Editorials

Every year, we dutifully and thankfully acknowledge our mothers. We buy gifts. We select greeting cards that say the nicest things. We become part of the crowd at our favorite restaurant. We make a special day in every way we can.

In the 1990s, autism rates exploded across the United States. While many debate the cause of this epidemic, a generation of children — as many as one in 150 children — will grow up facing tough real-world situations.

Investigators continue to seek clues that would lead to the arrest of the person or persons setting fires in Cape Girardeau — 19 of them since April 2005, including nine this year. Tragically, one of the most recent fires on April 29 killed a 42-year-old man.

Preparing government budgets, particularly at the local level, will require some financial ingenuity and prudence this year. Cape Girardeau's finance director recently told the city council that the general economic slowdown and rising costs are creating a significant pinch.

There have been many occasions this year — too many, some might say — to check your homeowner's and renter's insurance policy to see what's covered — and what's not.

The Cape Girardeau County Commission has been trying to deal with a thorny issue: the alleged abuse of a county computer-use policy involving an elected county official.

The church brought the stuff. The VFW brought the snacks.

It looks like we have a serial arsonist — or arsonists — on our hands in Cape Girardeau.

Marybeth Williams of Jackson was one of those individuals whose personality, attitude and charm suited her well to be an ambassador for her hometown, a role she relished as executive director of the Jackson Chamber of Commerce the past three years.

The Cape Girardeau School Board is to be commended for the emphasis it is putting on financial accounting, particularly in light of some major problems over the years in the way the district has handled its finances, having a cumulative effect of undermining the public's confidence.

Rock Port, Mo., in far northwest Missouri declared last week that the town of 1,300 has become the first U.S. city to get all of its electricity from wind power.

When Cape Girardeau County voters approved a half-cent sales tax in 2006 for road improvements and the sheriff's department, commitments were made to speed up the county's paving schedule in an effort to put hard surfaces on as many roads as possible.

We've had a lot of wake-up calls lately.

To many Cape Girardeau County residents, the words "planning" and "meet city codes" sounds like zoning. And county residents, on more than one occasion, have expressed with their votes their dislike of planning and zoning proposals.

The Missouri Department of Transportation is planning to build a highway roundabout at what is called the Blomeyer Junction where Highway 25 and Highway 77 intersect and where Nash Road (Route AB) will tie in when it's extended from the industrial area near the Cape Girardeau Regional Airport.

Joshua Kezer is serving a 60-year sentence for murder based on the recanted and unrecanted testimony of three inmate snitches, one of whom admitted in a letter it was a scam concocted to bargain down their own jail time with prosecutors.

The incidence of animal neglect in Southeast Missouri seems to be increasing, either because of better vigilance on the part of the public or because more of these cases involve such large numbers of animals and make for widely disseminated news stories.

It's almost too weird, too Wild West-ish to be true.