Editorials category, Page 72

We don’t just give power to political parties. We vest that power in individuals for a reason. We elect lawyers with military backgrounds like Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Mt. Lebanon, and Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Peters. We elect people who have been involved in government since before the Pirates last won a...

Laurel: To having a long memory. Can you cast yours back far enough to recall when the Pittsburgh Pirates were more than a perennial paperweight for Major League Baseball? This year marks 40 long, long years since the Bucs took Pittsburgh to the big dance and brought home the title...

New industries will always have growing pains. It shouldn’t be surprising that growing hemp should be experiencing hiccups. After all, growing hemp is something that hasn’t really happened — legally, at least — in Pennsylvania for decades. The namesake of Hempfield Township and Hempfield Area School District may have once...

Pennsylvania’s state-owned universities need more students. According to a census taken on the 15th day of class at the 14 Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education schools, total enrollment dropped 2.6% from 2018 to 2019. That’s a continuation of a trend. In 2010, there were 119,513 students. Today the number...

The phone rings. You know who it is. No, wait. You know what it is. It’s not a friend asking you to lunch. It’s not a neighbor asking to borrow your lawnmower. It’s probably not even your pharmacy reminding you that your prescription is ready. There is an ever-increasing likelihood...

Sustainable is a great new buzzword. It sounds great. Sustainable. It’s hard to argue with the idea of sustainability. Who doesn’t want something to keep going? The problem is that sustainable can mean two different — and closely related — things with one distinct difference. Sustainable can mean that something...

Victims should not be forgotten in the criminal justice process. It is easy to reduce the court system to criminal and prosecutor — crime and punishment. Marsy’s Law is being proposed as an amendment to Pennsylvania’s constitution. It is a crime victims’ rights amendment that legislators and advocates say provides...

Someone shot a bald eagle. It happened on the West Penn Trail in Derry Township on Friday. Someone took a gun and shot our national symbol in the face. Its famous white cap of feathers was soaked in blood and a piece of its beak was just gone. On Monday,...

May you be sealed in the Book of Life. G’mar Chatima Tova. That is the traditional greeting for Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, the holiest of the faith’s Holy Days. It is a time of fasting and reflection, dedication and prayer. It is a time the observant strive...

Sports isn’t necessarily what it used to be. That’s not a knock at the Pirates. A losing season is nothing new there. It’s not a crack about the Steelers’ struggles or the Penguins’ pains. It’s a reality of a major change in the sports world — whether you pay attention...

In a Penn Township, Westmoreland County, precinct, a woman stood confused as she looked at her ballot. “These are all the candidates? The one I was voting for isn’t here.” The poll worker explained to her that all the candidates she was allowed to vote for were on the ballot....

As the idea of college athletes getting paychecks on top of their scholarships gets kicked around in California and now in Pennsylvania, the attention tends to focus on the stars and the National College Athletic Association. The NCAA, after all, makes the rules. The sports oversight organization that calls all...

We can forgive without forgetting. On Wednesday, Amber Guyger — the former Dallas police officer convicted of murder for shooting Botham Jean in his apartment after she mistakenly walked in, thinking it was her home — was sentenced to 10 years in prison. What garnered almost as much attention as...

If you want an example of exactly why some changes can’t happen overnight, look to the hemp industry. Regardless of anyone’s position on the decriminalization of marijuana or the legalization of cannabis for medicinal use or the newest push for it to be permissible recreationally, it is hard to turn...

Women need a helping hand. It isn’t that women are more deserving of help than men. It isn’t that women are more likely to be in need of help than men. It isn’t that women can’t help themselves. It’s that women in need are likely to have so much on...

It may have been as much of a surprise to the Pittsburgh Pirates’ faithful fans as it was to their manager, Clint Hurdle when he was fired Sunday. The announcement came 90 minutes before the Bucs took the field for the PNC Park swan song of a season that was...

We all need a break from politics. It’s everywhere. It’s on television. It’s on social media. It’s at work and at restaurants and it shows up at dinner with family when that one relative — we all have one — just won’t stop bringing it up no matter what. Politics...

Outrage is a good catalyst but a poor navigator. A physical assault on two women at an Exxon station in Pittsburgh’s Marshall- Shadeland neighborhood has prompted huge response. Viral video of the incident shows the black women leave their car to go into the gas station, ostensibly to ask for a...

“Legalize marijuana” is not a new refrain in Pennsylvania. You could hear it on college campuses. You could hear it from libertarian groups. It came more and more as other states made lighting up permissible. The old song has been sampled often as medical marijuana has been OK’d and the...

Laurel: To pursuing the law despite the obstacles. Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. has charged Douglas Berry with homicide in the case of Elizabeth Wiesenfeld despite the fact that the 67-year-old Baldwin woman’s body has not been found. The law may be built on a premise of...

This week, I was reminded of how old I am because of a football player. Jon Condo retired. You might not recognize that name. Condo is a Pennsylvania native, a graduate of my own high school, Philipsburg-Osceola, that straddles the line between Clearfield and Centre counties. And he was a...

Conversion therapy is a grab bag of practices that utilize psychological, emotional, spiritual or physical techniques to try and remake someone who is gay or bisexual into a heterosexual. The practice also has been used on people identifying as transgender. Subjects are often minors. So kudos to the Allegheny County...

Someone is always watching. That might sound a little crazy, but you’re only paranoid if it’s not true. These days, everything is being monitored all the time. It’s not that someone can swoop in and stop you from doing something illegal or saying something inciteful. It’s that if something does...

Pennsylvania may be dotted by cities and towns, but at its heart, the state is a forest. It’s right there in the name. Pennsylvania. Penn’s Woods. The state has always embraced that nature. The Department of Environmental Protection was established in 1995 but traces its roots all the way back...

It is hard to believe that someone who makes the laws could break them flagrantly. But it happens. It happens more than we would like to admit. Elected officials are arrested. They plead guilty. They are convicted. They can serve prison sentences and sometimes they come back from political death...