Featured Commentary category, Page 50
Nickolaus Hayes: Why Dry January is good for your health
Dry January — abstaining from alcohol for the entirety of the first month of the year — has significant benefits for physical and mental health. It also prevents impaired driving and helps people reevaluate their drinking habits. Social drinking during the holiday season is widely accepted, generally seen as a...
Robin Abcarian: With every release of court documents, the damage Jeffrey Epstein did confronts us anew
I could live the rest of my life happily without being reminded of Jeffrey Epstein, his yearslong exploitation of young women or the many famous male moths who were drawn to the billionaire’s flame. I’m sure his emotionally scarred victims wish they could, too. Recent news developments, unfortunately, make the...
Jason W. Park: Timing of mass shootings offers clue to possible deterrence
Yet another senseless tragedy has occurred, the latest at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa. A school shooting leaving one dead and five wounded starts 2024 inauspiciously. However, we need more than “thoughts and prayers.” We all demand — and deserve — action. Rather than asking why this happened, let...
Freedom, democracy are here to stay — reflections on politics in 2024
It’s winter: dark, dreary and cold. There is a palpable feeling of dread in America as we face the upcoming 2024 political season. Pundits wonder why everyone is so grumpy. Positive economic news fails to change the national mood or lift the electoral prospects of President Joe Biden. We are...
Rep. Rob Mercuri: America’s largest full-time legislature should not be its least productive
As the new year begins, Pennsylvania’s state Legislature, the nation’s largest and one of its most expensive full-time legislative bodies, needs to make a New Year’s resolution for 2024 — to earn a return on the investment of the taxpayers whom they were elected to serve. Over the course of...
Jonathan Rothermel: Can a single, 6-year presidential term save us from ourselves?
The 2024 presidential primary season officially begins in just a few weeks, but former President Donald Trump’s commanding lead in the polls of likely Republican primary voters and President Joe Biden’s absence of a Democratic challenger appear to destine a repeat of the 2020 election. The most innovative country in...
Counterpoint: Jan. 6 was a protest and riot — not an insurrection
On Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress was preparing to certify officially the results of the 2020 presidential election, a melee took place at the nation’s capital, temporarily stalling the certification process. Later that evening, after the calm was restored, the Electoral College votes were cast, paving the way for another...
Point: Confronting the stain of an insurrection on American democracy
The chaos and fear wrought by the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, still stings fresh in the minds of millions of Americans — and particularly mine, as someone who served as a congressional staffer that day. But, as a country, I don’t think we’ve adequately grappled with the gravity of...
Daniel DePetris: Is the Middle East in danger of spinning out of control?
There is only so much a single person can do to control the events around them. Joe Biden is learning in real time that one of life’s golden rules also applies to the president of the United States. Despite holding the most powerful position in the world, Biden is finding...
Peter Morici: Bad news for Biden — Americans feel worse about the economy than they should
The U.S. economy has recovered from the covid pandemic reasonably well, yet President Joe Biden is getting little credit and could even lose his job in 2024. Third-quarter GDP growth scored at 4.9%; the Federal Reserve has enjoyed considerable success pulling down inflation. Jobs are plentiful, and the misery index...
Cal Thomas: President Gay is a symptom, not the cause
The resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay after “facing national backlash for her administration’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly work” does not solve the problem at America’s oldest college and other elite schools. She and many other university presidents are only a...
Vanessa Lynch: Celebrating EPA’s new oil and gas safeguards
Clean air advocates — and those of us living in front-line oil and gas communities — have something to celebrate as we start a new year. New Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) safeguards are poised to significantly slash methane pollution from the oil and gas industry. Parents across Pennsylvania are ecstatic....
Chris Heck: Bipartisan hope to protect Medicare
In the complex and often contentious world of health care policy, a glimmer of hope has emerged on the horizon. A bipartisan group of members of the U.S. House of Representatives has taken a stand to protect Medicare from looming cuts to physician compensation. The introduction of House Resolution 6683...
Elwood Watson: Generation X is almost 60
Latchkey kids. Slackers. Caffeine lovers. Grunge. That’s how a lot of people have referred to Generation X, the 46 million Americans, like myself, who were born between 1965 and 1980. We were a generation that has been perennially pegged as cynical, self-indulgent, aimless, contrarian and often peripheral when it comes...
Noah Feldman: The New York Times has an edge in suit against OpenAI
The lawsuit filed by the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement pits one of the great establishment media institutions against the purveyor of a transformative new technology. Symbolically, the case promises a clash of the titans: labor-intensive human newsgathering against pushbutton information produced by artificial intelligence....
Jason Opal: Even as American colonists defied the British, they understood the importance of the rule of law
The dominant storyline of our American Revolution is about patriotic defiance — refusing to pay taxes, dumping tea into the Boston Harbor and shooting redcoats once we saw the whites of their eyes. It’s about virtuous lawbreaking in the name of freedom. There is plenty of evidence to support this...
Counterpoint: A gilded age for college football — and the rest of us
The richest men in college football, as in the rest of the economy, are getting richer. In 1982, the legendary Bear Bryant made $450,000 coaching football at Alabama, or $1.4 million in today’s dollars. Alabama’s current coach pulls down $11.4 million, over 10 times what Bryant pocketed. Five college football...
Point: In college football, a sport driven by tradition, a revolution looms
College football is a game of tradition — from marching bands and fight songs to rivalry games and raucous student sections. But the game is undergoing its biggest revolution since the introduction of the forward pass. Billion-dollar television deals, continuing conference consolidation and the uncharted waters of player compensation threaten...
Mark Z. Barabak: Biden’s fellow seniors have advice for the 81-year-old president
For those who doubt Joe Biden’s capacity to be president, Herb Klar has a suggestion: Swing by his neighborhood sometime. “They don’t come to Rossmoor and see all the octagenarians … and see how lively and bright and competent we all are,” said Klar, 76, a retired clinical social worker,...
Doug Gansler: Could a 3rd party be the answer we need in 2024?
Four more years of a Trump presidency would take an enormous toll on America and its democracy. Polling continues to trend in Donald Trump’s direction over President Joe Biden’s, and we seem to be hurtling toward a disaster in November’s presidential election. This is a rare and unprecedented moment in...
Andrew Good: Pennsylvania workers need wider E-Verify mandates
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...
Adam Brandon: The fear factor and winning the independent voter
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...
Cal Thomas: Looking back, looking forward
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,...
Liz Hirsh Naftali: My 4-year-old great-niece was released by Hamas. When will the other hostages be freed?
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...
Rich Fitzgerald: Reflecting on 12 years of service
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...
