Featured Commentary category, Page 143
Pat Buchanan: War with Iran would become ‘Trump’s War’
President Trump cannot want war with Iran. Such a war, no matter how long, would be fought in and around the Persian Gulf, through which a third of the world’s seaborne oil travels. It could trigger a worldwide recession and imperil Trump’s reelection. It would widen the “forever war,” which...
Guy Reschenthaler: Combatting our veterans’ mental health crisis
Twenty veterans die by suicide each day. Additionally, up to 20% of veterans who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression. As our nation recognizes PTSD Awareness Month in June, it is important that we draw attention to these...
G. Terry Madonna & Michael Young: The Democrats’ debate marathon
Who will win the 2020 presidential election seems endlessly debatable — and the Democrats are preparing to demonstrate just how endless that debate will be. Overall there will be 12 sanctioned Democratic presidential debates during the party’s nomination battle, six of them in 2019 with six more in 2020. The...
Robert Ciervo: We must protect integrity of female athletics
In the ongoing debate about protecting the integrity of female athletics, I firmly believe female track athletes should only have to compete against their peers — not biological males, regardless of how those male athletes identify in terms of gender, which is a man-made construct. As a former Division I...
Mitchel Nickols: Advocates look out for patients
Chances are, most of us will become or know someone as a patient during our lifetime. The need to have a friend or loved one access or communicate with a medical professional about your care may necessitate having a patient advocate. A patient’s privacy is protected by the Health Insurance...
Bob Sherwin: Foster care, broken system or loving home?
Many have argued that the foster care system is broken. Dr. Phil has said it. The Boston Globe has said it. The Washington Post has said it. But as executive director of Bethany Christian Services of Western Pennsylvania and Ohio, I’m not sure I agree with this statement. While our...
Andy Carter: Pa. health care dollars at risk
A lot has changed since 1998, the year that Pennsylvania and 45 states stood up to big tobacco and helped create the Tobacco Settlement Fund (TSF). We may have moved on from CD-ROM, dial-up internet and the Y2K bug frenzy; but a few things have stood the test of time:...
Jeff Dunetz: Restrict immigration to soften blow of automation
Automation and artificial intelligence could make 54 million Americans’ jobs obsolete within the next decade, according to McKinsey & Company. Lesser-skilled jobs in manufacturing, construction and service industries will be the first to go. Increasingly, robots can perform these jobs more efficiently than humans. Robots also don’t need costly benefits...
John Stossel: Moral capitalism
Presidential candidates and the media keep telling people “it’s immoral” that a few rich people have so much more money than everyone else. They talk as if it doesn’t matter what the rich did to get the money. Instead, the fact that they are rich is itself immoral. Yaron Brook...
Walter Williams: Diversity & black education decline
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says that the city’s specialized high schools have a diversity problem. He’s joined by New York City Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza, educators, students and community leaders who want to fix the diversity problem. I bet you can easily guess what they will do...
Donald Boudreaux: Save us from a ‘manufacturing czar’
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., proposes to establish a new federal agency for designing and directing national industrial policy. Named the National Institute of Manufacturing, this agency would be led by what The Washington Post calls a “manufacturing czar, who could report directly to the president. This person would be called...
Tirzah Duren: Pennsylvania budget can build on tax reform boom
State lawmakers are heading into budget negotiations with wages rising, record-low unemployment and state revenues surpassing projections — an economic windfall largely due to federal tax reform. With all this great economic news, it would be easy to grow complacent. But here’s the reality: Pennsylvania still lags other states. To...
Erin Wall: Through the thorns, remembering Antwon Rose II
The Woodland Hills School District is not unique in the problems we face. Yet, we are uniquely forged from the steel-making roots of our past. Like all districts, we strive to provide a top-notch educational institution for our student body. We also seek to lay the foundation of a brick-and-mortar...
Pat Buchanan: Russiagate is no Watergate
“History is repeating itself, and with a vengeance,” John Dean told the judiciary committee, drawing a parallel between Watergate, which brought down Richard Nixon, and “Russiagate” which has bedeviled Donald Trump. But what strikes this veteran of Nixon’s White House is not the similarities but the stark differences. Watergate began...
Robert Torres: Older Pennsylvanians need more than minimum wage
It’s personal to us at the Department of Aging that more than 18% of workers earning less than $15 per hour are age 55 or older. That means 374,000 older adults are not making a living wage as they try to afford food and housing, on top of those facing...
S.E. Cupp: Spying, traitors & Donald Trump
Just put it on the towering pile of scripts even the writers of “Veep” would have rejected as too absurd. But it’s shockingly, appallingly, real. See if you can follow this. On Tuesday morning, the president’s national security adviser, John Bolton, announces North Korea is one of five countries he...
Antony Davies & James R. Harrigan: View political promises with healthy skepticism
Fewer than 18 months stand between us and the next presidential election, and politicians are tripping over each other to offer voters more “free” things, including everything from health care to college to a guaranteed basic income. But voters should be fostering a healthy sense of skepticism. If there is...
Joel Pfeffer: Immigration must shift to employment model
In a recent Rose Garden speech, President Trump outlined his administration’s immigration plan. Unfortunately, it offered little in the way of specifics, bullet points for those interested or written guidance for lawmakers. This creates a challenge for those concerned about legally admitting new immigrants into America. America’s current immigration structure...
Eric Barron: Federally funded university research transforms lives
For decades, the federal government has turned to universities to undertake research in a wide array of fields, including health care, energy and national security. Such investment is crucial for encouraging basic scientific research — the bedrock for the applied research that results in the applications and inventions that have...
Walter Williams: How government creates conflict
We are living in a time of increasing domestic tension. Some of it stems from the presidency of Donald Trump. Another part of it is various advocacy groups on both sides of the political spectrum demanding one cause or another. But nearly totally ignored is how growing government control over...
John Stossel: Designer babies — the real X-Men?
Soon, some of you will try to make “better babies.” Already, people pay labs to examine embryos so they can pick ones with DNA they like. Some screen for gender or eye color. Some screen out certain diseases. So far, they’ve been limited to selecting genes that exist in the...
Jonah Goldberg: The conservative divide
The idea holding together the conservative movement since the 1960s was called “fusionism.” The concept, which always worked better as an organizing principle than a philosophical one, was that freedom and virtue were inextricably linked. Virtue not freely chosen wasn’t virtuous. Or as Frank Meyer, the foremost architect of fusionism,...
Colin McNickle: The Penn Hills predicament
The Penn Hills School District finds itself in dire financial straits. And it now must execute a state-overseen financial recovery plan. A significant tax increase and layoffs are possible. But had taxpayers been given the direct oversight they deserve, the situation might be different, say two researchers at the Allegheny...
Jonah Goldberg: Does reality change ideas, or vice versa?
The intellectual right is in the middle of a huge brouhaha, as some prominent right-wing commentators celebrate what they believe is the end of the “conservative consensus” around classical liberalism — free markets, limited government, the sovereignty of the individual and even in some cases free expression. Fox News’ Tucker...
Michelle Malkin: Exoneree, now a law grad, fights for justice
What would you do if you were falsely accused and convicted of a brutal rape and murder you didn’t commit? How would you handle a violent maximum-security prison, sentenced to 16 years to life, at age 17? And where would you go, what would you choose to do, if you...
