Editorials category, Page 97
Laurels & lances: Cows, comments, alcohol and ashes
Laurel: To those on the hunt for crafty cows. The Westmoreland County Animal Response Team has the unenviable task of trying to track down a small herd of cattle that have been roaming southern Murrysville since at least April 26, when a Murrysville resident snapped a photo as he followed...
Editorial: Metcalfe’s vaccine bill quarantines free speech
We can vaccinate against many things. We can take a shot to prevent smallpox, and that worked so well the disease only exists in little vials. We can inoculate ourselves against everything from the tetanus we could get from a bad cut to the chicken pox that spreads like fire...
Editorial: Every 2020 candidate should be in Pittsburgh
Everyone knew that Joe Biden was going to run for president again. His undeclared presence on every hypothetical ballot was an open assumption for months. Despite a Democratic field that contenders almost large enough to be a hockey roster, Biden consistently polled higher than even the buzziest newcomers. His declaration...
Editorial: Tree of Life to Poway, anti-Jewish hate crimes rising
It must be a terrifying time to be Jewish. When the places where you go to feel your faith most fully are the places where you are targeted with guns loaded with bullets and gunmen loaded with hatred, it must feel like being a deer in an open field. No...
Editorial: Dating violence demands awareness
Love is in the air. But sometimes love changes. Sometimes it was never love at all. Sometimes what seems like love is control. It’s possession. It’s dangerous. And sometimes we don’t know how to explain the difference to our kids. The blossoming days of spring are warming and waltzing toward...
Editorial: Prison voting is Sanders’ slippery slope
The slope’s not that slippery, Bernie. Both the federal and Pennsylvania governments are making admirable progress in criminal justice reform. They are finding new ways to structure sentences. They’re changing mandatory minimums. They’re giving people who have served their sentences Clean Slate laws that make it easier to not just...
Editorial: Gas tax covers police for areas that won’t
Pennsylvanians pay 57.6 cents per gallon in gas tax, the highest in the country. With prices ranging from $2.94 to $3.15, that means about 18% to 20% of what we pay at the pump isn’t paying for what goes into the tank. It goes to Harrisburg, where it’s supposed to...
Laurels & lances: Voting, truth and rebuilding
Laurel: To party being less important than community. The Murrysville-Export Republican and Democratic clubs have worked together this year to garner 85 signatures necessary on a petition filed in Westmoreland Common Pleas Court seeking an order to redraw the Sardis and Newlonsburg precincts. The community hopes splitting each of those...
Editorial: Westmoreland sheriff’s office raid shows problems
There is a problem in the Westmoreland County Sheriff’s Office. For the second time, authorities have conducted a raid on the agency. It happened Wednesday morning when state police investigators swooped in, collected documents, questioned people and left two hours later. “It’s not about me this time,” Sheriff Jonathan Held...
Editorial: Murrysville needs more polling places
If you want people to vote, you can’t make it a challenge. In two Murrysville precincts, there are just too many voters to make showing up at the polls an easy proposition. Newlonsburg has 3,454 registered voters. Sardis has 3,498. That’s almost 7,000 voters — nearly half of Murrysville’s overall...
Editorial: Casey’s call for DNC debate makes electoral sense
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Scranton, is right. The Democratic Party should hold one of what promises to be a plethora of primary debates in Pennsylvania. The Keystone State will undoubtedly be a keystone in the 2020 presidential election. It usually is. Americans have gone to the polls to pick a...
Editorial: Pennsylvania Senate’s turn on child abuse protections
Okay, Senate. Your turn. The Pennsylvania House did its job. They took a proposal to rewrite the rules on child sex abuse reporting and ran with it. One bill would chuck the statute of limitations if the reason child abuse wasn’t reported was that the mandated reporters didn’t report the...
Editorial: DeLuca plan too late for Penn Hills, not for other districts
If nothing else, Penn Hills can be a cautionary tale. The school district’s $172 million money pit of debt might not be getting any shallower but it has prompted attention in Harrisburg. Auditor General Eugene DePasquale had already issued a 2016 report that called Penn Hills out for “mismanagement and...
Laurels & lances: Food fest, fight, overcoming and outstanding
Laurel: To a really big dill. Who doesn’t love a big old pickle? Now who doesn’t love an even bigger pickle? Exactly. And that’s what makes a bigger, better Picklesburgh festival something you can really sink your teeth into. The July 26-28 festival is going to be expanded and we...
Editorial: Highlands residents have right to know
We aren’t going to give up and go away. Highlands School District can keep making decisions and taking votes without the full light of day, but the Tribune-Review isn’t going to stop going to meetings. We aren’t going to stop paying attention to what is on the agenda and what...
Editorial: Notre Dame fire shows strength of resurrection
It took more than a hundred years to build. It stood for hundreds more. It defined the skyline of a city and the soul of a religion. And it didn’t stand a prayer against the consuming hunger of fire. The vast, awe-inspiring beauty of one of the great palaces of...
Editorial: #HeartsTogether promotes Tree of Life healing
How do you fill the hole left by grief and sorrow? How do you close the wound ripped open by hate? With hope. The Tree of Life synagogue stands — an empty shell — since the Oct. 27 shooting that shattered worship services on a quiet Sabbath morning. In the...
Editorial: Veterans court extends a helping hand
A veteran is someone who has proven they understand discipline. They know how to follow orders. They get what it means to be a small part of a larger operation, and why every part has a job to do. That means that when they get in trouble with the law,...
Editorial: Pa. rape kit progress has to continue
Imagine being robbed and finding out that, despite reporting it to police and turning over pictures and serial numbers for your TV and your laptop, the report sat on a shelf and waited for an investigation that never happened. Imagine being shot and discovering that the bullet was in an...
Editorial: Prosecuting Peduto for gun ban is wrong move
Six members of Pittsburgh’s city council and Mayor Bill Peduto have taken steps to change the law within their sphere of influence as applies to a certain class of weapon. It was a big step. The U.S. and Pennsylvania constitutions both uphold gun ownership as a right. But both also...
Lori Falce: Julian Assange arrest not a press attack
You, Julian Assange, are not a journalist. I know you like to claim that you are, largely because you like to hide behind the protections journalists are sometimes afforded when it comes to obtaining and releasing information and questioning authority. But what you have done is not journalism. It has...
Laurels & lances: Ligonier, light, lessons and love
Laurel: To preserving a little piece of the past. Ligonier Township leaders don’t want lose their connection to a treasured longtime landmark. Instead, the municipality is interested in buying Ligonier Beach to keep the private pool from floundering after the owners filed for bankruptcy. Details are still up in the...
Editorial: Toomey’s common-sense solution to gun law loophole
Listen to squabbles about gun control and you are bound to hear one question come up, either from frustrated proponents of limits or aggrieved champions of the Second Amendment. Why don’t we just enforce the rules we already have? If the two sides would actually listen to each other, they...
Editorial: Do Excela problems show changing hospital industry?
Are hospitals becoming the new malls? Just like retail has evolved, getting out of the big, glassy, glitzy shopping centers and into the phone in your pocket, it seems like medicine is likewise morphing into something else. And also like retail, it’s taking its toll on the old way of...
Editorial: UPMC, Highmark should consent to modification
It’s not that nothing can be done. When Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson issued his decision in Josh Shapiro’s plea for a stay of execution in the UPMC-Highmark consent decree, he didn’t throw the Pennsylvania attorney general a lifeline. Simpson’s ruling might be read as helpless when he says, “this...
