Editorial voices from across the country
Editorial voices from newspapers around the United States:
The news that O.J. Simpson will soon be out of prison drew a lot of attention.
He has spent nearly nine years out of a maximum 33 behind bars in Nevada on a slew of convictions, including kidnapping and armed robbery, after he and others tried to forcibly recover some sports memorabilia Simpson claimed to own.
But Simpson’s biggest brush with the law had come in 1995, when he was found not guilty in the brutal slayings the year before of his former wife, Nicole, and another man, Ron Goldman. The case captivated the American public and was a staple on TV from the crimes to the verdict. Many believed he was innocent. But just as many thought he got away with a terrible crime.
And when Simpson was arrested in 2007 for the sports memorabilia caper, there were a lot of folks who thought he got such a stiff sentence as much for the murders as for what the Nevada court convicted him of.
Again, to some that was a miscarriage of justice. Others decided it was justice delayed rather than denied.
Now he will be getting out. A parole hearing went in his favor, and he will be released in October. And yet again there is joy, and there is outrage.
With any luck he will fade into obscurity when the prison doors swing open.
No doubt he will be offered book deals, TV deals, speaking deals – maybe a film deal. Whether any of these comes to fruition depends on whether there is a market. And that will be up to all of us.
It’s premature to declare victory as Congress works to protect the Great Lakes from President Donald Trump’s proposed elimination of $300 million in funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, but action taken recently by the House Appropriations Committee is encouraging.
By a 30-21 vote, the committee restored $300 million for the GLRI to the budget. Many of the “no” votes such as that of U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, weren’t opposed to the $300 million restoration, but to other cuts made to Environmental Protection Agency funding.
But seven years of aggressive efforts to undo decades of abuse suffered by the lakes is only a start.
Continued funding is needed to protect the lakes against invasive species, to restore wildlife habitats, to clean up watersheds polluted by Rust Belt industries in the past and agricultural runoff today.
The Great Lakes are an underappreciated asset, both for the region and the neighborhood. The day will come when people – perhaps even President Trump – realize that if the goal is to manufacture things in the United States, the place to do it is in the Great Lakes Region. Water is our most important natural resource.
The new state requirement that Louisiana schools teach cursive has us scratching our heads.
The requirement was enacted in 2016 with implementation deferred to July 1 of this year.
In the 21st century where letter writing and shorthand are dead and jobs almost universally require keyboarding, software and thinking skills, the new cursive writing requirement seems like nostalgia in search of a problem to solve.
Imagine if lawmakers mandated that all citizens use hand-cranked can openers, or that all new drivers operate cars with manual transmissions.
Rather than looking back through the mists of memory to enact a cursive writing requirement, the Louisiana legislature could do more to help kids and schools by addressing the state’s looming fiscal crisis.