Featured Commentary category, Page 3
William M. Cotter: Let the sunshine in — restore transparency to Pa. government
National Sunshine Week, March 15-21, is a time to highlight the importance of open, transparent government and to call attention to actions that place those principles at risk. Pennsylvanians deserve to know what their elected school and township supervisor boards, borough councils and other agencies plan to discuss and vote...
Capt. Jason M. Deichler: ‘One for the Thumb’ — Pittsburgh’s next warship deserves Pittsburgh’s full support
In Pittsburgh, “One for the Thumb” was never just a slogan. It was a declaration — that toughness, discipline and hard work could earn something lasting. When the Steelers chased a fifth Lombardi Trophy in the 1980s, the city wasn’t bragging. It was acknowledging a standard. Today, that same spirit...
David L. Nevins: Non‑partisan doesn’t mean unbiased — Why America keeps getting this wrong
For as long as I’ve worked in democracy reform, I’ve watched people use nonpartisan and nonbiased as if they meant the same thing. They don’t. This confusion has distorted how Americans judge the credibility of the democracy reform movement, journalists and even one another. We have created an impossible expectation...
Elizabeth Stelle and Edward Timmons: Affordable child care begins with cutting red tape
Child care in Pennsylvania is expensive. Just one child in day care costs about 40% of the median household income of single-parent households in the commonwealth. When affordability is on everyone’s mind, we can’t overlook the opportunity to reduce one of the largest expenses for young families. Day care is...
Noah Feldman: The Supreme Court has a marijuana problem
The 17.7 million Americans who use marijuana daily or near-daily can relax: The Supreme Court appears poised to hold that Congress can’t prohibit them from owning firearms. More significantly, the argument revealed that the Supreme Court’s originalist doctrine on gun laws has made it increasingly difficult for Congress to bar...
Jamelle Bouie: Trump is the anti-Trump
There is an alternate universe in which Donald Trump is the popular, successful president of his imagination. In this world, Trump has a clear view of the political landscape. He knows he won a narrow victory, not a landslide. He knows that his key voters — the ones who put...
Commentary: Can AI fill out a winning March Madness bracket?
The end of the college basketball season is fast approaching. Selection Sunday is less than a week away, with dozens of teams waiting to see where they will be seeded and, for some, if they fall on the right side of the bubble. This also means that college basketball fans...
Aaron Brown: Strict new voter proposals have us searching for our true ID
When Kathy Magnuson was young, she signed her Social Security card with pride, if not precision, by her maiden name: “Kathy A. Brown.” She got married in 1963 and signed her new card more formally, “Kathleen A. Magnuson.” A later replacement card got the full treatment, “Kathleen Ann Magnuson.” These...
Austin Sarat: From moral authority to risk management — how university presidents stopped speaking their minds
Throughout the 20th century, college and university presidents spoke out on everything, from wars to civil rights struggles, with a sense of moral authority attempting to guide the course. Their language was typically direct and free of jargon. “Democracy is the best form of government. It is worth dying for,”...
Steve Kerr: The human cost of gun violence in America
I love coaching basketball. Being around young people, seeing their potential and helping them become the best versions of themselves is incredibly gratifying. But the job also offers a glimpse into how fragile it can all be. One injury, one bad break, a change in circumstances can shift everything for...
Chuck Collins: How billionaires worsen affordability crisis
Americans of all political stripes are concerned about affordability. Some politicians would like to change the subject. Billionaires and their allies in politics have tried everything, from falsely blaming the rising costs of food and housing on immigrants, to dismissing the entire concept of affordability as a “hoax,” as President...
Hal Brands: Israel has become America’s not-so-secret weapon
The ongoing war against Iran has raised a number of important issues: the ability of air power alone to achieve regime change, the ethics and effectiveness of targeting Iran’s leaders, the question of how much damage the war will cause in the region, and what its effects will be around...
Lauren Hall: Local governments provide proof that polarization is not inevitable
When it comes to national politics, Americans are fiercely divided across a range of issues, including gun control, election security and vaccines. It’s not new for Republicans and Democrats to be at odds over issues, but things have reached a point where even the idea of compromising appears to be...
Noah Feldman: Decades of presidents ignoring the War Powers Act led us here
When you bomb a country and take out its leader, that’s an act of war. Under the Constitution, Congress must declare war or otherwise authorize the use of force before the president may take such action. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Iran, where the joint U.S.-Israeli attacks that killed Supreme...
LZ Granderson: There are 2 Americas. Falling mortgage rates matter only to the wealthy one
There was a McDonald’s in my neighborhood that we would drive by often when I was growing up. Each time, I would read about the weekly sale advertised on the marquee underneath the golden arches. Occasionally, I would ask my folks if we could stop at that McDonald’s on the...
Jessica L. Schleider: If social platforms are harmful, don’t just ban kids. Regulate the harms
As major social media companies head to court this year to defend themselves against claims that their products have harmed young people’s mental health, policymakers are searching for decisive responses. The lawsuits, which focus on whether platforms knowingly designed addictive, psychologically harmful systems for youth, are bringing long-avoided questions into...
Jim Nowlan: Stop the world, I want to step off
At 84, I am an analog guy in a digital world. Sure, I do Zoom meetings and check my smartphone too often. Yet my mental health suffers, I swear, from the almost vertical rate of societal change; political mayhem; transition from a human- to digital-dominated world; and the sense that...
Counterpoint: Make year-long standard time the nationwide standard again
I’m one of the many Americans who hate being forced to time-shift twice a year. After only four months on standard time, daylight saving time returns with a vengeance on Sunday, March 8, when 2 a.m. abruptly becomes 3 a.m. Only residents of Arizona (with the exception of those living...
Point: Time changes have advantages year-round
America’s current daylight saving time system — spring-to-fall DST followed by winter standard time — is an excellent compromise, providing all of DST’s many benefits for the majority of the year and yet avoiding winter DST’s difficulties during the dark, cold months. Evaluating DST is more complex than it might...
Cal Thomas: The Clintons, at it again
How much faith should one put in the veracity of Bill Clinton when he testified last week in a deposition that he did “nothing wrong” in his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein? I guess it depends on the meaning of “nothing” and “wrong.” How much faith should one...
Joyce M. Davis: Iran’s martyrdom culture means this war could be America’s bloodiest yet
Few places on earth so revere martyrdom as Iran. I came to that conclusion during a visit to the country in 2002, not long after the Sept. 11 attack on the United States. In my book, “Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance and Despair in the Middle East,” I open the chapter on...
Robert T. Smith: Our planet’s doom is not so imminent
As the means of communicating its administration of the nation’s environmental laws to the public, on Feb. 18, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a Final Rule in the Federal Register stating that the prior action by the EPA regarding the control of greenhouse gases, called the Endangerment Finding,...
Justin Callais and Clay Routledge: The economic common ground America isn’t talking about
These days, it can feel like Americans across the political divide cannot agree on much of anything. But there is encouraging news: When it comes to the economic foundations of human progress and flourishing, we are not as divided as we might think. Political polarization has become a defining feature...
Panini Chowdhury: Allegheny County needs regional approach to mobility
Every weekday morning, thousands of Pittsburghers board a bus to get to work or school. That bus is operated by Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT). It travels along a street paved and maintained by the City of Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility & Infrastructure. It often crosses a bridge maintained by the...
Sheldon H. Jacobson: Crunching the numbers on the affordability crisis
The word that seems to concern many people today is “affordability.” Whether one is purchasing a home, buying food or paying doctors’ bills, everything seems more expensive. And the fact is, everything is more expensive. The consumer price index in December 2021 stood at 278. By December 2025, it had...
