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Venezuela oil deal represents good progress, bad structure

Editorials

In 2007, Hugo Chavez sent men with rifles into the Orinoco Belt. They walked into oilfields Americans had surveyed, Americans had drilled and American engineering had made productive and told ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to take a minority stake in their own work or get out. Those two got out. Chevron stayed and ate two decades of abuse for it. Chavez handed what he took to party loyalists, ran it into the ground and left his people eating zoo animals atop the largest proven oil reserves on earth. Give President Donald Trump the credit he has earned. Nicolas Maduro is gone. The Strait ...

Remembering efforts of those who built USA

Editorials

No longer the precursor to the start of the school year for most students, Labor Day weekend now serves as the first three-day weekend break for most. They and their parents get one more chance to take it a bit easy before the grind of the fall semester and all its activities starts to take its toll. There will be sales and parades, backyard barbecues (maybe not everyone has closed their pools just yet?) and even a few ceremonies in which folks gather to remember the true purpose of the holiday: We owe the success of this country not to the politicians who want all the control and ...

Chopping cherry trees stands as crime against DC humanity

Editorials

WASHINGTON — Sure, build a ballroom dwarfing the clean and classic design of the White House. Go ahead, murder the history of Lafayette Square with prison bars keeping tourists away from our traditional place of dissent. Close the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since it will never be the same again, with your name spoiling the grandeur and memory of the slain president. Take it all away from the people who live and love it here. But don’t chop down our precious cherry trees by the Hains Point waterfront, Donald J. Trump. To repeat, don’t cut down our cherry ...

Nation’s woke renaming trend is nothing but childish antics

Editorials

As part of Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada that the administration claims isn’t a trade war, the president has signed an executive order, renaming Lake Ontario, “Lake America.” This follows his renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” These childish antics help no one, but Trump is not alone in changing names for political and woke purposes. There is a long road in Northern Virginia that for years has been called “Lee Highway.” It passes through Arlington and Fairfax counties. Arlington County politicians decided they didn’t like Confederate Gen. ...

Letters to the editor

Letters to the Editor

There are scarier things than socialists DEAR EDITOR: A recent screed in The Vindicator op/eds surprised me for its lengthy attempt to tar Democrats as socialists and communists based on elected and nominated officials. The writer could have had an easier job of it by reviewing the “accomplishments” of the Trump administration and its collaborators in Congress. The writer’s anxiety over “… 250 elected offices …” held by what he deems are socialists is less scary when you realize there are more than 500,000 elected officials holding office, so about .0005% of elected ...

Praising God for another trip around the sun

Editorials

As my high school and college classmates and I have gotten older, I have noticed that when birthday shoutouts go out on Facebook, many say they thank God for “another trip around the sun.” This wasn’t a saying that I grew up hearing, but it definitely has special meaning now in the middle years of middle age. When I posted my birthday selfie on Facebook in August, thanking friends for their “warm and loving” well wishes, I got comments saying how beautiful and amazing I looked, which made me giggle a bit since I was rocking my Ohio State gear and hyping the upcoming college ...