I’ve long considered Athens my adopted hometown. My heart is in these hills. Years before I stepped foot on the Ohio University campus as a wide-eyed freshman in August 2003, I knew I wanted to go to college here.

In nearly 15 years writing news, one of the most gut-wrenching, powerful stories I’ve ever covered happened this past January when I interviewed Alex Andrews less than a week after he had been shot through his kitchen window around 2 in the morning by an unknown assailant.

President Donald Trump promised over and over he would not cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. He even boldly told the conservative Heritage Foundation, “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican, and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.”

Taking up the subject of the love affair between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings impels one first to make two stipulations before the discussion can even begin.

I enjoy falling asleep listening to people much smarter than I am telling me stories about history. 

Thoughtful, studied consideration does not reign supreme in American politics, and frankly, I can’t think of an era it did. Conversely, I also can’t think of an era like ours where crankery and ignorance was entertained so prominently and with such deference.

1. The cost of higher education has risen dramatically over the last 50 years. A four-year, full-time public university, including tuition, fees, room, and board, using 2013 dollars, would've cost $6,966 in 1964. In 2013, the price is $17,474. It's just not possible anymore to "work your way…

Around and around we go. Where will it stop? It won't.

Hot on the heels of my report this past week that online for-profit charter schools are taking more than $1.4 million out of public school districts in Athens County, Athens Board of Education member Bruce Nottke has gone statewide with the issue.

The minimum wage debate seems to be once again raging.

The legend goes that Lyndon Baines Johnson, during a brutal 1948 race for U.S. Senate, instructed his campaign manager to begin spreading a rumor suggesting his opponent routinely undertook to gather carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows.

With 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. of A. has nearly a quarter of the world's prisoners.

You can't say the late Gore Vidal hadn't been warning us for many years. The man famously characterized himself as the master of the obvious, after all. And it's become glaringly obvious that democracy in America has taken a turn for the worse.

Salon's Andrew O'Hehir recently wrote a piece titled, "America: Stupidly stuck between religion and science," in which he makes the capital mistake of ignoring the harm inflicted by the anti-science movement in America every day.