Opinion category, Page 724
Peter Morici: Trump must have health-care solutions to win again
President Trump’s continued focus on immigration may play well to his base, but to win the swing voters and cobble together a majority of electoral votes, he must address our broken health care system — it ranks first among issues with voters. Affordability is key — Americans pay 75% more...
Editorial: Perot paved political pathways
Ross Perot wasn’t a guy who did things first. He was a guy who saw a way to do them a little bit better. Perot, who died Tuesday, wasn’t the first person to make money in Texas. He was one of the first to drill into technology instead of oil....
Letter to the editor: Noncitizens & making our laws
Should noncitizens have say in making our laws? Counting illegals could add more representatives to the House; do you want noncitizens having a say in the laws that you have to live under? Clem Zahrobsky Delmont...
Letter to the editor: How to prevail over Trump
Flattering Trump If I were advising Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, I would tell him that he is on the wrong track if he wishes to prevail over Donald Trump and the United States. Although a case can be made in his accusing the American administration of mental retardation,...
Letter to the editor: Hate of Trump indefensible
Recent letters have proclaimed the legitimacy of hating President Trump. Webster defines hatred as prejudicial hostility, with such synonyms as loathe, detest, abhor and abominate. Claims implying that many loyal supporters of our duly elected president are “moonshine-swilling hillbillies” who will probably lose their immortal souls (i.e., go to hell)...
Pat Buchanan: Is Putin right? Has liberalism lost the world?
“The liberal idea has become obsolete. … (Liberals) cannot simply dictate anything to anyone as they have been attempting to do over the recent decades.” Such was the confident claim of Vladimir Putin to the Financial Times on the eve of a G-20 gathering that appeared to validate his thesis....
Tom Purcell: Humor cure for what ails America
It’s never too late for a good belly laugh. July 1 was, unofficially, International Joke Day. The origins of the day are unclear, but whoever started it was on to something — because our country sure could use a good belly laugh about now. Which reminds me of the man...
Cal Thomas: Censoring the census
The notion of history repeating itself is usually viewed as a negative statement, but some history is worth repeating because we might learn and be guided by it. In last month’s 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court rejecting the Trump administration’s claim that adding a question about whether a person...
Editorial: Title IX scored USWNT victory
You can’t watch a glacier move. You can’t watch the continents shift. You can’t watch a redwood grow. The big things take a long time to come to fruition. But that doesn’t mean nothing is happening. The law can be like that, too. Something can be voted on and passed...
Editorial cartoons for the week of July 8
Editorial cartoons for the week of July 8....
Letter to the editor: Supreme Court & our voices
Letter-writer Ron Slabe has demonstrated a total misunderstanding of the functions of the Supreme Court (“Pa. Supreme Court fails us on fracking,” June 28, TribLIVE). He says that they “put their money and voices where it was supposed to count, our judicial system.” The judicial system is specifically designed to...
Letter to the editor: We can repair our political divide
The political climate is indeed divisive, as evidenced in our conversations, the media and our letters to the editor. Perhaps one way to temper this divide is to first seek commonalities in terms of our visions of how caring and respect should be evident in our interactions with each other....
Letter to the editor: Situation at border is not a humanitarian crisis
The situation at our southern border is not a humanitarian or human rights crisis. It is a law enforcement matter. Those people have been detained for violating our borders and laws. They are owed nothing but criminal prosecution. No matter their political motivations, congressional Democrats visiting border patrol stations for...
Jonah Goldberg: Nike fans flames of culture war
Nike is doing it wrong. I don’t mean the shoemaking, though that thing with Zion Williamson was pretty bad, I have to say. No, Nike is doing it wrong because it managed to do something that all the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, alt-righters and other denizens of the lowest coprophagic phylum of...
Gordon Denlinger: Pa. must stop letting surpluses disappear
It was great to learn in early June that Pennsylvania took in much more revenue than expected a month before the end of the June 30 fiscal year, gathering a surplus of over $900 million. There were concerns during budget negotiations that the state surplus would burn a hole in the pockets...
Editorial: Pennsylvania to blame for low Real ID applications
Pennsylvania is concerned that people aren’t jumping on the Real ID bandwagon. Hmm. It’s hard to figure out how 12.8 million people could have gotten the idea that it doesn’t matter. Pennsylvania has balked and delayed to implement Real ID at every turn for years. Yes, the state has finally...
Letter to the editor: Energy innovation & Carbon Dividend Act
Thank you for your coverage of Europe’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas pollution in the steel industry. If the world is to achieve near zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century (which is what scientists say is needed to keep the earth’s climate in the range that has supported human civilization),...
Letter to the editor: Bravo for SummerSounds
I was most fortunate to be one of the more than 8,000 fans in St. Clair Park June 28 for the marvelous concert by Leonid and Friends (“Russian Band covering Chicago tunes packs SummerSounds in Greensburg,” June 28, TribLIVE). Words can’t accurately describe the energy and excitement of the event....
Letter to the editor: Food & health care as ‘rights’
Those who claim food and health care are human rights are dangerous tyrants. The right of one individual does not place an obligation upon another. For example, I have a right to express myself, but I cannot demand that the government force you to listen or build me a stage....
Editorial: Body cameras protect everyone
Let’s go to the video. We believe our eyes, but sometimes our eyes might stretch the truth. They might say what we want to hear. They might pick a side. And that is why body cameras on police are important. Today everybody has a television studio in their pocket. Every...
Nathan Benefield: Infrastructure fix requires break from past
Pennsylvania’s infrastructure woes are impossible to ignore. From structurally deficient bridges to mounting debt to rising turnpike tolls that chase away motorists, residents would be forgiven for wondering what they are getting in return for paying the highest gas tax in the nation. Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has been one...
Paul Kengor: Religious symbols & the Ruth Bader Ginsburg standard
I wrote a few weeks ago about one of the major Supreme Court decisions due up in the current term — the Bladensburg cross case, in which secularists demanded the tearing down of a large cross that serves as the centerpiece of a veterans’ memorial in Bladensburg, Md., erected in...
George Will: How can presidential candidates be so silly?
WASHINGTON — If California Sen. Kamala Harris is elected president in 2020 and reelected in 2024, by the time she leaves office 114 months from now she might have a coherent answer to the question of whether Americans should be forbidden to have what 217 million of them currently have:...
Mark Davis: Direct support professionals Pa.’s largest workforce crisis
Two out of five workers who care for people with an intellectual disability or autism (called direct support professionals, or DSPs) leave their jobs every year, largely due to the cripplingly low wages they are paid through government funding. Recently, the 2019 version of the Fix the DSP Crisis video...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: Counting votes is simple math of politics
Here is the question Sen. Kamala Harris should have been asked during the Democratic Party’s presidential debate, and it would have been a good question for each of the candidates: “If you were in the United States Senate when the major civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 was being...
