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Lori Falce Columns category, Page 4

Pope Francis, first Latin American pontiff, dies at 88
Lori Falce: Chuck Schumer is no Neville Longbottom
At the end of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” the benevolent wizard in charge of the magic school took the opportunity to deliver an object lesson. He upended the annual competition between the school’s four houses by delivering a few last-minute points to the main characters for saving the...
Lori Falce: Group shot spoiled picture-perfect ending to manhunt
For almost two weeks, Pennsylvania State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, U.S. marshals and other law enforcement were combing Chester County for one man. Convicted murderer Danelo Cavalcante spider-walked up a wall in the county prison like a spy in an action movie. The man who brutally stabbed his...
Lori Falce: Chilly Billy and the real Hollywood scare
For some kids, their childhood heroes were sports figures. For others, they might be actors or pop stars. For me? Well, mine was a local television host. I couldn’t get enough of Bill “Chilly Billy” Cardille. His Saturday night film fest on WPXI wasn’t the beginning of my love affair...
Lori Falce: Hey, Big Pharma, negotiation isn’t tyranny
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America really doesn’t back away from its reputation. Do you want to call the coterie of companies it represents Big Pharma? Fine. The trade group that lobbies for those companies leans into the name using its cheeky initials — PhRMA. The organization is so forthright...
Lori Falce: Presidential debate or cafeteria food fight?
If you are a politics nerd like me, you probably spent Wednesday night watching the first Republican presidential primary debate of the 2024 election season. For some, this might be comparable to the other periodic ritual trial-by-combat going on right now — NFL preseason football. There definitely are parallels to...
Lori Falce: Troubling trend in journalism
People have an idea in their heads about what it is like to work for a newspaper. It’s an idea that, like many things, is shaped by movies and television. Editors bark orders and chew cigars like the Daily Bugle’s J. Jonah Jameson. Reporters flock on the steps of every...
Lori Falce: Age limits for elected officials would protect them and voters
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s health is at issue. Again. The California Democrat fell in her home and was sent to the hospital. A spokesman said everything was fine, and she was released and is now at home. I wish her well. But concerns about Feinstein’s health are rooted in her...
Lori Falce: The impact of Pittsburgh synagogue shooting remains for all victims
Victim impact statements are an important part of the criminal sentencing process. After guilt has been decided but before a sentence is delivered, there is a period when the depth of the damage is demonstrated via statements — written or read or bravely spoken — by those keenly affected. With...
Lori Falce: There are other small-town problems, Jason Aldean
Jason Aldean set off quite the brush fire with his latest video. The country singer’s single “Try That in a Small Town” plays to a regular trope of the genre: the inherent nobility of small-town life. Aldean talks about small towns a lot in his music. “Hicktown” was one of...
Lori Falce: In support of writers
I have a serious love of television, and so I take things that stand between me and my ability to binge-watch it personally. How dare someone make me wait an additional year to see what happens on “The Last of Us.” I’m not sure I can live in a world...
Lori Falce: Hardest part of jury’s job starts now
Whether or not Robert Bowers was guilty of the murders of 11 members of three Jewish congregations at a synagogue in Pittsburgh was never really in doubt. When the jury returned a guilty verdict in June, it was what everyone knew it was: the first milestone in a trial that...
Lori Falce: Focus on beating opponents sets up bitter grudges, bigger battles
The crowing came quickly after a routine political back-and-forth turned into an unexpected upset with long implications. On Wednesday, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers took a pen to the state’s budget, meant to govern spending over a two-year period. He signed the plan into law — but not without a little...
Lori Falce: Do we owe Titanic sub billionaires empathy?
My sister is a 5-foot, 2-inch walking encyclopedia of all things Titanic. She was about 6 when the obsession started. She was 8 when Dr. Robert Ballard discovered the wreck. That was when she began to carry around a coffee table book that was almost as tall as she was....
Lori Falce: Titanic loss prompted change. So should Titan’s
The Titanic often is thought of as the quintessential example of a shipwreck. It isn’t the only boat to sink. It isn’t the only ocean liner to meet a watery end. In fact, the famously “unsinkable” sunken ship was part of a family of three identical sisters of the White...
Lori Falce: Court’s job is to find justice. Finding forgiveness isn’t as easy
The justice system is an odd balancing act. It must be impartial, yet it weighs more than just guilt and innocence. It also takes into account harder-to-quantify qualities like remorse and regret, grief and loss — and perhaps the hardest of all, forgiveness. We are told to forgive and forget,...
Lori Falce: Where there’s smoke, there’s wildfires — and serious questions to answer
Problems can get out of hand when you decide they don’t affect you. Maybe it’s because you don’t have the time or the money or the ability to do anything about them at the moment. I get it. That’s why my mail accumulates on the passenger seat of my car...
Lori Falce: Synagogue shooting trial spotlights a horror that hasn’t changed
Everyone sees terrible things every day. We just see them from a safe distance. We see people die in horror movies in ways that make you question the sanity of the person who wrote the script. Television serves up the kind of fictional crime dramas that are a staple of...
Lori Falce: PTSD, kids and the schools where tragedy happens
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental health condition that arises for people who have been through events that are a tragic shock to the system. Just like an old injury to a bone can flare up when a wrong move or the right weather tweaks the spot and makes the...
Lori Falce: The ironic Venn diagram of Montana and China
I love a Venn diagram. You know, those charts made of overlapping circles that show what different spheres have in common? Take Democrats and Republicans, for example. The two parties have tons of differences that could make them seem miles apart on everything from taxation to regulation to immigration. But...
Lori Falce: Feinstein and Santos need to choose a new adventure
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and U.S. Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., don’t have a whole lot in common. Feinstein will turn 90 next month, three months before the next-oldest member of Congress, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. She is the senior senator from California, holding her seat since 1992. Only Grassley...
Lori Falce: Judicial reform is about accountability, not retribution
There is a difference between accountability and retribution. Accountability means you are subject to the consequences of your actions. You back into a car in the parking lot, you pay your deductible and probably see your insurance premium go up. You miss your credit card payment and have to pay...
Lori Falce: Emmett Till accuser has died, but her legacy should live on as a cautionary tale
Carolyn Bryant Donham died on Tuesday at 88. It was possible for Donham to live a simple, respectful and respectable life in the Mississippi Delta area where she was born. She could have gone about her world with no one ever knowing her name. Instead, her name will forever be...
Lori Falce: The truth about surviving childhood
Almost every day on Facebook or Twitter or some other social media outlet, I see a version of it. Sometimes it’s just a quick one-liner from a friend. Sometimes it is dressed in a funny meme. Often it is a long passage shared by a relative who I know does...
Lori Falce: Chatting with ChatGPT opens eyes on AI, journalism
The impact of artificial intelligence is a hot topic. Everyone wants to know what AI means for their industry and their jobs — including journalists. We all know that innovation is amazing. It helped us reach the stars and travel the globe. It lets you play amazingly detailed games on...
Lori Falce: Is the law one size fits all or not?
Covering court gives you a unique perspective on how the criminal justice system works. More specifically, it gives real insight on how it does work versus how it should work. Those might seem like the same thing. They are not. It’s a topic that is getting a lot of attention...


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