Columns

By VINCE LUECKE
Editor

The winter nearly all of us want to see gone has been hard on just about everything, people, pets, livestock and most of nature’s other inhabitants.

One of many people’s favorite feathered friends, bluebirds, have taken a big hit, it seems. Two people have come to the News over the past week after finding several dead bluebirds in their birdhouses.

Lloyd Arnold
District 74
State Representative

We’re officially in the second stage of this year’s session, where House bills move to the Senate for consideration and debate and Senate bills move over to the House.

Lee Hamilton
Center for Congress

In his State of the Union speech to Congress last month, President Obama drew widespread attention for pledging to use his executive authority to advance his priorities.

He insisted he intends to act with or without Congress, and listed well over a dozen actions he plans to take by executive order.

“Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families,” he said, “that’s what I’m going to do.”

By VINCE LUECKE
Editor

I suspect not that many Perry Countians knew the name Roger Tomlinson before perhaps hearing news reports about his death Feb. 9.

Called the father of geographic information systems, the UK-born geographer’s concept of overlaying layers of map data is used by many of us everyday, from the GIS mapping systems in our cars that guide us to our destinations to the hand-held devices that show us exactly where we are.