Editorials category, Page 21
Laurels & lances: Kids giving back
Every week in this space, we give a spotlight to some of the best and worst news. Sometimes it’s a smaller aspect of a bigger story. Sometimes it’s a piece from one community that might have been missed by others. This week, we know what the lance is. Everyone knows...
Editorial: Trump shooting shows need for hospitals and first responders
The shooting Saturday at the Donald Trump campaign rally in Butler County will be a dark day in American history. But amid the finger-pointing about what went wrong with law enforcement and how the Secret Service should have been better prepared, there are things being neglected. Namely, there should be...
Editorial: Rustic Ridge report doesn’t deliver final answer
Investigations give us answers. They do not necessarily make us feel better. On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission delivered an answer to a question lingering since August. Did the Peoples Gas service lines play a part in the Rustic Ridge explosion that claimed six lives, obliterated three homes and...
Editorial: Challenging times require people to do the reading
There has never been a time when it was this important to consume the news critically. It is important to know what is happening. This is an Olympic year and an election year. There are wars raging in Israel and Ukraine. Governments are being upended in Europe and South America....
Editorial: U.S. primary-care system can’t withstand the next pandemic
An unprecedented strain of bird flu is spreading among dairy cattle in the U.S. An outbreak of a flesh-eating bacteria has infected more than 1,000 people in Japan. At least 13 communicable diseases including measles, dengue and polio have surged past pre-pandemic peaks in regions across the world. The threat...
Editorial: Democracy must stand up to violence
Violence and democracy cannot exist in the same arena. On Saturday, former president and GOP candidate Donald Trump was struck by a bullet as he spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of supporters in Butler County. Trump, bloodied and defiant, was quickly removed from the stage. Despite the injury to his...
Editorial: Could presidential race swing Pennsylvania politics?
Pennsylvania’s history as a swing state always gets attention during presidential election years. In the last two such elections, it has made all the difference. Suburban voters in Beaver, Butler and Chester counties helped put the Keystone State in Donald Trump’s column in 2016. Erie and Northampton counties switched to...
Editorial: Start planning path to next Pennsylvania budget now
Pennsylvania has a 2024-25 budget. Hallelujah. The budget came in a mere 11 days late. In Pennsylvania political time, that’s practically early. The 2023-24 budget overshot the June 30 deadline by almost half a year. The last parts were signed Dec. 14, making it closer to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s February...
Laurels & lances: Furries and Philly
Laurel: To furry friends. You might want to dismiss Anthrocon as a bit silly. When you have thousands of people dressed like stuffed animals, the jokes do tend to write themselves. But the convention is serious business, too. VisitPittsburgh’s senior director of communications and public affairs Emily Hatfield said this...
Editorial: If Biden won’t say Fogel’s name, Trump couldVideo
Please say Marc Fogel’s name. Say his name, say it often, say it in important places and bring him home. Fogel, 62, is a teacher from Oakmont who has spent his whole adult life teaching kids in foreign countries. In August 2021, he was arrested in a Moscow airport for...
Editorial: Standing up for youth lost in accidents and crime
We lose children every day. There are a million ways every year that our most precious resource slips through our fingers. All of them are heartbreaking. All of them are terrible. Nationwide, the total is about 37,000 annually, according to the National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention. In Pennsylvania,...
Editorial: Kiski Township should let Sunshine Act clear up Bartolicius’ departure
Residents of Kiski Township know one thing about the resignation of Lee Bartolicius from his position as police chief: Township supervisors accepted it. Do they know why he resigned? No. Do they know if there were problems to be resolved? No. Do they know what he received in a severance...
Editorial: With or without Chevron, clearer laws are essential
Among the many rulings the Supreme Court handed down this term, a decision on so-called Chevron deference could prove especially consequential. The question at issue was whether the courts or government agencies should determine the meaning of ambiguous laws. The new ruling unsettles a 40-year-old understanding by shifting some of...
Editorial: Hispanic population growth can build Pennsylvania political power
Western Pennsylvania is not a melting pot of cultures. The people who have come to or passed through Pittsburgh and surrounding communities have not blended into a homogeneous puree of creamy uniformity. And, really, who would want that anyway? Instead, it’s more like a marketplace of skills, ideas, beliefs and...
Editorial: Pennsylvania School Boards Association should be subject to the Right-to-Know Law
The Pennsylvania School Boards Association might seem like a trade organization. The name gives the same feeling as other state groups for those with related business, such as the Pennsylvania Corn Growers Association, Pennsylvania Retailers Association or the Malt Beverage Distributors Association of Pennsylvania. There are similarities. Each group looks...
Laurels & lances: Legend, lanternflies and law
Laurel: To a sweet life. Gus Kalaris did what he could to brighten Pittsburgh’s North Side. From 1951, he manned his “Gus and YiaYia’s” street cart from spring until fall, popping corn and shaving 50-pound blocks of ice to make the icon ice treats he was known for. Kalaris died...
Editorial: America is derived from the consent of the governed
In the fall of 1774, 56 men from 12 of the 13 American colonies met in Philadelphia in the First Continental Congress. It included John Adams and his cousin Samuel, Patrick Henry, John Jay and George Washington. The purpose was to decide how to proceed after Great Britain’s harsh consequences...
Editorial: South Side, crime and the difference a year makes
In 2022, crime was a problem on the South Side of Pittsburgh. People were concerned about safety. So were businesses. The Fudge Farm closed its South Side location in June 2022, with the owners saying after yet another shooting: “We can no longer ask teenage children or (anyone) for that...
Editorial: Six months is too long to wait for Hamilton’s resignation
The end of the year is too far away. Westmoreland County Register of Wills Sherry Magretti Hamilton has had a bad year. She’s been held in contempt of court by two judges. Multiple orders have attempted to force her to do her job. There have been hearings. A conservator was...
Editorial: Was presidential debate the worst ever?
During the 2024 primary season, neither presidential candidate participated in a debate. That changed Thursday when President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and former president Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, took the podiums in an audience-free Atlanta event on CNN. For many, it was deemed a disaster. A...
Laurels & lances: Memories cherished, memories lost
Laurel: To owning a piece of history. Fundraising often includes more than a simple donation. It can be more transactional, like buying Girl Scout cookies or a fish dinner at your local fire company. The Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall found a way to make money by selling off something...
Editorial: Should police be allowed to collect DNA for anyone arrested — even if they aren’t charged with a crime?
The most basic building block of who you are is contained in your blood, your skin and the other cells of your body. Even if you don’t have your driver’s license or passport on you, the DNA coded into your body is even more precise than your fingerprints. A fingerprint...
Editorial: Juvenile detention is not a 1-time, quick fix
The picture of juvenile detention in Western Pennsylvania is changing. Allegheny County’s Shuman Juvenile Detention Center closed in September 2021 when the state pulled its license after a series of problems including a heroin overdose and other issues with unattended children. The state called out the facility for “gross incompetence,...
Editorial: What RFK Jr. really means to the Pennsylvania ballot
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has filed paperwork to appear on the Pennsylvania ballot as a presidential candidate. The fourth Kennedy to run for president and the first to do so as an independent, he maintains that he will win. That’s the position of any presidential candidate, no matter how long...
Editorial: Russian show trials live on with American reporter
Joseph Stalin’s infamous death camps are a thing of the past in modern Russia, but the dictator’s absurd show trials live on. Last week, Russian prosecutors announced that they had finalized “charges” against Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and will begin sham proceedings against him next week. Gershkovich has...
