Opinion

TEXANS ARE LEARNING that the state’s attorney general isn’t a very good lawyer. Ken Paxton sued four other states this week, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to toss the Electoral College votes from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin because of the election changes they made in response to the pandemic.

THIS HAS BEEN a strange year. This is a strange holiday season. This is a strange time to buy gifts for kith and kin. We are used to braving very large crowds at very large brick-and-mortar emporiums. We can still go to them, but being cheek-by-jowl among strangers is not healthy this strange year.

GAIL WATERFIELD’S LETTER (at right) appeared on my desk this week unanticipated. It is a contemplation of home and of aging—and how our definitions of both inevitably change.

THE PANDEMIC FELT so far away out here. My husband and I live eight miles south of Glen Rose—the nearest town of any size—barely over the Somervell-Bosque county line. Our house sits a mile and a half off Texas Highway 144, past two ranch gates and cattle guards, and at the end of a winding, up-and-down gravel road that leads to a ridgetop. There are no other houses in sight, just a wide western view of layered blue mesas.

MOST OF THE VOTE counting is over. Most of the noise, with any luck at all, is behind us—although, the Electoral College voting happens in two weeks. Cross your fingers, if you haven’t stuck them in your ears.

AT THE FREEDOM FORUM, we’ve thought about creating t-shirts that read: “Free speech: Complicating Thanksgiving Dinner since 1791.” But this pandemic-era Thanksgiving, as families and friends assemble around a Zoom screen or an actual dining room table to celebrate, all of the freedoms of the First Amendment should be high on the list as we count our blessings.

THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC has laid much of the American economy on its back—but a bright spot made the disaster less crippling than it might have been. That is the Paycheck Protection Program, which funneled money to workers through small businesses.

THE LAST 10 DAYS of election fracas have recalled to mind a prayer, from the evening of Nov. 4, 1992, less than 24 hours after William Jefferson Clinton defeated George H.

IN A POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT like Washington, D.C., the kinds of legal perils encircling Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton might be grounds for firing, impeachment, or congressional investigation. Paxton, indicted more than five years ago on securities fraud charges, has not yet had his day in court.

FOR OVER 11 DECADES, savvy Hemphill Countians have set their holiday clocks for 11:30 am on the first Friday in December—the date of the Annual WCTU Bazaar. Some of us schedule playoff football games around the event.