Farmer Brown goes out to his field one day and shoots his best bulls. That season calf production is off a bit and the calves produced are a little less healthy. Next year, he does the same and calf production and survival again drop. The third year he repeats it with results both predictable and alarming.

So he goes to his agriculture agent and complains, “them wolves and bears are killing all my calves!”

Michael Wilson, national director of Americans for Democratic Action, misstates a key fact in his opinion piece on the Boeing-NLRB dispute that the Juneau Empire published on Oct. 14. Boeing has not shifted work from a union shop in Washington state to a non-union shop in South Carolina. Boeing built a new factory in South Carolina to produce three 787 airplanes per month above and beyond the seven per month it plans to produce in Everett, Wash. No work was moved, no facilities were shuttered, no workers were laid off.

A planning process underway at the state presents some pretty stark options for the future of transportation in Southeast Alaska. Under one of the prominent alternatives being explored, a traveler from Haines to Ketchikan would take the following route: ferry from Haines to a new terminal in Katzehin, drive the new Lynn Canal Highway to Auke Bay, ferry to Kake, drive a new road to Petersburg and then on to the southern end of Mitkof Island, ferry to Wrangell then to Coffman Cove, drive to Hollis and likely spend the night on Prince of Wales, and finally ferry to Ketchikan.

Regarding the Empire’s outside editorial from the Kansas City Star that appeared in Tuesday’s edition: The editorial reiterates the recent assassination attempt, on U.S. soil, of the Saudi Arabian ambassador. This editorial quotes an unnamed White House official as stating the United States “doesn’t tolerate the targeting of foreign diplomats on our soil.”

Well, that statement is OK enough, except it apparently doesn’t apply to the United States when we’re doing our assassination plotting in foreign countries.