Opinion category, Page 731
Letter to the editor: Mike Doyle can help fight global AIDS crisis
Over the past 15 years, we’ve made immense progress in the global AIDS fight, but the disease remains a deadly crisis. Every day, the AIDS epidemic claims 2,500 lives. Earlier this year, the House Appropriations Committee took a big step toward continuing America’s leadership in the AIDS fight by maintaining...
Letter to the editor: Opposition to gerrymandering, census question ploys for votes
It confuses me how anyone could be opposed to gerrymandering and the citizenship question on the census. Aren’t they both political ploys to affect voting outcome? One is by redistricting, and one is by counting people who aren’t citizens and should have no right to vote. The citizenship question is...
Letter to the editor: Tax cheats should be forced to pay
I was shocked when reading the Highlands School District delinquent taxpayer list — not only by the sheer number of people who haven’t paid their taxes, but the amounts, many over $10,000. Clearly some people have not been paying their taxes for years, and nothing happens to them, other than...
Editorial cartoons for the week of July 22
Editorial cartoons for the week of July 22....
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of July 22
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of July 22....
Clarence Page: Is Trump’s latest race-baiting a 2020 campaign strategy?
If you were relieved, as I wanted to be, by President Donald Trump’s next-day repudiation of the “Send her back!” chant directed at a Somali-born congresswoman during his North Carolina rally, perk down. The vitriol that welled up so visibly and disturbingly in that crowd Wednesday night symbolized the unusual...
Lawrence John: Legislation another barrier to opioid addiction treatment
Last year, Pennsylvania took a major step forward in helping those addicted to opioids by becoming the first state in the nation to remove the prior authorization insurance requirement for medication-assisted treatment (MAT). Unfortunately, our state Legislature is now considering a measure that would set us back in helping those...
Editorial: Progress or caution with turnpike proposal?
Development always seems like a good idea. It’s expansion. It’s growth. And generally, yes, that can be great. Our leaders are responsible not just to maintain the status quo but to keep an eye on the future. That means we have to grow. We need younger residents to feed the...
Letter to the editor: Censorship & disingenuous global warming report
On March 4, Apple removed Westmoreland author Greg Wrightstone’s Inconvenient Facts smartphone app from its App Store. The preferred view is that extreme weather is surging. We are spun and told a partial truth in regards to global warming data. The impacts are exaggerated and the costs of fixing it...
Letter to the editor: School directors’ contact information should be public
Please tell your local legislators to support House Bill 703, which would make it mandatory for school board members to publish their email addresses so their constituents can contact them. Even though the bill does not go far enough, as it should also mandate that they provide their phone numbers,...
Letter to the editor: Integration vital for ending hatred of Muslims
If I told you that 10,000 Muslims and guests gathered in a town in Pennsylvania to celebrate peace and to share an olive branch with their neighbors, would you hold it to be true? Or would you fear the unknown? The Ahmadiyya Muslim community held its annual convention, the USA...
Jonah Goldberg: Paul Ryan once again being cast as pariah
Paul Ryan is getting the hate treatment — again. The former GOP House speaker and 2012 vice presidential candidate is a unifying figure these days. Liberals have long despised him — unfairly in my mind. Anti-Trump conservatives are infuriated by his “surrender to Trumpism,” in the words of Charlie Sykes,...
George Will: The puzzling problem of vaping
SAN FRANCISCO A 29-story office building at 123 Mission St. illustrates the policy puzzles that fester because of these facts: For centuries, tobacco has been a widely used legal consumer good that does serious and often lethal harm when used as it is intended to be used. And its harmfulness...
John Dame: Unintended consequences of medical marijuana
More than 40 years ago I ran a rock radio station, Starview 92.7-FM, in central Pennsylvania. We offered special midnight movies, including “Reefer Madness,” which warned of a decent into madness for those lured into trying marijuana. This 1930s propaganda film was quite campy and funny, especially in the culture...
Antony Davies & James Harrigan: Tech companies are watching; do we care?
Google Assistant records conversations, and now those recordings have been leaked to the public. Is anyone really surprised? Judging by Google’s stock price, the answer is a resounding “no.” Consumers introduced listening devices into their homes, and they seem relatively blasé now that humans on the other ends of those...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: If you came from someplace else, how will you vote in 2020?
For many Americans, the decision on how to vote in the 2020 presidential election will now be simpler. Hearing an American president tell any American to “go back where you came from” will be enough to decide the election for millions of voters who have been told that too often...
G. Terry Madonna & Michael Young: As goes Pennsylvania, so goes the 2020 election
While Democrats wade through a marathon of intra-party debates, the national punditocracy is increasingly asking two urgent questions about the impending 2020 presidential contest: Can President Trump win Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin again? And can he win a second term without those three states? Both questions reflect a stark reality...
Sounding off: 13-star flag was co-opted by hate-mongers
When I first heard about Nike removing its Betsy Ross flag shoes from the market, I was dismayed and thought that people where being too touchy-feely and too PC. Once I heard the context of the situation, I understood the objection. I always saw that flag as a starting point...
Editorial: Black arrests up, police recruits down
The numbers show two perspectives of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police’s relationship with black people. But are they telling the same story? On Monday, the Black Political Empowerment Project pointed to the data from the latest class of police recruits as a “serious disappointment.” The numbers show just four black...
Letter to the editor: Let’s be civilized, decent again
Let’s be civilized, decent again Let’s all go back to where we came from; about 90% of me would have to go to the British Isles, and the rest chopped up between Sweden and Germany. I guess I could take part of a cousin or two along, but they’d have...
Letter to the editor: Federal system has gone astray
Under our federal system, legislation is enacted to ensure equal justice, provide for our national security, act as a safeguard of our rights and freedoms, promote and regulate commerce, ensure general economic benefit, and enumerate and restrict in many ways government power. Our federal laws should always be just, good...
Letter to the editor: Alternatives to accruing college debt
I understand that the op-ed “Plan would slash higher-education costs” is all about debt. It is not about paying off debt, merely getting out from under debt at the expense of someone. Me, I’m a taxpayer. If you owe the government at whatever level and you don’t pay, I do....
Walter Williams: Our deviant culture hasn’t always been the norm
Here’s a suggestion. How about setting up some high school rifle clubs? Students would bring their own rifles to school, store them with the team coach and, after classes, collect them for practice. You say: “Williams, you must be crazy! To prevent gun violence, we must do all we can...
John Stossel: Ag-gag laws hurt search for truth in farming
Recording events from public land shouldn’t be a crime. Yet when a woman in Utah, standing by a public road, filmed farmworkers pushing a cow with a bulldozer, the farmer told her, “You cannot videotape my property.” Soon the police came and local prosecutors charged her with “agricultural operation interference.”...
Editorial: Moon shot proves American aspiration
Moon shot. It was an against-all-odds idea. It was a plan that was as far-fetched as it was impossible. It was the kind of ridiculous idea that you threw out there as an example of ridiculous ideas. But in 1961, John F. Kennedy gave the impossible a deadline. He stood...
