The Mille Lacs County Times

By LESLEY TOTH At Random On Monday morning, Feb. 13, President Obama sent to Congress his federal budget for fiscal year 2013, a sort of wish list of White House spending priorities. The proposal calls for raising taxes on the wealthy, spending cuts in certain areas of government and increasing the budgets of infrastructure projects [...]

By LESLEY TOTH At Random As unbelievable as it still seems, last week marked my one-year anniversary at the Mille Lacs County Times. It seems to me that it wasn’t that long ago that I began working for my hometown newspaper. My first day on the job that January day I was greeted with 20-below [...]

By LESLEY TOTH At Random As an avid political junkie, I have never cast a vote without listening/watching/reading everything I can about the candidates. The past year provided me with plenty of opportunities as the debates between the nine-person pool for GOP nominees whittled that group down to five. And it looks like I will [...]

By LESLEY TOTH At Random Another year has passed and a new 12 months awaits us. This time of year, many people participate in making New Years Resolutions, a tradition dating back centuries. Many people make resolutions and, according to several studies, they often deal with the following: •Improve well-being: lose weight, exercise more, eat [...]

By LESLEY TOTH At Random Currently, there are more than 21 million veterans walking among us. Of those, 1.5 million are female, 2.3 million are African Americans, 1.1 million are Hispanics, 9.2 million are 65 years or older, and 1.9 million are younger than 35. More than 30 percent of all living veterans served during [...]

By LESLEY TOTH At Random Whether it has been the Tea Party rallies, the recent Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, or the protests that have been coined the “Arab Spring,” public display of speech has been making headlines at a renewed pace lately. I was able to see a glimpse of this vocalization in a few [...]

By LESLEY TOTH At Random While I may like a little cat and mouse in a romance movie, the game of playing hard to get that entertainment powerhouse Netflix began this year has been an eye-rolling experience. We fell in love with Netflix nearly two years ago. We had long since given up on cable [...]

by LESLEY TOTH At Random Budget deal deadlines. Gridlock at the legislature. Government shutdown. With one of the longest state shutdowns in history still fresh in our memories and its effects still surfacing after the dust has settled, these are familiar phrases for Minnesotans Now, we are poised to see a repeat of those events [...]

by LESLEY TOTH At Random It’s that time of year again — computer labs are being dusted off, busses are revving their engines and students everywhere are chewing down their fingernails in anticipation. For most college students, the 2011-2012 school year started last week. And with the economy still struggling to escape market vacuums, more [...]

by LESLEY TOTH At Random As a self-proclaimed political junky, I’d been waiting with anticipation for the  2011 GOP presidential debate in Ames, Iowa that took place last Thursday. For me, the debates are one of the most exciting part of the political process, running a close second to the actual election results. It is [...]