Featured Commentary category, Page 147
Eric Dean: Compulsory licensing could kill research, construction jobs
Across the country, scientists are developing roughly 4,000 experimental drugs. They’re developing these potential breakthroughs in laboratories meticulously constructed by union tradesmen and women. These labs are the best in the world, thanks in no small part to these skilled craft workers. My organization, North America’s Building Trades Unions, spends...
Terry O’Sullivan & Stephen Sandherr: Immigration fix & Pennsylvania’s construction crisis
While Congress has long signaled that a legislative fix for a group of immigrants could come soon, it can’t be soon enough for the thousands of affected Pennsylvanians and the industries in which they work. Currently more than 5,000 immigrants with Temporary Protected Status reside and work in Pennsylvania, and...
Lynn Banaszak: The Girls Scouts leadership pipeline
I fondly remember the afternoons with my Girl Scout troop in our elementary school cafeteria, laughing, learning and growing. I earned many badges, but more importantly, I gained a sense of accomplishment, explored different perspectives about the world, developed a commitment to community and forged lasting friendships. I count those...
Walter Williams: Brett Kavanaugh & George Mason University snowflakes
George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School hired Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh to co-teach a summer course called Creation of the Constitution. The course will be held 3,668 miles away, in Runnymede, England, where the Magna Carta was sealed 800 years ago. Some GMU students and faculty have...
John Stossel: Our green dreams need better resources
The Green New Deal’s goal is to move America to zero carbon emissions in 10 years. “That’s a goal you could only imagine possible if you have no idea how energy is produced,” James Meigs, former editor of Popular Mechanics magazine, says. “Renewable is so inconsistent,” he adds. “You can’t...
Nancy French: Romney wasn’t Christian enough for some Republicans. Somehow, Trump still is.
When Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, ran for president in the 2008 GOP primary, many evangelical Christian voters were reluctant - putting it mildly - to support him, because of his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. One of Romney’s opponents, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, exploited...
S.E. Cupp: Bernie Sanders’ secret: He’s a political insider
There’s good news and bad news for Bernie Sanders. The bad news is, 2020 is proving to be a lot more work than 2016 was. He’s no longer just a protest candidate who can dodge the demands of running for president in favor of vague promises and canned speeches. The...
Pat Buchanan: Is Bernie stealing Trump’s ‘no more wars’ issue?
“The president has said that he does not want to see this country involved in endless wars … I agree with that,” Bernie Sanders told the Fox News audience at his April 15 town hall meeting in Bethlehem, Pa. Then, turning and staring straight into the camera, Bernie added: “Mr....
Jonah Goldberg: Mueller report offers little in black and white
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we live in a time when everything is supposed to be black and white. The weird, incestuous relationship between the media and the political parties incentivizes combatants to take positions on the 1-yard lines, if not in the end zones. But what if — and...
Michael Hiltzik: Surprise! Social Security has gotten healthier
The crux of the conservative attack on Social Security in recent years has been the claim that the program is on an unbroken path to insolvency. Monday’s release of the Social Security trustees’ annual report knocks a pillar out from under that campaign, for it shows that the program actually...
Patricia Murphy: Trump’s warning you: The socialists are coming!
Meet “socialist,” the hardest-working word in politics in 2019. The single word has helped upstart Democrats attract young and social-curious potential voters, given the paddles of life to desperate-for-a-cause conservatives, and led President Trump to an early and effective way to frame the re-election battle he wants to have with...
Cal Thomas: Congress & consequences of sanctuary cities
In the category of Mad magazine’s “scenes we’d like to see” comes President Trump’s threat to transport migrants to cities and states that have declared themselves sanctuaries. Apparently he thinks such a move would force Democrats in Congress who represent these places to vote to fund the wall along our...
Mark Reynolds & Hilary Schenker: Earth Day call to action on climate
As Americans observe Earth Day today, let’s take a moment to reflect on the power of the grassroots movement behind that first celebration in 1970, which led to dramatic changes that improved the quality of our lives through cleaner air and water. Shocked by the massive oil spill that fouled...
G. Terry Madonna & Michael Young: Political polarization threatens our stability
Love and marriage, as the old ditty has it, may not always go together, but incivility and polarization sure go hand in hand in contemporary American politics. It’s virtually impossible to separate them. More importantly, it has led to chronic dysfunctionality in government. Recently, in a rare moment, the Pennsylvania...
Antony Davies & James Harrigan: Pittsburgh gun ban just political advertising
Most people know that politicians of all stripes are rarely sincere. Case in point: the Pittsburgh City Council’s recent industrial-strength gun-control nonsense. This law was so tempting to those who posture for a living that even Mayor Bill Peduto and Gov. Tom Wolf had to get in on the act....
Phyllis Zagano: No women, no Catholic Church
In August 2016, Pope Francis named a commission of 12 scholars to study the history of women deacons. The commission — the first in the history of the Church to have an equal number of men and women — provided a report some months ago. Will the pope restore the...
Walter Williams: Pondering Democrats’ views on voting, guns & reparations
There’s a push to change laws to grant both criminals serving time and ex-criminals the right to vote. Guess which party is pushing the most for these legal changes? If you guessed that it was the Democrats, go to the head of the class. Bernie Sanders says states should allow...
John Stossel: Don’t fear 3D-printed guns
Are you very afraid? 3D-printed guns are coming. “Virtually undetectable!” shrieked CNN. “This changes the safety of Americans forever!” shrieked MSNBC. Does it? Six years ago, a company called Defense Distributed posted blueprints for 3D-printed guns on the web. The Obama State Department said that violated the Arms Control Act...
Donald Boudreaux: Reasons to be happy on Earth Day
April 22 of each year is now Earth Day. (I note that April 22 is also the birthday of Vladimir Lenin. Readers may draw their own conclusions.) The internet and airwaves will teem with gloom ’n’ doom, as warnings are heard of a coming calamity. Guilt-tripping will also peak, with...
Eric Nelson: Pennsylvania should be cautious about nuclear bailout
Normally, businesses use hard work to generate profit and, at times, big business uses lobbyists. This appears to be the strategy as the nuclear industry levels its crosshairs on Pennsylvania. In New York, its $500 million marketing assault secured a return on investment of $5.7 billion in higher energy prices...
Colin McNickle: Pennsylvania gaming expansion’s marginal returns
State-sanctioned gambling — “gaming,” in the parlance of its overlords — has seen marked growth in Pennsylvania. But as a new analysis by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy notes, the returns — initially sketched as the be-all and end-all on many fronts — remain marginal when considered in context....
Pat Buchanan: Pete Buttigieg & Christianity’s crackup
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” said Hamlet, who thereby raised some crucial questions: Is moral truth subjective? Does it change with changing times and changing attitudes? Or is there a higher law, a permanent law, God’s law, immutable and eternal, to which man’s...
Christine Emba: Congress should ease the pain of filing taxes
For the first time in a long time, I managed to do my taxes early this year. My refund check arrived by mail. Opening it, I looked down at the (paltry) sum, sighed and placed the letter into my bag. And then it blew away. Literally. It blew out of...
S.E. Cupp: The silver lining in Trump’s homeland security purge
“They are decapitating the entire department,” a Department of Homeland Security official ominously told The Washington Post of last week’s alarming purge that resulted in forcing the resignation of Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, pulling the pick to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement and firing the Secret Service director. President Trump’s ouster...
Michelle Malkin: False accuser Shaun King’s record of harm
This weekend, “journalist, activist and humanitarian” Shaun King gave the keynote speech at the annual Innocence Network Conference in Atlanta. The theme of the event, whose attendees work to prevent and undo wrongful convictions, is “The Presumption of Innocence.” It was just three months ago that King recklessly exploited the...
