which spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much. The Democrat budget proposes a deficit of $1.2 trillion for 2010, with the national debt climbing to $17.1 trillion.  It also includes one of the largest tax increases in history.  The spending in this budget is so massive that independent estimates suggest roughly 250,000 new federal bureaucrats may be needed to spend it all.