So what's the biggest issue facing agriculture right now? Is it crop prices? Energy costs?
"The biggest agricultural issue we have is labor," Congress member Eric Massa told us during an interview earlier this week.
Part of the problem is...

Has the country gone berserk?
Are we really this nuts?
Just how many people bought into the craziness about President Obama's speech to school children?
And how much worse can this anti-Obama movement get?
The president of the United ...

Actually, a more direct translation is "pubic hair," which is SO MUCH BETTER.
A member of City Council is alleged to have hurled an expletive at last night's meeting. I didn't hear it. I was distracted by the guy in the hall outside screaming...

All of us will be assessing President Obama's speech on health care more extensively in the next few days, but here are my early thoughts.
In our house, as we waited for the president's speech, we asked each other what we hoped he...

Received in our newsroom this morning: A news release announcing that Mayor Bob Duffy will "publicly endorse" Democratic candidates for City Council and the Rochester School Board.
We're all agog here. The news release had the tone of...

From outsider to magic man in four years. The Democratic Party knows the superstar it has in Mayor Bob Duffy - who did not get the party's endorsement during his first run - and is milking the Duffy brand dry to sell the party's slate of...

There are legitimate reasons to oppose School Board member Cynthia Elliott's bid for re-election. But there is no legitimate reason for the anonymous attack launched against her this week.
Among a flood of campaign mail that Rochester Democratic...

Today, General Motors is touting the one million miles that testers have driven its Chevy Equinox hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle.
That once again puts all eyes on Honeoye Falls, where so much of the research work on these vehicles is taking place....

Late last week, I noted that School Board member Cynthia Elliott was being attacked through anonymous campaign flyers sent to Democratic voters. The same is true of County Legislator Carrie Andrews.
Andrews is running for re-election, and...

When the Rochester Labor Council, AFL-CIO, announced its endorsements over the weekend, one County Legislature race was conspicuously absent: the 29th District.
The Council endorsed two Democratic Party-backed candidates facing primary...

The Brits are used to it.
The shouting, the nostril-flaring, the fist-pounding are all in a day's work in Parliament.
The South Koreans go one better. They throw chairs and get into slug fests.
Former President George W. Bush was quick...

The two freshman Democrats in the Rochester area's Congressional delegation - Dan Maffei and Eric Massa - voted against admonishing South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson for shouting "You lie" during President Obama's speech last week.
Their...

At a family backyard gathering in one of the city's more upscale neighborhoods, there was a conversation about the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant that opened on the corner of University Avenue and Culver Road.
One middle-aged white man...

POLITICS: Democrats celebrate a write-in win
Leaders of the Monroe County Democratic Party are finding plenty to cheer about in the results of yesterday's primary election. Not only did all of their endorsed candidates fend off their Democratic...

For every 100 units of blood donated, fewer than five are donated from the African American and Latino communities, says Slater's Raiders founder Lenzy Blake. Minority communities may have language barriers that lower participation, but fear of...

In general, there were no surprises in yesterday's primary elections, particularly in the City of Rochester, where all of the Democratic Party's designated candidates won. But that doesn't mean there was nothing interesting in the results. Here's...

County parks have been the focus of several controversies in the past year, and at this point, it's almost certain they'll be an issue in the County Legislature elections.
One of the first indications came when Republicans began robocalling...

Words certainly aren't everything, but President Obama's speech to the United Nations this morning was an important one. It expressed a foreign policy that was both conciliatory and tough. And it reminded me of one of the reasons I hoped Obama...

Remember the Taxpayer Protection Act? Well, it's put the county in an interesting and possibly unanticipated position.
The TPA requires the county to keep non-mandated spending increases below the year-to-year increase in the Consumer Price...

Republicans don't have a long, solid history of supporting Medicare. If some Republicans had their way, including former President Ronald Reagan, Medicare might not exist today.
After listening to US Representative Chris Lee, who was in...