Featured Commentary category, Page 48

Pennsylvania lawmakers recently introduced a bill that would require all state and local government contractors, and their subcontractors, to verify that newly hired workers are either American citizens or legal immigrants. Contractors that refuse to do so would face stiff fines. If passed, this bill would prevent companies from using...

Voter trust and fear over the 2024 election are driving unprecedented interest in independent voters. The candidate who can address these fears, whether that candidate is President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump, will go on to win. With only a handful of states up for grabs, they need...

At the end of the year, we hear predictions about the future, many of which have been proven wrong: from the end of the world due to climate change, to the telephone is just a toy. (There is a story, probably apocryphal, that in 1876, the president of Western Union,...

There are 107 people, including seven Americans, still held hostage by Hamas since the brutal terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7. My great-niece, 4-year-old Abigail Mor Edan, was one of them. For 50 days, we did not know where she was, if she was alive, or if she was...

As I near the end of my third and final term, it provides a perfect opportunity to say thank you to Allegheny County residents. It has been the privilege of my life to serve in this position, and to represent you as county executive. Together, we have accomplished a great...

I was stunned by the early morning headline that appeared in my email. According to The New York Times, Israeli officials had known about Hamas’ plan for more than a year before it launched its Oct. 7 attacks. This could not be true. The Israel that I have come to...

In the great national divide over pickleball, one side is enjoying a serving of schadenfreude over the news that the sport’s professional league is in trouble. Those who view the sport as an abomination — and they are legion — will take heart from the fact that Major League Pickleball,...

I am an oddball. I like to work on Christmas. I don’t know how it is now, but when I was younger and worked for newspapers, variously in Africa, Britain and the United States, I always volunteered to work over the holiday and loved it. There was a special Christmas...

In a remarkable plot twist, the Colorado Supreme Court has found that former President Donald Trump must be excluded from the state’s primary ballot because he engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Now the pressure is on the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Section 3 of the 14th...

Every time I rip open a lovingly wrapped gift (and plenty of us will be doing a lot of that soon), one thing pops into my mind: trash. The wrapping paper, trash. The package hidden underneath it, trash. And the gift itself, in most cases, future trash, given enough time....

You rake your leaves and wake up the next morning only to see more on your lawn. You look to your neighbor’s lawn and realize their leaves have found their way onto your lawn. You say to yourself, “If only they would rake their leaves, my yard would be fine.”...

It’s popular to talk about the need to transition to “clean energy” to combat climate change. But what is clean energy? It should mean any type or use of energy that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and keeps energy reliable and affordable. But to some activists, clean energy means only renewable...

In early December, my telephone messages were filled with the pained voices of veterans who felt more like prisoners than liberators, men about to be robbed of Christmas by the endless quarantine at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Wilkes-Barre. It would mark the fourth consecutive Christmas where overreaching covid regulations...

Beyond her trailblazing role as the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor considered iCivics — a civics education nonprofit founded after she retired from the court — to be her “most important legacy.” “The practice of democracy is not passed down through the gene...

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, the sun shone brightly. Little did we know that this beautiful day would end as the second bloodiest on American soil in history. The dust had hardly settled when our Pennsylvania Task Force One (PA-TF1) deployed to help with the search and rescue...

A historic drama playing out in Texas ended last week when the Texas Supreme Court held that Kate Cox, a woman 20 weeks pregnant with a fetus with trisomy 18, an almost always fatal abnormality, could not legally end her pregnancy in her home state. Cox had taken the rare...

U.S. Steel is one of the most iconic American brands in one of America’s most storied industries, and both have deep roots in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The announced sale of U.S. Steel to Japan’s Nippon Steel Corp. (NSC) may seem like another American industry falling to foreign competition, but...

I lost a lot this year. My breasts. My ovaries. My uterus. My belly button. (I’ll explain that last one later.) But I gained a lot, too. After enduring four surgeries that benched me from work for a total of 14 weeks, I have removed the vulnerable body parts to...

We’ve got Israel looking for billions. We’ve got Ukraine begging for more billions. And the president and Democrats can’t wait another day to cut fat checks for both countries. Thank God the Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives are telling Democrats that before we dish out money to...

AMMAN, Jordan Every hour of every day of the last two months, aid agencies have pleaded for deliveries of humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip. We have been placed in the intolerable position of requesting permission to do lifesaving work. Last week, I wrote to the president of the United...

The Social Security program is projected to face a funding shortfall in just over a decade. To be clear, this is not as big a nightmare as is often described. Even if we hit this date and Congress did nothing, the program would still be paying more than 80% of...

In just 10 years, Social Security will be insolvent. Some politicians think we can ignore the problem or grow our way out of it — but that’s a recipe for disaster. Without action, the law calls for an immediate 23% across-the-board benefit cut upon insolvency. That’s a $17,400 cut for...

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported that the annual cost of family health insurance jumped to nearly $24,000 this year, the greatest increase in a decade. While insurance executives and employers may cite a plethora of reasons, one of the chief culprits is lack of oversight over the Wild West...

It’s not necessarily sinister for a prosecutor to go from offering an attractive plea deal to a defendant to throwing the book at him. Plenty of defendants have seen that happen after they turn down a plea bargain or authorities turn up new evidence. But the reasons for the dramatic...

Pennsylvania has long been an energy leader and is poised to lead in the transition to a booming clean energy economy. Our natural resources, strong economic base and skilled workforce have powered our growth and supported generations of Pennsylvanians. We now find ourselves at a critical moment where forward thinking...