Featured Commentary category, Page 19

Yet another senseless tragedy has occurred, the latest at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa. A school shooting leaving one dead and five wounded starts 2024 inauspiciously. However, we need more than “thoughts and prayers.” We all demand — and deserve — action. Rather than asking why this happened, let...

It’s winter: dark, dreary and cold. There is a palpable feeling of dread in America as we face the upcoming 2024 political season. Pundits wonder why everyone is so grumpy. Positive economic news fails to change the national mood or lift the electoral prospects of President Joe Biden. We are...

As the new year begins, Pennsylvania’s state Legislature, the nation’s largest and one of its most expensive full-time legislative bodies, needs to make a New Year’s resolution for 2024 — to earn a return on the investment of the taxpayers whom they were elected to serve. Over the course of...

The 2024 presidential primary season officially begins in just a few weeks, but former President Donald Trump’s commanding lead in the polls of likely Republican primary voters and President Joe Biden’s absence of a Democratic challenger appear to destine a repeat of the 2020 election. The most innovative country in...

On Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was preparing to certify officially the results of the 2020 presidential election, a melee took place at the nation’s capital, temporarily stalling the certification process. Later that evening, after the calm was restored, the Electoral College votes were cast, paving the way for another...

The chaos and fear wrought by the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, still stings fresh in the minds of millions of Americans — and particularly mine, as someone who served as a congressional staffer that day. But, as a country, I don’t think we’ve adequately grappled with the gravity of...

There is only so much a single person can do to control the events around them. Joe Biden is learning in real time that one of life’s golden rules also applies to the president of the United States. Despite holding the most powerful position in the world, Biden is finding...

The U.S. economy has recovered from the covid pandemic reasonably well, yet President Joe Biden is getting little credit and could even lose his job in 2024. Third-quarter GDP growth scored at 4.9%; the Federal Reserve has enjoyed considerable success pulling down inflation. Jobs are plentiful, and the misery index...

The resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay after “facing national backlash for her administration’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly work” does not solve the problem at America’s oldest college and other elite schools. She and many other university presidents are only a...

Clean air advocates — and those of us living in front-line oil and gas communities — have something to celebrate as we start a new year. New Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) safeguards are poised to significantly slash methane pollution from the oil and gas industry. Parents across Pennsylvania are ecstatic....

In the complex and often contentious world of health care policy, a glimmer of hope has emerged on the horizon. A bipartisan group of members of the U.S. House of Representatives has taken a stand to protect Medicare from looming cuts to physician compensation. The introduction of House Resolution 6683...

Latchkey kids. Slackers. Caffeine lovers. Grunge. That’s how a lot of people have referred to Generation X, the 46 million Americans, like myself, who were born between 1965 and 1980. We were a generation that has been perennially pegged as cynical, self-indulgent, aimless, contrarian and often peripheral when it comes...

The lawsuit filed by the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement pits one of the great establishment media institutions against the purveyor of a transformative new technology. Symbolically, the case promises a clash of the titans: labor-intensive human newsgathering against pushbutton information produced by artificial intelligence....

The dominant storyline of our American Revolution is about patriotic defiance — refusing to pay taxes, dumping tea into the Boston Harbor and shooting redcoats once we saw the whites of their eyes. It’s about virtuous lawbreaking in the name of freedom. There is plenty of evidence to support this...

The richest men in college football, as in the rest of the economy, are getting richer. In 1982, the legendary Bear Bryant made $450,000 coaching football at Alabama, or $1.4 million in today’s dollars. Alabama’s current coach pulls down $11.4 million, over 10 times what Bryant pocketed. Five college football...

College football is a game of tradition — from marching bands and fight songs to rivalry games and raucous student sections. But the game is undergoing its biggest revolution since the introduction of the forward pass. Billion-dollar television deals, continuing conference consolidation and the uncharted waters of player compensation threaten...

For those who doubt Joe Biden’s capacity to be president, Herb Klar has a suggestion: Swing by his neighborhood sometime. “They don’t come to Rossmoor and see all the octagenarians … and see how lively and bright and competent we all are,” said Klar, 76, a retired clinical social worker,...

Four more years of a Trump presidency would take an enormous toll on America and its democracy. Polling continues to trend in Donald Trump’s direction over President Joe Biden’s, and we seem to be hurtling toward a disaster in November’s presidential election. This is a rare and unprecedented moment in...

Pennsylvania lawmakers recently introduced a bill that would require all state and local government contractors, and their subcontractors, to verify that newly hired workers are either American citizens or legal immigrants. Contractors that refuse to do so would face stiff fines. If passed, this bill would prevent companies from using...

Voter trust and fear over the 2024 election are driving unprecedented interest in independent voters. The candidate who can address these fears, whether that candidate is President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump, will go on to win. With only a handful of states up for grabs, they need...

At the end of the year, we hear predictions about the future, many of which have been proven wrong: from the end of the world due to climate change, to the telephone is just a toy. (There is a story, probably apocryphal, that in 1876, the president of Western Union,...

There are 107 people, including seven Americans, still held hostage by Hamas since the brutal terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7. My great-niece, 4-year-old Abigail Mor Edan, was one of them. For 50 days, we did not know where she was, if she was alive, or if she was...

As I near the end of my third and final term, it provides a perfect opportunity to say thank you to Allegheny County residents. It has been the privilege of my life to serve in this position, and to represent you as county executive. Together, we have accomplished a great...

I was stunned by the early morning headline that appeared in my email. According to The New York Times, Israeli officials had known about Hamas’ plan for more than a year before it launched its Oct. 7 attacks. This could not be true. The Israel that I have come to...

In the great national divide over pickleball, one side is enjoying a serving of schadenfreude over the news that the sport’s professional league is in trouble. Those who view the sport as an abomination — and they are legion — will take heart from the fact that Major League Pickleball,...