Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 68F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph..

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 68F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph.

Sir, I have not yet begun to fight!” bellows Captain John Paul Jones from the rolling deck of the USS Bonhomme Richard to his British adversary’s demand for surrender.

Sadly, those famed fighting words also summarize the ignominious response to a fire that broke out aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard on July 12, 2020, which burned at its moorings in San Diego over four days, injuring 64 sailors and civilians. The ship, fresh out of refit, had to be decommissioned after repairs were estimated to cost up to $3.2 billion and take years to complete.

As with the 2012 fire that destroyed the submarine USS Miami at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the fire aboard the Bonhomme Richard was intentionally set, it’s alleged. The seaman accused denies the charges and will go on trial in September.

The fire alone, whether set or not, isn’t why the Bonhomme Richard was destroyed. The response to the fire was, the Navy’s investigation concludes. Crew and commanders were unprepared to fight the fire, sailors were inadequately trained and poorly led, and equipment was non-functional, improperly maintained or incompatible.

The non-judicial punishments quietly announced last Friday included 20 sailors connected to the response. The three most senior officers of the ship — Capt. Gregory Scott Thoroman, the commanding officer; Capt. Michael Ray, the executive officer; and Jose Hernandez, the ship’s senior-most enlisted sailor — were issued letters of reprimand, with Thoroman and Ray also forfeiting pay. Vice Adm. Richard Brown, surface force commander for the Pacific Fleet at the time, received a letter of censure.

“A capital ship of the U.S. Navy was lost at the pier and it seems like nothing is being done about it. And two years later, on a Friday afternoon, you release the information about this report. You’re taking out the trash and hoping that nobody notices,” was the reaction of Sal Mercogliano, producer of What’s Going on in Shipping, which follows maritime news.

We hope promoters of a new community center on Manchester’s West Side and neighborhood residents can come to a positive resolution of their differences. That may take some give and take from both camps.

The claim by the director of a Manchester gay pride group that the police department is somehow anti-gay because of how it briefly delayed a parade is, in a word, absurd.

Outgoing Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Shibinette says she will take a short break from her work life to focus on her family and herself. Her announcement last week is a reminder of the extraordinary pressures leaders in both public and private sectors have been under during th…

If you ask a Democrat you’ll find that inflation comes from greed. Ask a Republican and you’ll find it comes from Joe Biden. Regardless of its origin, all can agree that it has arrived.

A Nashua Democrat who wants to be an executive councilor is pushing passenger rail to Boston with an argument that goes most of the train advocates one better. She says that New Hampshire’s very economy “is limited unless we invest in commuter rail.”

We must have missed the memo from those who determine what names are deemed suitable in the natural world. We had to look it up this summer when news stories warned of the invasion of the “spongy moth caterpillar.”

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan writes that America has grown confused about the rights of the individual and our obligations to society.

A national study reports that New Hampshire drivers are among the best in the nation, No. 4 according to Smart Asset. It bases this on such data as the percentage of drivers who carry insurance, the number of fatals per million miles traveled, and arrests for drunk driving.

Way too much of the taxpayers’ money (some $1.9 trillion) was approved by Congress last year in the name of countering the COVID pandemic. President Joe Biden’s plans for yet more such spending have, for now, been spiked.

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