It’s been a while since we’ve heard the kind of optimism contained in Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-SC) announcement of a presidential run.

Journalism used to be about getting the truth out there, but recently we were told it shouldn’t happen if Americans could be swayed the wrong way by seeing and hearing it. Bunches of journalists themselves were upset by a live, CNN, 70-minute, New Hampshire town hall session in which a skill…

I’m a hard-bitten columnist.

Most Americans don’t know which countries the United States fought against in World War II or when the U.S. Constitution was ratified. Good luck having them point to Ukraine on a map, much less Belarus. Watch them stare blankly if you ask who represents them in the state legislature or what …

This past year as a senior at West Valley High School I took a culinary class. My group and I decided we’d spend the semester on a mission: adding as much cayenne to our food as possible.

Recently, there has been a spate of horrific murders.

Once upon a time, a baseball game took its own sweet time from start to finish. A pitcher dawdled with a resin bag on the mound. A batter called time two-three times in a single at-bat before digging cleats just right into the dirt at home plate. A manager might come out to the mound to disc…

The crowning of Charles III as king of England and the shrinking realm of the United Kingdom was not the only coronation taking place in the world.

No words of condolence can sooth the loss felt by the families and friends of the three soldiers who died in a helicopter crash on April 27.

Recent days have flown by at the News-Miner as we head into the busy spring season.

A Texas federal judge’s ruling to remove the 23-year-old drug mifepristone from the market not only threatens abortion access in the U.S. — it’s also an appalling sideswipe at the Food and Drug Administration’s authority and expertise.

The auto industry needs fewer cheerleaders and more skeptics. Like Carlos Tavares.

A search of the Fairbanks Daily-News Miner archives shows that editors back in the day liked posting light-hearted coverage of April Fools’ Day. Here is a small sample.

Marissa Barnwell failed to show sufficient deference to the Pledge of Allegiance. And for that, she was punished.

Listen, I don’t want to sound authoritarian, but I hereby announce that the coming week is “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Week” and that everyone 16 or older is required to sing its lyrics in public at least once a day. After all, the oomph of this delightful ditty has been making millions feel bubbly f…

When Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, the Byzantine Empire and its capital had up to that point survived for 1,000 years beyond the fall of the Western Empire at Rome.

It is a time of Russia indulging in nuke talk, yanking people out of prisons to replace the dead soldiers in Ukrainian battlefields and China saying it just might hand Russia more fighting tools. While Ukraine was simultaneously losing some land it had won, there were also some positives, no…

My office wall at the News-Miner was mostly bare except for a calendar in Polish. This past week I purchased a low-budget painting of a cabin in the woods signed by watercolorist Helen Atkinson.

A lot of Americans can steer past Presidents Day without even noticing it, even if they find it suspiciously odd that there is no mail.

One death of an abused child is too many. To think the death of many abused children might save the state money is just plain wrong.

We all should be appalled that health officials worry polio, measles, mumps and so on might make a comeback in Alaska because vaccination percentages have dropped so low.

I see that the News-Miner web page carries an ad for a calendar with outhouse photos.

Like all of you, I finished tons of art projects while in grade school. After we finished, my fellow students decorated the classroom walls with their masterpieces. Unfortunately, the teacher always said, “You can take yours home.” I figured the nuns believed I lived in a house with bare wal…

It’s best never to take White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s word for anything, but we can presumably believe her when she says that the flying objects shot down by the United States in recent days aren’t from an alien civilization.

About 100 million people used ChatGPT in the month of January, according to one estimate, which would be the fastest-growing user base ever. Yet I often speak to people who are less than impressed with ChatGPT, citing its mistakes and banalities, and they suggest it is a passing fad.

Two big blips of downright infuriating news flashed across our news screens last week. But both vanished quickly, swamped by the next gush of made-for-TV stories.

William Barr took another spin through the news cycle last week, and though it wasn’t anywhere near as uplifting as his star turn before the Jan. 6 committee, you can be sure he came out wearing the identical self-assured smirk he’s long since perfected.

After a hiatus during the Trump years, Republicans are back in the mood for fiscal probity.

Welcome to a new level of crazy in the culture wars.

Thank God, the witch is dead.

I’ve tried. I’ve really tried. But I just haven’t been able to get worked up over the tall tales of George Santos.

The one part of Speaker Vote Week that received rave reviews was C-SPAN’s wall-to-wall coverage, with cameras showing live scenes of lawmakers interacting on the House floor. Normally, when the House is in session it controls the cameras that feed into C-SPAN and other news outlets. But with…

In the mid-1990s, Cyberdyne Systems Corporation created an artificial intelligence-based defense system called Skynet. When the system achieved self-awareness on August 29, 1997, it decided that humanity was the enemy and precipitated a devastating nuclear war.

A social network, privately run by a billionaire free-speech advocate, on a shoestring budget, hosting politicians with millions of followers, and with very loose content rules.

We now know at least one of the priorities of the Biden administration during the remaining weeks Democrats control the House of Representatives.

You might think that you’ve seen this movie before but there’s little reason to think this will be a repeat of the Robert Mueller investigation that declined to bring charges against Trump.

Someday, history’s chroniclers will label this November as the month when America’s political elites and also America’s just plain people of the left, center and right suddenly began trying to see beyond the horizon — urgently hoping to discover their next generation of leaders.