Featured Commentary category, Page 149
Aaron Bernstine: Pa. budget proposal hurts local environmental projects, bipartisan consensus
One of the things that gets forgotten in Harrisburg is how powerful it can be to work across the aisle to move Pennsylvania forward. While bipartisan agreement is rare right now, one of the few programs my colleagues on both sides of the aisle support are environmental funds that drive...
Tori Koerbler: A plan to pay teachers what they’re worth
When I was in fifth grade, the kickball game at recess was the best part of the school day. My teacher, Mr. Mettler, would lace up his white New Balance sneakers, take the ball from the closet and get the game going in the school yard. He could have taken...
Thomas Mullane: Indoctrination in higher education
During a career teaching social sciences — anthropology, psychology and sociology — at local colleges and universities in the Pittsburgh area, I have made it clear to students that what I was teaching was not my personal view. My aim was to introduce students to critical thinking, theories of history...
Heckuva way to end Black History Month, Pam Northam
More than two weeks after a heinous medical school yearbook photo of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam roiled Richmond, his wife, Pam Northam, shook things up again by reportedly handing cotton to black kids during a tour of the governor’s residence and asking, “Can you imagine being an enslaved person, and...
Donald Boudreaux: An interview with Adam Smith
My first trip to Europe, in 1987, was to visit the Edinburgh grave of the father of economics, Adam Smith. Born in 1723, Smith died in 1790. During his lifetime he was rightly regarded as one of the world’s greatest thinkers. My admiration for Smith stems largely from the wisdom...
Douglas Macgregor: Great nations don’t fight endless wars, allow undefended borders
“Great nations don’t fight endless wars,” President Trump said in his State of the Union address. That bold declaration comes as the president seeks to bring to a close nearly two decades of bloody foreign interventions and refocus our military on the much more pressing duty of defending America’s borders....
Philip Bump: McConnell has found the real culprit in North Carolina’s fraud-riddled election: DemocratsVideo
What we know happened in North Carolina last fall isn’t that complicated. The campaign of Mark Harris, the Republican running for Congress in the state’s 9th Congressional District, was aided by a consultant named Leslie McCrae Dowless, despite warnings from Harris’ own son that Dowless’ tactics were questionable. There are...
Pat Buchanan: On to Caracas and Tehran
In the Venezuelan crisis, said President Trump in Florida, “All options are on the table.” And if Venezuela’s generals persist in their refusal to break with Nicolas Maduro, they could “lose everything.” Another example of Yankee bluster and bluff? Or is Trump prepared to use military force to bring down...
Colin McNickle: Latest Pittsburgh jobs report disappoints
Overall job growth continues to be lackluster in Greater Pittsburgh. And in an interesting twist, the sector pacing that meager growth does the least to boost economic growth while the one so regularly touted as its future is showing paltry gains, say scholars at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy....
Fellow Republicans: Support this gun safety bill
This week, for the first time in more than two decades, the U.S. House of Representatives will hold a vote on major stand-alone gun safety legislation, this time in the form of H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019. As conservatives with a deep respect for the Second...
Michelle Malkin: Handy history of fake noose
Is it any wonder that American news consumers are at the end of their ropes of patience with the “mainstream media”? Three weeks ago, there were troubling questions, contradictions and doubts about Trump-hating, attention-craving actor Jussie Smollett’s absurd hate crime claims. Few in the “professional” journalism herd paid heed. Now,...
Greg Christy: Can the power region afford to miss the shale revolution boat?
We are in the middle of a great American shale revolution. For the first time in decades, the United States is holding its own against OPEC and Russia, going from energy importer to energy exporter. Unlocking previously inaccessible shale reservoirs deep underground using hydraulic fracturing technology is becoming our nation’s...
Wayne Campbell: Keep Sunday hunting ban
The issue of allowing Sunday hunting has surfaced again. Senate Bill 147 sponsored by Sen. Dan Laughlin, R-Erie, removing the prohibition, was reported out of the Senate Game and Fisheries Committee without benefit of public scrutiny or hearings. It is unfortunate that opponents to Sunday hunting were not given a...
Mitchel Nickols: For Black History Month, let’s celebrate contributions
Here we are, hundreds of years since millions of slaves were deported from the west coast of Africa involuntarily, and millions died because of poor conditions on slave ships. Yet the call for all Americans to join in the celebration of Black History Month is not too much to ask....
John Stossel: Bogus gun research
Last week Rep. Nancy Pelosi warned President Donald Trump that if he declared an “emergency” to build a wall, “think what a president with different values can present… Why don’t you declare (the epidemic of gun violence in America) an emergency, Mr. President? I wish you would … . A...
Walter Williams: Plunder an American way of life
Frederic Bastiat, a French economist and member of the French National Assembly, lived from 1801 to 1850. He had great admiration for our country, except for our two faults — slavery and tariffs. He said: “Look at the United States. There is no country in the world where the law...
Doyle McManus: ‘America first’ increasingly looks like America alone
WASHINGTON — The annual Munich Security Conference is usually a somnolent affair, a ritual renewal of vows between the United States and its European allies. This year was different. Germany’s outgoing chancellor, Angela Merkel, finally said what she thinks of President Trump. Without using Trump’s name, she described his “America...
Pat Buchanan: Will diversity be death of Democrats?
Both of America’s great national parties are coalitions. But it is the Democratic Party that never ceases to celebrate diversity — racial, religious, ethnic, cultural — as its own and as America’s “greatest strength.” Understandably so, for the party is home to a multitude of minorities. It is the domain...
Robert Powelson: Misinformation campaign will prolong Pittsburgh’s water woes
Using unequivocal language including “ineptness,” “negligence” and a “lack of training and expertise,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro filed 161 criminal charges this month against the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA). The filings laid out how the drinking water provider that serves over 300,000 Pittsburghers was criminally liable under...
Nathan Benefield: Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget rhetoric meets reality
Last year, nearly 50 of our neighbors fled Pennsylvania every day. They moved to growing states like Texas, Florida and North Carolina, seeking opportunity. Meanwhile, we literally can’t pay businesses enough to come here. Recall that Amazon rejected $5 billion in taxpayer-funded bribes and set up “HQ2” elsewhere. It’s time...
Doyle McManus: Trump’s bromance with Kim Jong Un faces a reality check as nations discuss nuclear disarmament
WASHINGTON — Persuading North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons will be a long and grueling process that will require President Trump to make significant concessions — and even then, the effort may fail. That dose of caution from Trump’s special envoy to North Korea,...
Michelle Malkin: Oklahoma’s rape kit scandal
If you are puzzled by the nationwide rape-kit testing backlog, Oklahoma provides maddening insight on the bureaucratic forces that create intolerable inertia — and injustice. An estimated 225,000 rape kits have gone unprocessed across the country; more than 7,200 have been neglected in Oklahoma. Last month, a woman who reported...
Richard Serbin: Vatican should chip in for clergy abuse survivors
Finally, decades into a still-unresolved crisis, some Pennsylvania bishops are now agreeing to compensate victims of predator priests. But it seems that one responsible party is getting off scot-free: the Vatican. For four days later this month, bishops from around the world will meet to discuss the child sex abuse...
Antony Davies & James Harrigan: Minimum-wage myths
Gov. Tom Wolf has put Pennsylvania’s minimum wage front and center in the news again, as he tries to raise it to $12 an hour. This is music to the ears of people earning $7.25 an hour, but it won’t be a happy tune for everyone. Politicians would rather you...
Jeff Remington: STEM, pot & our prosperity
I am very appreciative of Gov. Tom Wolf’s generous attention to Pennsylvania’s education needs during his tenure. His recent budget address gave additional credence to how he values education in the commonwealth. He is not alone. The 2019 Senate and House Education Committees are made up of lawmakers who are...
