Featured Commentary category, Page 152
Cal Thomas: Cough up, America
When you receive your paycheck and look at the withholding for federal, state and sometimes city taxes, along with Social Security and Medicare, you probably don’t think you’re underpaying governments and want them to take more. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio believes that if you have played by...
S.E. Cupp: Democrats getting down in the dirt with Trump
On the first day of the new year, Nancy Pelosi made a number of promises to the nation as she once again assumed the gavel of Speaker of the House. “We believe that we will not become them,” the Democrat from California said in a phone interview, referring to Republicans....
Peter Morici: Swing voters want solutions, not socialist revolution
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez notwithstanding, the big winners in the midterms were moderate Democrats. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders carefully salted swing districts with young candidates who appealed to minorities, college-educated women and suburbanites who want solutions to problems in their daily lives, not a socialist revolution. The moderate Democrats...
Problems with Pittsburgh’s proposed gun control ordinance
Pennsylvania’s 1.3 million concealed handgun permit holders may soon be considered criminals while visiting Pittsburgh. The proposed gun control ordinance bans everything from so-called assault weapons to starter pistols for track meets. The ordinance prohibits citizens from carrying guns except on their property or in their homes or “fixed place...
Pat Buchanan: Trump should declare emergency
In the long run, history will validate Donald Trump’s stand on a border wall to defend the sovereignty and security of the United States. Why? Because mass migration from the global South, not climate change, is the real existential crisis of the West. The American people know this, and even...
Jonah Goldberg: Recycled ‘Green New Deal’
It’s fitting that the Green New Deal pushed by many but popularized by Democratic phenom Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who had her “60 Minutes” debut last week, is a triumph of recycling. Not of plastic bags or soda cans, but of ideas. Specifically, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal...
Michelle Malkin: Wall a monument for the people
Profligate politicians have never met a multibillion-dollar infrastructure project they didn’t like — except when it comes to President Trump’s border wall. Think about it. Boston’s Big Dig black hole, the nation’s most expensive highway project, burned through $25 billion and was plagued by deadly engineering incompetence, endless cost overruns,...
David Argall: Road map to safer schools
Citizens throughout the country watched in horror last year as a gunman claimed the lives of 17 students in a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. People were heartbroken to see yet another school shooting taking the lives of the innocent. In the midst of this...
Tara Murtha & Susan Frietsche: Nothing ‘pro-life’ about overturning Roe v. Wade
Next week is the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case that affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to access safe, legal abortion. Every year around this time, people who call themselves “pro-life” cite statistics related to the number of abortions in the United States since 1973 while...
Maria Gallagher: So much wrong with abortion ‘right’
We as Americans take our rights very seriously. The right to free speech. The right to freedom of religion. The right to peaceable assembly. But, there is so much wrong with the so-called “right” to an abortion. As we mark the anniversary of the Jan. 22, 1973, U.S. Supreme Court’s...
Colin McNickle: Chaos ahead for Pa. transportation funding?
A nasty storm could be brewing for Pennsylvania’s transportation funding regimen, says the executive director of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. And, it’s all been fueled by dubious state legislation that long has milked the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) for millions of dollars to, in contravention of federal law,...
Walter Williams: Hope for black education
In reference to efforts to teach black children, the president of the St. Petersburg, Fla., chapter of the NAACP, Maria Scruggs, said: “The (school) district has shown they just can’t do it. … Now it’s time for the community to step in.” That’s a recognition that politicians and the education...
John Stossel: Legal weed is no disaster
Ten states and Washington, D.C., have now legalized adult use of marijuana. Supporters of America’s long war on drugs said legalization would create disaster. Has it? No. Colorado and Washington offer the longest points of comparison, because weed has been legal in those states now for five years. More people...
Colin Hanna: Economic growth, new jobs, strengthened pensions
From 2012-17, the private equity industry invested $127 billion in Pennsylvania and employed more than 180,000 workers at private equity-backed companies. Despite the industry’s clear record of driving economic growth and creating jobs while strengthening pensions for public servants across Pennsylvania, it is under attack. Pension fund portfolio managers should...
G. Terry Madonna & Michael Young: We can’t afford to impeach Trump
Seventeen! That’s the number of separate federal and state ongoing investigations targeting President Trump. This number omits the dozens of civil lawsuits the president or his businesses are confronting. Under this unprecedented scrutiny, Trump is easily the most investigated president in American history. As Democrats take over the House, they...
S.E. Cupp: What we’re hoping for this year
If it’s possible, 2018 was a year in which it felt like everything was changing, and also like nothing was. While we set our global expectations for 2019, teeming with significant political, social and economic volatility, we’re also considering more local possibilities — changes within our own communities, homes and...
Michelle Malkin: Dems should say Cpl. Ronil Singh’s name
In the still of the last night of 2018, the silence of California Dems chilled the air and airwaves. Border wall opponent Sen. Kamala Harris tweeted three times between Christmas and New Year’s Eve bemoaning the plight of illegal immigrants and their children. But, not a peep was heard from...
Gary Scott Smith: Pittsburgh a city of faith
While Pittsburgh is known for its steel industry, sports teams, ethnic diversity, and recent physical makeover and cultural renaissance, it is much less recognized as one of the nation’s most religious metropolitan areas or for its fruitful faith heritage. The Pittsburgh area has hundreds of thriving congregations and parachurch ministries....
Steven R. Howell: Will Mexico actually pay for the wall?
How will President Trump get Mexico to pay for the wall? Hammering on the “caravan” of migrants headed from Central America to the United States via Mexico was a central theme for Trump prior to the midterm election. However, maybe it wasn’t just a fear-mongering political ploy to boost turnout...
Dale Kotowski: We all depend on clean water
Here in Western Pennsylvania, it can feel miraculous that wild trout have persisted through all that has been thrown at them: clear-cut logging, coal mining, oil and gas drilling. And yet an hour’s drive east from Pittsburgh, trout anglers like me face a bounty of choices. Mill Creek, Indian Creek...
John Stossel: Sweden isn’t socialist
For years, I’ve heard American leftists say Sweden is proof that socialism works, that it doesn’t have to turn out as badly as the Soviet Union or Cuba or Venezuela did. But that’s not what Swedish historian Johan Norberg says in a new documentary and Stossel TV video. “Sweden is...
Walter Williams: The worst enemy of black people
Malcolm X was a Muslim minister and human rights activist. Born in 1925, he met his death at the hands of an assassin in 1965. Malcolm X was a courageous advocate for black civil rights, but unlike Martin Luther King, he was not that forgiving of whites for their crimes...
Donald Boudreaux: Progressives are unrealistic
Progressives take pride in their reliance on science. They insist that society should be governed according to objectively discovered facts rather than ruled by superstitions, dogmas and baseless fears and fantasies. I believe that progressives are correct — which is why I’m no progressive. Progressives’ agenda is inconsistent with their...
Peter Morici: Better ways to appoint Supreme Court justices
How about this new year’s resolution for Congress: find a better way to appoint Supreme Court justices. The spectacle of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings — character assignation largely motivated by his fairly conservative approach to the Constitution — illustrates that Congress has made the process toxic. And, it has...
Mitt Romney: How a president shapes the public character
The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December. The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been...
