Featured Commentary category, Page 119

Watch out. Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley have locked their sights on the next targets of a frightening free speech-squelching purge: independent citizens who dare to raise questions online about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. I’m vaccinated. My children are up to date. There’s no dispute that vaccines have...

It is a story of corruption that will stay secret, politicians who will need fewer votes to win, even dangerous communicable diseases that will spread faster as our best scientists struggle to fight them. The story is the slow and painful demise of local newspapers, a story whose ending is...

As Pennsylvania employers and business owners, we regularly think long term. Whether expanding our companies, hiring new workers, planning capital investments or responding to economic downturns, we base decisions not simply on immediate benefits or drawbacks but on long-term results. This isn’t always easy, but it’s necessary. After all, others’...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., claims that “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” The people at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agree, saying that to avoid some of the most devastating impacts of climate change, the world must slash carbon emissions...

If you are an American college professor, the way you get a raise or tenure is by getting papers published in “academic journals.” The stupidity of these journals says a lot about what’s taught at colleges today. Recently, three people sent in intentionally ridiculous “research” to prominent journals of women...

This weekend, we again will be forced to comply with an archaic tradition, one that offers no benefits. In fact, “springing forward and falling back” comes with many consequences at significant cost. If that’s not enough to make you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, remember that...

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers have proposed a new plan to clarify what bodies of water and areas around waterways should be regulated by the federal government in conjunction with the Clean Water Act. The new proposal has been drafted to replace a flawed rule...

“Politics stops at the water’s edge” was a tradition that, not so long ago, was observed by both parties, particularly when a president was abroad, speaking for the nation. The tradition was enunciated by Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan in 1947, as many of the Republicans in the 80th Congress...

It’s good when a majority of voters in your state back Donald Trump. Just ask the residents of Alabama, who discovered Monday morning that the president of the United States is going to make sure they receive VIP treatment following the devastating tornadoes that swept across a rural part of...

The Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965 was part of the Great Society campaign of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration. Part of its noble goal was to create opportunities for students who dreamed of earning college degrees and advancing their careers by providing financial aid to students in need. By...

Last month, the little birdies in Twitter’s legal department notified me that one of my tweets from 2015 is “in violation of Pakistan law.” It seems like ancient history, but Islamic supremacists never forget — or forgive. My innocuous tweet featured a compilation image of the 12 Muhammad cartoons published...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

“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....

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...

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....

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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....