Featured Commentary category, Page 121

President Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women; was accused by numerous women of sexual harassment or assault; endorsed a candidate for Senate who was credibly accused of child molestation; praised an aide despite photographic evidence supporting accusations of spousal abuse; directed that hush money be paid to women in advance...

I watch my neighbors create positive change year-round. They volunteer to shovel sidewalks for seniors on their block and swap tomato-growing tips at the community garden. These are the actions that create and sustain a community, but the largest and most impactful changes we can make begin at the ballot...

Suppose I declare that I am a king. Should you be required to address me as “Your Majesty”? You say, “Williams, that’s lunacy! You can’t prove such nonsense.” You’re wrong. It’s proved by my declaration. It’s no different from a person born with XY chromosomes declaring that he is a...

San Francisco is one of the richest cities it the world. It’s given us music, technology and elegant architecture. Now it gives us filthy homeless encampments. One urban planner told me, “I just returned from the Tenderloin (a section of San Francisco). It’s worse than slums of India, Haiti, Africa!”...

When Americans think about political polarization, I’d imagine most of them think back to the ’90s—Newt Gingrich, the Clintons, the ascendance of conservative media figures like Rush Limbaugh, all that. Well, polarization started in the ’90s all right. But not the 1990s. The 1790s. In other words, we have this...

On Friday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced that his office has filed 161 charges against the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA) over elevated lead levels. For years, Pittsburgh community members and environmental coalitions like the Our Water Campaign — a local coalition of environmental, labor and community organizations...

To manifest his opposition to President Trump’s decision to pull all 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, and half of the 14,000 in Afghanistan, Gen. James Mattis went public and resigned as secretary of Defense. Now Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, in public testimony to Congress, has contradicted Trump...

President Donald Trump will be entering the chambers of the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday night to deliver a State of the Union address that he hopes will lift his sagging political fortunes. The 45th president has stumbled his way into an approval rating in the mid-30s, according to...

People love to hate weather forecasts, though it’s getting a lot harder to find fault. Forecasts gave plenty of advance warning that Chicago would see a bitter high of around minus 12 on Wednesday, and lows Wednesday night comparable to a bad day in Antarctica. Public officials closed schools and...

The first thing that needs to be said about President Trump’s decision to sign a measure reopening part of the federal government without getting money for the wall he demanded is that his experience as a New York businessman was no help. Perhaps he failed to recognize that Democrats are...

If recent history is a good predictor, this year Pennsylvania politicians could dole out over $300 million in taxpayer money for corporate handouts. And cities like Pittsburgh that lost out in the sweepstakes for Amazon’s second headquarters (or “HQ2”) may be motivated to double down on the next big prize....

Old conventional wisdom: It can’t happen — Donald Trump cannot be denied the Republican renomination in 2020. New conventional wisdom: maybe it can. Even a month ago, it seemed implausible Trump might be challenged for the 2020 GOP nomination. Troubles he certainly had. But presidents seeking a second term are...

Rush Limbaugh’s December 2018 Limbaugh Letter has an article titled “Demonizing White Men.” It highlights — with actual quotations from people in the media, academia and the political and entertainment arenas — the attack on white men as a class. You can decide whether these statements are decent, moral or...

Sunday is the Super Bowl. I look forward to playing poker and watching. It’s easy to do both because in a three-hour-plus NFL game there are just 11 minutes of actual football action. So we’ll have plenty of time to watch Atlanta politicians take credit for the stadium that will...

In mid-January, waves of outrage swept over the internet because of a confrontation on the National Mall in Washington between a group of conservative high school students from Kentucky and an elderly Native American Marine Corps veteran. The social media mob initially condemned the students for being right-wing jerks. Then,...

Pension reform at long last is being phased in for newly hired state workers in Pennsylvania. But it will be decades before those pension plans’ health is restored. And some taxpayers could see their taxes rise before relief comes, according to a review by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy....

January 2002. I arrive in Kabul, Afghanistan, to reopen the U.S. Embassy. Destruction is everywhere. Kabul airport is closed, its runways cratered and littered with destroyed aircraft. The drive south from the military base at Bagram is through a wasteland. Nothing grows. No structures stand. In the city itself, entire...

In the wake of his unprecedented campaign and unexpected election, the question always was: What would come after Donald Trump? What were the consequences of electing someone who was inexperienced, undeterred by and uninterested in facts and uncannily adept at whipping people into a frenzy by way of mere gesticulations...

Congressional Republicans are suffering, as I have noted in the past, from a bad case of Stockholm syndrome. They’ve seen what’s happened to “the formers” who crossed the bully in the White House — e.g., former senator Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and former representative Mark Sanford, R-S.C., — and all they...

First responders work around the clock, keeping our communities safe, every day. They understand and accept the risks involved, as well as the long hours, rigorous physical requirements and constant training. However, many emergency workers are starting to face an unexpected hurdle and a new kind of threat: anti-energy protesters....

Each morning as I pull into the parking garage, I am greeted with a sign proclaiming the mission statement of the city’s parking authority. Over the past 15 years or more, the norm has been that businesses/agencies develop and post a mission statement that clearly defines its values, goals, beliefs...

Sometimes, a three-point celebration is just a three-point celebration. Sometimes, a pep rally is just a pep rally. Sometimes, a smile is just a smile. And sometimes, a hat is just a hat. Only among the most deranged partisans could a universal sports ritual, a common high school activity, a...

Welcome to the eye of the hurricane. For more than a month, the federal government was in partial shutdown while President Trump and congressional leaders were deadlocked over the president’s demands for money to build his long-promised border wall. Neither side would budge and all the wiggle room for negotiation,...

In 1976, Gerald Ford won 15 percent of the black vote. That’s the most of any recent Republican presidential candidate. In most elections, blacks give Democrats over 90 percent of their votes. It’s not unreasonable to ask what have blacks gained from such unquestioning loyalty to the Democratic Party. After...

Today concludes School Choice Week. School choice is a noble cause. In much of America, parents have little or no control over where their kids attend school. Local governments assign schools by ZIP code. Having choice is better. Whether it’s vouchers, scholarships, charters, private schools or just having options among...