Opinion

At least 11 people have died in Texas, nearly half of them children, after Winter Storm Fern swept the state last week, the Texas Standard reported. Among those killed were three young brothers who fell through ice on a private pond near Bonham, about 60 miles northeast of Texas. In the Dallas suburb of Frisco, two teens died after a sledding accident. They were riding on a sled being pulled by a vehicle.

By now, most people know about Saturday morning’s killing of the 37-year-old male nurse in downtown Minneapolis, Alex Pretti.

Greenland has a population of roughly 59,000 people, consisting largely of indigenous tribesmen. The capital city contains a little over twenty thousand. Nearly everyone lives on the southwest corner of what has been categorized as the world’s largest and one of its coldest islands. The capital city, Nuuk is known for its extremely heavy automobile traffic. Greenland achieved home rule status in 1979, although Denmark still considers it a territory and (on paper at least) defends it against China and Russia. Most of the island is under at least twenty feet of ice (which adversely affects any mining for rare earth minerals that explorers might wish to dig). In reality any defense would likely fall to the United States since nearly all of NATO’s defense activities in recent years have been taken up primarily by America. President Trump would very much like it to become a United States territory in order to have a freer hand in that defense. Denmark opposes that move. So does Greenland. Other NATO nations would seem more receptive to at least some variant of that idea.