Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said something interesting while campaigning for Dave McCormick, one of the contenders for the GOP nomination to replace departing Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. "Just once, I'd love to see a Republican candidate stand up in a primary and say: 'I am a moderate, establishment squish. ...

Adults deciding where to settle and raise their families once considered tax rates, job opportunities and housing prices. Now they also have to ask themselves whether they want their children in schools that push gender fluidity, teach masturbation and provide tampons in the boys' room for females transitioning to become males...

For about a half-second after the leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion in the case that may throw out Roe v. Wade, people who support Roe dropped the talking points and told the truth. California Gov. Gavin Newsom tweeted that if men could get pregnant, of course abortion would be legal. Joe Biden talked about the right to abort a child. The dropping of the filter was a refreshing reprieve from the typical euphemisms...

The horrific massacre in Buffalo, New York, has created a debate about the "great replacement theory," the rancid theory adopted by white supremacists that Jewish people are conspiring to destroy the influence of white Americans by importing nonwhite immigrants...

Few people are more committed to Christian education than Carroll and Debbie Williams. The two have played important roles at Lynwood Christian Academy and Cape Christian Community School. As the school year wraps up, the couple will enter a new chapter: retirement...

When all you have is a hammer, everything does indeed look like a nail. This is the best way to describe government officials' unoriginal and often destructive thinking. No matter the problem du jour, the answer is always more government spending. But more spending requires more tax revenue, which is not always easy to acquire in the modern global economy...

Recently, a middle-aged white couple was kicked off a JetBlue flight from West Palm Beach, Florida to Newark, New Jersey, for behaving obnoxiously and spewing out vulgar and homophobic slurs at the crew and passengers. The woman claimed that her filthy words and obnoxious behavior were protected by her right to free speech and that her being kicked off the plane was evidence that "free speech is dead" in America. ...

Orange is the color that Hadiya Pendleton's friends wore in her honor when she was shot and killed in Chicago at the age of 15, just one week after performing at President Obama's second Inaugural parade in 2013. After her death, her friends asked for programs and events to honor her memory and raise awareness about gun violence. Since 2015, Wear Orange has taken place the first weekend in June (honoring Hadiya's birthday of June 2)...

If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its decision guaranteeing reproductive rights, and the question is returned to the states, then I predict we can all expect major disruptions in our daily lives. Many states including Missouri will all but completely ban abortion, but that is only the beginning. With illegality comes consequences. Will Missouri become a police state devoted to controlling everyone's private sexual behavior, especially women? How else do you think an abortion ban would work?...

Trump claims Pennsylvania's election system was fraudulent when he lost but now claims it's free and fair because his people won their primaries. Kudos to the Keystone state for holding a clean election using the same equipment, mail-in ballot system, election monitors and tabulation equipment used in 2020! So it's rigged when he loses and fair when he wins? Don't you wish life was really like that!...

A big event will be held in Cape Girardeau on Saturday, connecting area youth with a former Major League Baseball player who will conduct a one-day Fitness Sports Clinic at Capaha Field. People Organized to Revitalize Community Healing (PORCH) will host former MLB outfielder Curtis Granderson who will lead the clinic, set for 9 a.m. to noon. Up to 125 youth between the ages of 7 and 17 are invited to participate, with priority given to kids who live in the south side of Cape Girardeau...

An inspiring story about two local track and field runners caught our attention last week. Aiden Scheeter is a freshman at Oran High School. He runs the 400 on the high school's track squad. But unlike his fellow runners, Scheeter is visually impaired. He was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and cone-rod dystrophy (CRD), the former a disease affecting the retina where cells break down over time and the latter an inherited disorder involving light sensitivity of the retina cells...

It was the Saturday of the first weekend I had ever spent with Felipe. Our relationship was in that place and time when I knew my heart was approaching the point of no return. He had already met my best friends and my family. He showed up to my Tuesday night guitar gig and even read an essay of mine I hadn't yet published. Felipe seemed intrigued by all of the quirks and qualities that existed in me...

That's the big news story of the week. In the richest country in the world, new mothers are not able to find baby formula or are having to stand in line for hours to get it. That problem is at the top — for now — of the growing pile of economic blunders and social miseries Joe Biden and his failing policies have caused the American people...

In 1955, an unmarried pregnant University of Wisconsin graduate student left her home and traveled to San Francisco to a doctor who took in unwed expectant mothers, delivered their babies and helped arrange adoptions. The baby son she delivered and put up for adoption grew up to become the legendary business and technology entrepreneur Steve Jobs...

Americans are now entering uncharted, revolutionary territory. They may witness things over the next five months that once would have seemed unimaginable. Until the Ukrainian conflict, we had never witnessed a major land war inside Europe directly involving a nuclear power...

There was something ridiculous about the half-a-dozen protesters in "Handmaid's Tale" costumes showing up at Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett's house, with one of them explaining to a reporter that Barrett, as an adoptive mother, doesn't know what it's like to carry a child to term. Never mind that the Justice has given birth five times...

I would like to commend our mayor, city council members and city staff for creating the proposed 2022-2023 operating budget for the City of Cape Girardeau. Upon reviewing the document, it was obvious to me that a lot of thought, work and time went into developing a budget that not only provides for routine city operating costs but also invests available revenues in city employees, streets, the airport and other areas of infrastructure...

Going food shopping feels like getting punched in the gut. You pick up a whole roasting chicken, hoping it will feed four, and see the price: over $10 in many New York area stores--a staggering $18 if the bird's organic. Apples are close to $3 a pound. And forget buying a steak; you might have to take out a mortgage...

This weekend Southeast Missouri State University will host its spring commencement ceremonies. Among those walking are 1,063 undergraduates, 304 master's students and 24 specialist candidates. SEMO will hold a ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday for the Harrison College of Business and Computing, College of Humanities and Social Sciences and Holland College of Arts and Media. The keynote speaker will be Dr. Shane Mizicko, professor of music in the Department of Music...

The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a passionate advocate for abortion rights, but she was also one of Roe v. Wade's most effective critics. "My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change," she said, explaining that abortion rights were gaining ground when Roe froze the democratic process in place and gave opponents a poorly reasoned decision to focus on...

The mission of Mineral Area College (MAC) is to serve the community by providing students a quality, affordable education and offer opportunities for personal growth and career development in a safe, professional environment. We are flattered the community has chosen us to be the provider of affordable general and technical education in the greater Cape Girardeau area...

The United States is in the grips of a fentanyl crisis that doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves. Yes, it's important who owns Twitter, and interesting what some Republicans might have texted former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 election, but none of this matches the significance of a hideously insidious drug devastating American communities...

City of Cape Girardeau leadership recently announced a proposal that would triple the amount of funding for the removal of abandoned or unsafe buildings, a move they say is necessary to reduce crime and improve neighborhoods. The proposal would allocate $125,000 in American Rescue Plan funds toward the removal of these structures, which can be a draw for illegal activity in addition to being structurally unsafe...

"I felt like a fireman in hell. I couldn't put out all the fires." That's a quote from Steven Massof, an employee of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist. Massof was operating illegally as a doctor in Gosnell's clinic. At Gosnell's trial, Massof testified to the horrors that played out in Gosnell's clinic, where women were overmedicated for late-term abortions. Babies were born alive, necks were snipped and women died there. It was, in fact, a hellish scene...

In America today, approximately 1 out of 5 Americans is suffering with a mental health issue; and approximately 1 in 25 adults is experiencing a serious mental illness that substantially interferes with one or more major life activities. The pandemic has further compounded the impact on mental health. ...

The spring season of Old Town Cape's Tunes at Twilight kicks off this week, and the concert series will return to its former location: Ivers Square in downtown Cape Girardeau. The concert series had been moved to the Southeast Missouri State University River Campus during construction of the new City Hall. But with construction complete, the outdoor music series can now resume with the former Common Pleas Courthouse-turned-City Hall as the backdrop...

"What is the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?" the president of the United States asked 10 years ago at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. "A pit bull is delicious." Of course, to echo E.B. White: Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process...

Politicians, the Federal Reserve, and Fed and administration apologists like to claim the inflation we face is caused by supply constraints. This claim goes against the facts on the ground. According to the World Trade Organization, even though there was a collapse in trade at the beginning of the pandemic, trade in intermediate goods — critical inputs in finalized products — quickly recovered despite port and shipping bottlenecks. ...

Forget inflation, forget Ukraine, forget the crashing stock market. Thanks to a troublemaking leak by some jerk inside the U.S. Supreme Court, abortion is dominating the front pages of our media again. The leak of the first draft of a majority decision by the Supremes to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that legalized abortion in the U.S., has reignited the abortion issue overnight...

Lending money is not, as they say, rocket science. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, in the last quarter of 2021, of the total of all outstanding business loans from all commercial banks, 1.08% were delinquent. Per the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as of second quarter 2021, a little over 2% of the $1.4 trillion outstanding in auto loans were delinquent...

Mother's Day means I can put flowers in the ground without fear of frost. It's the commercial name given to my annual OK-to-plant day. It's time for warmth and new growth in my planting zone. Any other reason to honor the day has been determined by someone else. Consumers are expected to spend roughly $31.7 billion in honor of Mother's Day this year according to Yahoo Finance, and I wonder if my plants are included in that total...

Editor's note: The following is our annual Mother's Day editorial. Each of us owe a debt of gratitude to our mothers, if for no other reason the gift of life itself. On Sunday, we'll celebrate Mother's Day and all the moms who selflessly give of themselves for their families...

That black and white picture of the beautiful dogwoods and azaleas in Charleston does justice to neither. With SCOTUS on the verge of blocking Roe v. Wade my concern is what's next? Is same-sex marriage or LGBTQ rights or interracial marriage going to be banned? Will schools be forced to teach only the history of white people? Will Republicans be able to gerrymander all districts at will? How soon before America becomes an ultra-right police state??!...

Schools are becoming indoctrination factories, trying to turn children against their country and their own parents' values. It's what the teachers unions intend. Amazingly, that's just fine with President Joe Biden, who told a gathering of teachers and union bigwigs on April 27 that the kids are "yours when they're in the classroom." That wasn't just a Biden stumble. He repeated it for emphasis: "They are all our children ... They are not somebody else's children."...

Southeast Missouri State University is more interested in educational competition than the focus of learning for students. For years we have been told that education is the means to a better paying career. For years Cape has struggled with the income gap reported by USA Today on 07/13/2018: "The share of poor black residents living in extreme poverty neighborhoods rose from 45.3% in 2010 to 78.1% in 2016, the highest black concentrated poverty rate of any U.S. ...

I'm confident that the highlight of Pope Francis's recent meeting with members of the Papal Foundation at the Vatican was a little foster boy named Noah. Fresh off his baptism into the Catholic Church back home in California, Noah and his soon-to-be adoptive family were invited to the Vatican to sit in on the meeting of the Papal Foundation, which works to help needy people all around the world by giving money to projects personally selected by the pope...

Thursday is the National Day of Prayer, a day set aside on the first Thursday in May when Christians gather for personal repentance and to seek God's wisdom for our leaders and families. The history of the Day of Prayer dates back to 1952 when Congress passed a joint resolution. It was signed by then-President Harry S. Truman. The law was amended and established as the first Thursday in May in 1988 during the Reagan administration...

Despite what you might have learned in high school civics, the Supreme Court really only has one role in our system of government -- to uphold Roe v. Wade. That's the animating sentiment behind the furor over the leak of a Supreme Court opinion drafted for a majority by Justice Samuel Alito overturning the abortion decision...

I have been the mayor for Cape Girardeau for just over three weeks now, and I'm happy to report that I'm not regretting it yet. I say that because a lot of people seem to enjoy asking me if I am! In fact, just the opposite has happened, because I have gotten to have many conversations with people who are full of ideas, plans, and strategies to make this city work...