Editorials

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It’s time to get your flu shot — if you haven’t already. You owe it to yourself, and to protect the people around you.

President Trump created a firestorm — a phrase that could describe almost any of his actions — when he said last month that he would issue an executive order ending “birthright” citizenship fo…

Every year the Don R. Grable American Legion Post 48 in Ilwaco holds its annual law and order awards.

“Neonic” is a word that sets off alarm bells among those who are reflexively opposed to pesticides on farms and ranches.

This month reporters from our sister publication, the Capital Press, tried to put a dollar figure to the impact of retaliatory tariffs placed on U.S. agriculture products to farmers and ranche…

It was always going to be ugly. The Washington Legislature’s first major effort to implement court-ordered statewide full funding for K-12 education has upset decades of local school levy arra…

Perhaps nothing personifies the late Sen. John McCain better than this episode from his 2008 presidential campaign.

Despite its factions and feuds, Oysterville remains a really remarkable community success story. Even its quarrels are encouraging in a way, indicating it is a place that stirs passionate feel…

Americans have looked down our noses at the Chinese, whose dirty air we’ve seen on television — dreary gray and brown, shrouding ugly streets in a kind of sickly twilight. How disheartening it…

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Chinook Observer is joining this week with publications around the U.S. to issue a warning about the ongoing assault on America’s free and independent press, one of the para…

If it looks like a scene from the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean,” that’s because it is.

‘Beauty and the Beast’

The press is not the enemy, despite what President Donald Trump has said. His relentless campaign against independent journalism is a self-serving strategy meant to shield himself from account…

There’s a well-known story of a Long Beach mayor decades ago who unscrupulously made sure his family had the only fireworks stand in town. Such self-dealing was once all too common. Today’s Lo…

The Food and Drug Administration is taking another look at proposed nutritional labeling rules after a hue and cry from cranberry, honey and maple syrup producers.

Cape promotion well deserved

In the last 20 years, we doubt a year has gone by without some sort of tragedy on the Oregon and Southwest Washington coasts.

It’s unsurprising that Cape Disappointment State Park is on the verge of losing an important campground. It’s also unsurprising — but nevertheless disappointing — that federal and state agenci…

The Chinook Tribe’s tenacious efforts to survive as distinctive original residents of this place — and to convince bureaucrats of their legal existence — could form the basis of an intricate l…

The quest for bitcoins, the cryptocurrency that exists only in cyberspace, probably doesn’t weigh heavily on the minds of most Northwesterners.

The fight over using man-made chemicals to control burrowing shrimp in Willapa Bay has now been going on about three times longer than the Trojan War — close to three decades. Like that classi…

Opioid overdoses are killing an average of 115 Americans a day, with 40 percent involving prescription painkillers. Opioids accounted for two-thirds of country’s 63,600 overdose deaths in 2016.

Both desirable and dangerous, coastlines are a front-row seat for the splendors, rewards and hazards of the living, crashing ocean. A new analysis of tsunami risks published last week shouldn’…

A Chinook Observer editorial cartoon from more than a century ago recorded the adversarial relationship between fishermen and all the species that enjoy eating salmon. Specifically about outwa…

Wednesday is a special day for this newspaper.

The U.S. Navy is once again eying state parks on the south Washington coast and Columbia estuary as training sites for SEALs, the service’s elite special-operations group. Pacific County parks…

A century ago the economies of rural areas were held back by lack of electricity, phone service and adequate highways. Nowadays, slow internet connections can be a similar handicap — one the P…

Washington’s Legislature has a split personality when it comes to government openness: Good for everyone else, but not for themselves.

A look back at several years of news about the Columbia River Dungeness crab industry highlights trends and problems that are coalescing into a need for a better coordinated response.

Tuesday’s pre-dawn tsunami watch was a useful reminder of the need to be a well-educated and prepared coastal resident.

For all who care about the fishing industry and Columbia River heritage, the end of The Gillnetter is a sad occasion marking the close of an era. Combined with the atrophying of the Columbia R…

As we wish all our Pacific County neighbors and subscribers around the world a happy and safe new year, we cannot help but look ahead to 2018.

It is hard to believe that 10 years have passed since we were hit by the nasty leftovers of two tropical typhoons.

Getting to know the fishermen and crabbers of the Columbia-Pacific region is a lesson in respect for tradition, the environment and the future. No one has a better sense for how humanity’s wel…

The sad death earlier this month of 87-year-old Audrey Davis of Ocean Park is generating discussion about how we deal with a variety of issues on this remote coast — everything from dementia c…

Washington state agencies have ideas for how to accommodate future requests for a host of new projects along the Pacific coast — tidal, wave and solar energy, dredging disposal, mining, marine…

“Words spoken by the President of the United States matter. Are you tonight recanting the oath you took on January 20th to preserve, protect, and defend the First Amendment?” U.S. Sen. Ben Sas…

In Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, citizens and authorities had several days to brace for a looming disaster in the form of this year’s horrendous hurricanes. In hindsight, they didn’…

“America First” remains an empty slogan, judging by an absence of White House and congressional interest in replacing the U.S. Coast Guard’s fleet of increasingly antique helicopters.