From Babe Ruth to John Wayne, Americans have seen chewing tobacco in popular culture for over a century. Spitting chew has been a trademark of cowboys and professional athletes alike and chewing tobacco use continues at high rates in the United States. In 2018 a survey showed 2.4 percent of American adults used smokeless tobacco, with snuff or snus pouch use on the rise and chewing tobacco on the decline.

The final gavel and the adjournment of the second session of the 107 Nebraska Legislature occurred last Wednesday, April 20 . The last day of a session is referred to as “Sine Die”, Latin for “without a day.” This was a sixty-day session, but it was packed full of issues, chief among them the allocation of the federal ARPA funds.

The 2022 Legislative Session will go down in history as one of the Nebraska Unicameral’s finest. In just 60 days, the Legislature passed record tax relief, made critical public safety enhancements, and invested in generational water resource projects. As if this wasn’t enough, Senators also allocated $1.04 billion of federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding.

Skin is the largest organ in the human body, but it’s easy to take it for granted. Unless we notice pain or itching or funny spots, most people don’t give it much thought. However, the skin is critically important. It helps regulate our body temperature and fluid and electrolyte balance. It provides us critical information about our environment, and it protects us from invasion by the sea of germs we encounter every day. Some of the sickest patients doctors ever treat are those who have had significant skin loss, whether due to illness like toxic epidermal necrolysis, or injury like burns. This important organ can give

We completed the second session of the 107th legislature this past Wednesday, the 60th day which is the final day we could meet. The last day provided an opportunity to finish the business of the legislature, with some procedural things that we need to finalize. For example, in order to close the books on this session and start the next biennium session with a clean slate, all the bills from the first and second session of this 107th legislature were indefinitely postponed (killed).

As the weather warms up this spring and summer, thousands of Nebraskans are planning to visit our state’s many national treasures and other historic sites. From Homestead National Historic Park in Beatrice to Scotts Bluff National Monument in the Panhandle, Nebraska has so much to offer.

Unsung Heroes -- Over 40,000 acres. At this writing, that is the amount of pasture and cropland that has burned in Gosper and Furnas counties, as well as just south of the border in northern Kansas. At least eight families have lost their homes. Dozens of other structures were also destroyed. Firefighting equipment was lost as well. In addition to this are all of the livestock, the center pivots and other irrigation equipment, the hay bales, and the miles of fence line. All destroyed by a merciless and deadly force.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, was first listed as a medical diagnosis in 1980. However, it has been recognized and called by many different names throughout history. The first recorded description of PTSD is in the Epic of Gilgamesh which dates back to 2100 B.C. In The Iliad and The Odyssey, Homer wrote about Trojan War soldiers exhibiting the symptoms of PTSD. Shakespeare described a character in King Henry IV who suffered from post-traumatic nightmares.

The tax reform bill, LB 873, which I discussed at length last week, will provide over 900 million dollars in reduced taxes for the citizens of the state of Nebraska over a 5-year period. You may see other articles criticizing this tax change, saying that there was no tax break for middle or low income taxpayers, but this is absolutely not true. I want to set the record straight, if you pay income taxes, you get a tax break. Some additional funds for property tax relief were included to help rectify the situation of the overburden/overreliance on property taxes in the state, especially in K-12 education and community colleges. Those were two of the big components in LB 873, in addition to the phase out of the state income tax on social security benefits.

Presidents, especially those of different parties, have a history of reversing their predecessor’s policies once they are sworn in. This is not unusual. But a president inheriting a policy with bipartisan support that has helped keep America safe for two years, and choosing to reverse it anyway? That is very unusual.