The opinion page of The Covington News is the heart and soul of its editorial existence.

Our editorials appear in this column. They are written and approved by a three-member editorial board which includes the publisher, general manager and the editor.

When we write editorials regarding national or state concerns, they generally reflect our middle-of-the-road, conservative thoughts.

And when we write editorials on local issues, we generally offer suggestions to improve our community.

We’ll praise the accomplishments of local people, or sometimes disagree with the directions our local politicians are taking us. More often than not, though, we agree with and praise their efforts to grow our community and help it prosper.

Most of our columnists deal with local issues and state politics, though we do run one national columnist whose thoughts are definitely conservative.

We also run editorial cartoons, a local one and a few state and national ones of a conservative nature. Some readers have seen a need for more of a balance in our editorial cartoons, and we agree. To that end, we’ve begun a trial run of cartoons from Clay Bennett of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. A cartoon on the Tea Party from him that we ran on Sunday has already drawn fire from one reader (see the letter below).

We welcome the input, because this is your page, too. We want to hear from you, whether you agree or disagree with our editorials, and give you time on the soap box. We encourage you to submit your ideas either in the form of a column or a letter for all to see.

This forum is open as long as your opinions are not libelous and you sign your name to your submissions and take credit for them.

Please feel free always to comment on the Covington News. Send your thoughts and letters to tgiddens@covnews.com.