Opinion

Civil War soldiers celebrated Thanksgiving in the field

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AS IN MOST WARS, the men of the Civil War found it excruciatingly difficult to be away from loved ones at holiday time. Thanksgiving was no exception.

The holiday itself has its roots in the Civil War. The first official proclamation declaring Thanksgiving as a national day of remembrance was issued by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, partly in honor of Northern successes in the war that year. Lincoln designated the last Thursday in November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.”

End the streak of daily deaths on Texas highways

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IMAGINE THE HEADLINES if the population of Harlingen, Pflugerville, or North Richland Hills were wiped out by a natural disaster like a flood, hurricane, tornado, or by terrorist attack. Or if 18 airplanes crashed in Texas, with no survivors, every year for the last 22 years. We would all be shocked and horrified at such an incomprehensible loss of life. And yet, since Nov. 7, 2000—the last deathless day on Texas roadways—we have lost more than 79,000 lives to traffic fatalities. That is nearly equal to the population of those cities and those airplane crashes.
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State Capital Highlights

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Panic buttons, locked doors for Texas schools Texas public schools would have to install panic buttons in classrooms and ensure all doors and windows are locked and monitored under new proposed safety standards released last week by the Texas Education Agency. The proposal is the latest effort to strengthen school safety after 19 children and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary in Uvalde last May in the state’s deadliest school shooting.

Vote for ‘Big Lie’ candidates could be the last vote

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ALL PRESIDENTS, BEGINNING WITH Washington, occasionally lied to the public, either intentionally or unintentionally. But no past President ever came close to lying to the public—to us—so blatantly, so often and so consistently as Donald Trump. He does it to inflate his wealth and his golf scores, blame others for his failures, and rewrite his personal and our national history to aggrandize himself.

The Canadian Charisma

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OASIS…A WORD THAT WAS first given a physical definition as a fertile spot in a desert. It was the terminology used for the areas that could offer a supply of water and vegetation to craving and hopeless explorers. This early definition led to its subordinate and metaphoric definition…a pleasant area or period in the midst of a difficult or troubled situation. It’s a place that is preserved from surrounding unpleasantness; a refuge, if you will. It’s serenity amid chaos.