Have you been to the grocery store or courthouse lately and been approached in the parking lot by not one, but two people seeking signatures on initiative petitions concerning abortion rights? Confused? You’re not alone. For what appears to be the first time in history, Nebraskans are being asked to sign not one, not two, but three petitions seeking to determine if and when a woman can have an abortion.

Growing up in Palmer, the town fathers had a surefire way to let people know when something big was going on. No, they didn’t blow the fire whistle, as that was just for emergencies; rather, when there was an occasion worth noting, a flagpole would appear in the middle of main street.

If I had a motto, it would have to be “Why make the fat kid do it?” I know what you all are thinking: Why not just lose some weight and then you wouldn’t get stuck with that task? Well, that is easier said than done, especially when the Danish Bakery was passing out kolaches along the parade route in Dannebrog on Saturday. Sometimes, there is simply no escaping food! Snacking on one of those tasty treats during Dannebrog’s annual summer celebration capped off a roller coaster of a week when it came to healthy living for your local, plump newspaper publisher.

Let’s face it, Nebraska has high property taxes, the seventh highest in the country according to the Tax Foundation, which tracks such things. “Lots of land, not a lot of people,” has always been the catchphrase, which translates into a higher burden of property taxes.

One of the great, unsolved mysteries in the state has been why the beloved Trev Alberts left his alma mater to become athletic director at Texas A&M. Alberts was an All-American football player at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, then eventually became athletic director at the school after a successful stint at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Last Wednesday evening, I was returning home from covering the NSAA Class C State Golf Tournament, when I came across a peculiar sight standing, literally, right in the middle of the road. In the rural reaches of Howard County, just as the sun was starting to set, I crested a hill and there, right in the valley below, stood a Hereford cow.

Welcome to a new corner of your newspaper. For years, this column has been called “Capitol View” and for the past several years, it’s been written by J.L.

A couple weeks ago, after returning from Albion, where we meet a truck and pick up our printed copies of the newspaper each week, I pulled a copy of that week’s edition of the Palmer Journal off a stack, opened it up, and my stomach almost instantly twisted into knots.

It won’t come as a surprise to our readers to learnthat, growing up, I was a bit of a bookish kid. I loved reading—not many high school students take a book from the Oprah Winfrey Book Club to football camp— and I loved learning, so much so that I often tell people that school was really one of the only things I was good at growing up.

In 2014, President Obama famously said, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” telling the American people he didn’t care whether Congress had provided legislative authority for his favored policies. He would go it alone whenever he felt like it. Ten years later, Obama’s then-Vice President, now-President Joe Biden has been ruling in the same fashion daily. President Biden’s executive actions don’t just ignore congressional intent; they are expensive, unwise, and unworkable. A recent report by the House Budget Committee showed President Biden’s executive actions have totaled over two trillion dollars in added cost to taxpayers, all without congressional approval.