Opinion

May 4, 2010 — The Lassen County Arts Council and others in our community are trying to raise money to save the music programs at area schools. We’ve done it before, and I guess now we need to do it again.   

One could easily surf the Internet and find all kinds of articles about how students, especially young students, benefit from musical education, so there’s no need for me to regurgitate all that stuff for you in this column. Type a few words in any search engine, and you’re there. But I can easily tell you about my experiences with music in school, and how they positively affected my young life.

April 20, 2010 — National media report Saturday mail delivery may go the way of the milk wagon, and that a wide majority of Americans think that’s OK.

Hold on.    

Congress must act first, and that is not likely to happen soon. Some Congressional leaders worry about trimming mail service, even if only 35 percent of people surveyed by Gallup last summer disapprove.

April 13, 2010 — Every eighth grader in California knows the First Amendment to the Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”   

Later this week, Lassen County’s Tea Party Patriots will exercise their constitutional right to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances. They will line up and march on Main Street to protest many of the policies of the Obama administration and the Democrat - controlled Congress, and I say, “Way to go."

March 30 ,2010 — Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the other Founding Fathers created the census in 1790 when they wrote the U.S. Constitution and empowered Congress to count every person living in the United States of America and to use that count to determine representation in the Congress.   

The census has been taken faithfully every 10 years since then, the use of the data collected has increased and watch out now — this year is a census year.