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Today's Opinion

Council approves tattoo parlor in Uptown

LAUREL – To the Kenosha City Council for approving an ordinance that allowed Black Pearl Tattoo to move in to Uptown. The business had been in a Pleasant Prairie strip mall but owner Greg Larsen was eager to buy a building and found one in an area of Kenosha where he believes he will draw more walk-in traffic. It’s fortunate that the council supported the plan and neighborhood businesses raised no objections. Kenosha needs to be receptive to businesses wanting to locate in our community.

The anti-meddling ordinance

In a lot of places it might not be necessary to pass a city ordinance in order to get elected officials to follow sensible procedures in their relationships with city workers.

But Kenosha has a history of electing meddlers and micro-managers to part-time positions such as the School Boards and City Council. Putting sensible procedures in writing is probably a good idea.

Real progress reducing infant mortality

County health officials and local medical providers should be celebrating the news that the infant mortality rate in Kenosha County’s black population has fallen significantly.

In 2011, the black infant death rate was 4 per 1,000 live births, significantly below the level it has been in recent years. Over the last 10 years, the mortality rate for black infants was 11.2 per thousand. It fell to 8.3 in 2009 and 6.5 in 2010.

Local Columnists

This relationship isn’t working

BY ANNE HAMBROCK

Dear Coupons,

This is a letter I never wanted to write. Let’s face it, if I were a better person I would just say what I have to say to your face. But I’m weak.

Tavern Night at City Hall

By Steve Lund

slund@kenoshanews.com

The meeting room for the city’s Licensing and Permit Commttee was unusually crowded Monday night. This is license renewal time for the city’s taverns, so a substantial number of Kenosha’s bar owners were on hand to make sure nothing unexpected happened to their meal tickets.

S. Korean president’s visit underscores growing influence

By Arthur I. Cyr

Special to the Kenosha News

Syndicated Columnists

Timely injustice

By Leonard Pitts Jr.

Not to canonize the man. After all, the then-governor of Illinois was later imprisoned on corruption charges.

But that doesn’t change the fact that, in 2000, stung that 13 inmates had been exonerated and freed from death row in the previous 23 years, Ryan committed an act of profound moral courage, imposing a moratorium on capital punishment. In 2003, in the waning days of his term, he one-upped himself, commuting every death sentence in his state.

Marathon bombers part of bigger picture

By Georgie Anne Geyer

The one thing no one has suspected Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of being is a closet essayist. The idea of this young Chechen/Dagestani/Khrgyz man who, with his brother is accused of the vicious Boston Marathon bombings, making notes on his ideas had not entered the bio.

And yet news sources are reporting new information about Dzhokhar. Lying helplessly in the landlocked boat he was hiding inside of, in the small Massachusetts town outside Boston where they had fled, he wrote several primitive but revealing thoughts on the hull of the bullet-pocked boat with a pen he found. Since these are the first revelations of this young would-be Trotsky leaking out his likely last words to the world, they are probably quite honest — and they would be totally admissible in court.

Controversies doom Obama’s effort to restore faith in government

BY SCOTT RASMUSSEN

It’s impossible to predict the lasting impact of the controversies now besetting the Obama administration, but the risks to the president’s agenda are sizable.

On the legislative front, they could doom the already cloudy prospects for comprehensive immigration reform. The implementation of President Obama’s health care law is also likely to be a bit more challenging. It’s possible, too, that this week’s controversies could provide a big boost for Republicans heading into the 2014 midterm elections.