Editorials category, Page 15

At any emergency, there is a concern beyond bandages and oxygen. The victims of a car crash, fire or other event are observed and kept calm. An emergency medical technician may wrap in a blanket someone who doesn’t have any outward signs of injury. It is more than about keeping...

Michael Conahan should be familiar with what goes into difficult decisions about crime and punishment and their effect on a person’s life. Conahan was a Temple-trained lawyer who spent 13 years as a Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas judge. For four years, he was the county’s president judge —...

Laurel: To those who helped. Elizabeth Pollard, 64, was last seen Dec. 2, looking for her missing cat near Monday’s Union Restaurant near the village of Marguerite in Unity. About 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, a search began for Pollard, centered around a sinkhole into an abandoned mine nearby. The search went...

The U.S. House of Representatives’ bipartisan Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump has released recommendations in a 180-page report. The task force, chaired by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, was authorized in the aftermath of the July 13 shooting at Trump’s political rally at the Butler...

A federal appeals court Friday upheld a controversial law banning the U.S. operations of TikTok — the popular video-based social networking app owned by Chinese company ByteDance — unless it finds a U.S. buyer. That gives the company six weeks to keep fighting before the ax falls. This impacts a...

On Jan. 7, Susan Shepherd called the police. Her son Christopher Shepherd, 48, was in the grip of a psychiatric crisis. He had a kitchen knife. He barricaded himself in his Upper St. Clair home. It wasn’t the first time. Christopher Shepherd was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder....

When it comes to his son Hunter, Joe Biden is always a father first, a president second. Last Sunday, at the close of the Thanksgiving weekend and the warmth of family gatherings, Biden granted a full and unconditional pardon for his son’s convictions on tax evasion and gun-related charges. As...

Pennsylvania often is split into its major parts. It is Pittsburgh to the west, Philadelphia to the east and everything else in the middle. Aside from the handful of cities, it is filled with almost 17 million acres of forest and more than 7 million acres of farmland. It is...

How much should an elected official be paid? It’s not a simple question. There are a variety of positions filled by election. Some are jobs that require a meeting or two a month — perhaps an overall investment of two to four hours. Depending on the city or borough, a...

Laurel: To looking ahead. The Westmoreland County Chamber of Commerce announced Monday the launch of a $25,000 study to explore construction of a convention center. “We feel the time is right to move forward with this next step,” Chamber President Dan DeBone said. The preferred location would be somewhere along...

On Monday, President-elect Donald Trump took to social media to make a statement about his feelings on an issue of domestic economy and foreign relations. “I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case Nippon Steel of Japan,” he...

Given how the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority is better known for limiting the authority of federal regulatory agencies than supporting them, last week’s small victory for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is an especially welcome one. The justices served the nation’s interest by essentially doing nothing — declining...

Social media is everywhere. It’s on the desktop computer that might be used for gaming. It’s on the laptop your teenager uses for homework. It’s on the tablet your kindergartner uses for videos. It’s on the smartwatch that counts steps. It’s on the phone tucked in every back pocket or...

The apparent death of the PRESS Act in Congress should alarm Americans on two levels. After this bill unanimously passed a Republican-controlled House — a testament to its commonsense defense of First Amendment principles that protect Americans of all political persuasions — all it took to ensure its demise in...

For three years, TribLive has periodically contacted the U.S. State Department. We ask the same questions, sometimes tweaked to reflect national or world events. We ask for the most recent information on Marc Fogel. The Butler native and Oakmont teacher has been held in a Russian prison since 2021, when...

In Pennsylvania, the national holiday of Thanksgiving and the retail festivities of Black Friday are quickly followed by the state’s own seasonal celebration. Bust out your camouflage and fluorescent orange. It’s deer season. Since 2019, the first day of regular firearm hunting for antlered and antlerless deer has come on...

Laurel: To accessibility. Many people don’t have much contact with their local governments. If you are a renter, for instance, any contact with your municipality might be between your landlord and officials. You might not even know where the local government offices are. So what is the best way for...

Thanksgiving is not the same from one house to the next. Some families spend all day with relatives coming and going, talking and laughing and eating from an endless buffet. Some gather around an elegantly laid out table for a formal dinner. Some hold hands as they say grace. Some...

You can learn a lot of things in college. You can study the law. You can explore history. You can become an artist, a scientist, an engineer or a teacher. Most college students also learn a lot about debt. The average cost of a year’s in-state public university tuition in...

The crypto party seems to be getting restarted. Bitcoin is surging, and big players are celebrating amid expectations that President-elect Donald Trump will make the U.S., as he put it, “the crypto capital of the world.” Lest this experiment go awry, regulators need to keep some guardrails in place. In...

With the Thursday concession of U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, Pennsylvania’s 2024 election season effectively comes to a close. Republican businessman Dave McCormick has already gone to Washington for new-senator orientation. The sliver of difference between the two candidates — McCormick’s 48.8% to Casey’s 48.6% — triggered an automatic recount. Casey’s...

If Nippon Steel really wants to buy American, it should start by selling the union on the deal. Right now, the members aren’t buying it. The Japanese company’s $14.9 billion offer to acquire Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel has been on the table since December. U.S. Steel stockholders approved the deal in...

Laurel: To getting involved. People talk about fighting the government. Winning a battle like that is the stuff of movies and TV shows. Losing the encounter is more expected. But how often do people really engage? This week, Monroeville council denied an application for a controversial development after multiple meetings...

There are places where the cultural mix of a community makes you expect to hear a chorus of different languages. Along the southern border, Spanish makes sense. So might a smattering of Portuguese or the odd native tongue like Quechua. Closer to Canada, there could be some French. But Westmoreland...

Pennsylvania needs an answer — once and for all — on mail-in ballots. The ability to use the voting alternative without a reason like being out of town or having a medical condition was given blanket approval with the passage of Act 77 in 2019. It promptly got its first...