Joseph Sabino Mistick Columns category, Page 4

Our local political fever may have broken last Tuesday in Allegheny County’s general election. In both the county executive and district attorney races, after a string of recent successes by progressive candidates, the voters brought local politics back toward the center. That may be good for the entire region. Democrat...

Even local elections can generate national interest these days. If the races for Allegheny County executive and district attorney are close, they could turn on issues with no connection to the jobs that are on the ballot — or be decided by people far beyond this part of southwestern Pennsylvania....

Sometimes a plastic bag is more than just a plastic bag. If you were around during the administration of Pittsburgh Mayor Sophie Masloff, the news that those small plastic grocery bags are now banned in the city reminds you of a time when simple solutions reigned over needlessly complex solutions...

The race for Allegheny County executive may still be Sara Innamorato’s to lose because of the heavy Democratic registration edge here, but her Republican opponent, Joe Rockey, appears to have a shot. There seems to be a lack of enthusiasm for Innamorato among traditional older Democrats, including many Democratic committee...

Many of my friends and I used to call ourselves progressives. Our parents, labor union members and World War II veterans who had fought for social justice overseas, raised us to believe that it is a citizen’s duty to use the political process to improve the lives of all Americans....

When it comes to being a real American patriot, Donald Trump would not make a patch on the seat of Gen. Mark Milley’s pants. But that didn’t stop Trump from recently suggesting that the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff committed a “treasonous act” by assuring his Chinese...

I was in grade school when I walked my first United Auto Workers (UAW) picket line at the factory gate of the Fisher Body plant in West Mifflin. I can’t remember if it was a contract strike for better wages and benefits or a wildcat strike over a safety issue...

When Sen. John Fetterman was given permission by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to wear his signature baggy shorts and hoodie on the floor of the Senate, some Republicans were predictably outraged by the break with tradition. Maybe that was the whole point. Fetterman responded to their indignation with a...

If you want to know why some communities are pushing back against progressive criminal justice reformers, consider the case of Yan Carlos Pichardo Cepeda, who was recently arrested and then released by Pittsburgh District Judge Xander Orenstein. At the time this column was filed, Cepeda was “in the wind,” having...

It might be Patsy’s, Sinatra’s old joint, if you’re from New York City. In Philadelphia, Dante & Luigi’s or one of the other old-time places scattered among the neighborhood rowhouses and apartment buildings might be your go-to joint. But if you are from a certain part of Pittsburgh, Johnny’s in...

When you are swimming upstream, it is best to get an early start, and Joe Rockey, the Republican nominee for Allegheny County executive, has run the first television ad in his race against Democrat Sara Innamorato. Innamorato is favored to win in the heavily Democratic county, but Rockey is defining...

A viewer needed only one image from the Republican presidential debate last week to see how completely Donald Trump has taken over the Republican Party. There were eight men and two women on the stage. And every single one of the men — the seven male candidates and one male...

There is one sure sign that Donald Trump is in trouble again, and that is this: American citizens — whether they are public officials or simple folks who are in the wrong place at the wrong time — will now have their lives and their families’ lives threatened by Trump...

Zigzagging across the Pacific Ocean, farther than he ever imagined being from his home in East Liberty, 19-year-old Johnny Vento played pinochle with his fellow soldiers, still oblivious to what awaited them in Australia if they managed to avoid enemy torpedoes. Once they landed and Vento continued his training as...

It was a warm summer night in 1990, and I was sitting with Pittsburgh Narcotics Chief Earl Buford Jr. in an unmarked police vehicle on the edge of an open-air drug market. As the mayor’s chief of staff, I had asked Buford to help us understand the wave of drug-related...

On the death of 96-year-old Tony Bennett on July 21, the media was filled with stories of a remarkable guy who was still a regular guy. Born Anthony Dominick Benedetto in Queens, this Calabrese son of a grocer and a seamstress led an authentically American life, with all its ups...

With each report of a new Donald Trump indictment or target letter, the polls show Trump solidifying support. And some political commentators continue to announce this phenomenon breathlessly, amazed at Trump’s polls as his legal troubles get worse. What they still miss, and what they should have learned years ago,...

Only in an upside-down world would the Republican-­controlled House Judiciary Committee accuse conservative Republican FBI Director Christopher Wray of weaponizing the Justice Department against conservative Republicans. But that is what happened last week. Wray testified for five hours before the committee, spending most of his time discrediting and fending off...

If you don’t have the stomach for more hypocrisy in government and politics these days, stay away from the plight of New Jersey Superior Court Judge Gary N. Wilcox versus the impunity with which United States Supreme Court justices operate. Wilcox is facing judicial ethics charges for posting 40 TikTok...

The “Calumny of Apelles” is a famous 15th-century painting by Sandro Botticelli that depicts the isolation of a truth teller. The painting shows nine figures, with the unadorned Truth at the far left. On the far right is the king, the decider, seated on an elevated throne. And separating the...

As his legal problems mount, Donald Trump and his loyalists are falling back on some decades-old smears and insults to attack those who they want us to believe are behind Trump’s troubles. As reported in the Tribune-­Review last week, they are calling President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats “communists”...

As we get ready to honor our own fathers, especially after a week like the last one, Father’s Day 2023 seems like a good time to remember “The Father of Our Country,” George Washington. This past Tuesday, former president Donald Trump was arraigned in federal court on 37 criminal charges...

On June 5, much of the media covered the 55th anniversary of the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, who was running for the Democratic nomination for president when he was killed. If you were around then, it was the latest bad news in a decade of bad news....

Whatever lessons presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took from his youthful connection to Western Pennsylvania, there are some things he seems to have missed or forgotten. DeSantis said in his recent memoir, “I was geographically raised in Tampa Bay, but culturally my upbringing reflected the working-class communities in...

It was a tale of two Democratic cities on primary election night in Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia, Democrats nominated Cherelle Parker to be their party’s nominee for mayor. In Pittsburgh, Sara Innamorato was the winner of the Democratic Party’s nomination for Allegheny County executive. Those offices are widely seen as the...