Featured Commentary category, Page 54
Kelly McKinney: Are we as a nation ready for the next big threat? What Oct. 7 and the pandemic have taught us
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...
Bobby Ghosh: Pro pickleball’s woes won’t dent the sport
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,...
Llewellyn King: Christmas is the world’s festival, its happy place
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...
Noah Feldman: Supreme Court unlikely to uphold Colorado ruling disqualifying Trump
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...
Paul Thornton: Christmas gift-giving turbocharges our trash problem. This is how I cope.
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....
Jerald McNair: ’Tis the season to be more neighborly. And doing so can transform communities.
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.”...
Terry Fitzpatrick: Beyond platitudes on clean energy
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...
Stacy Garrity: The hospital that stole Christmas
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...
Joshua Jansa and Eve Ringsmuth: Sandra Day O’Connor saw civics education as key to the future of democracy
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...
Mark Schweiker: It’s time for a second USAR team in Pa.
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...
Mary Ziegler: A Texas case shows how cruel and illusory the latest abortion-ban exceptions can be
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...
Ryan Costello: U.S. Steel-NSC Merger a good deal for workers, consumers and Pa.
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...
Christine Vendel: Genetic testing can save lives. I believe it saved mine.
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...
Michael Reagan: Shut the open door to America
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...
Philippe Lazzarini: We must prevent humanitarian aid from being used as an instrument of war
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...
Counterpoint: Balanced economic growth provides the best route for ‘fixing’ Social Security
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...
Point: Social Security can’t grow its way out of trouble
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...
Renee Y. Hsia: Same hospital, same injury, same child, same day — why did one ER visit cost thousands more?
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...
Harry Litman: Hunter Biden isn’t being accused of any new wrongdoing. So why was he just indicted again?
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...
Mike Dunleavy and Jackson Morris: Legislators should come to table for Pa.’s energy future
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...
Rob Perkins: Our indigent defense system is (still) broken. Here’s why that matters.
Our criminal justice system is adversarial by design. Prosecuting attorneys work on one side of the aisle, and defense attorneys on the other. Defense lawyers play a critical role, as they serve as a check and balance on the near-limitless power of the prosecutor. About a year ago, I wrote...
Dyan Mazurana and Anastasia Marshak: Hamas’ use of sexual violence is an all-too-common part of modern war — but not in all conflicts
The United Nations, women’s groups and human rights groups are facing criticism for not quickly condemning Hamas fighters for raping and sexually violating Israelis during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Most critics cite rising antisemitism as the reason some experts and advocates did not quickly rally behind Israel’s repeated claims...
Elwood Watson: The continued hypocrisy of so-called family values conservatives
Do as I say, not as I do. This sort of Victorian philosophy seems to be par for the course among many of the so-called family values conservatives. Recent reports that Christian Ziegler, the husband of Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, is under police investigation in Sarasota, Fla., following...
Jonathan Sharp: Protecting our firefighters from dangerous chemicals
Firefighters , the brave people who risk their lives to protect their communities, are regularly exposed to countless toxic substances while extinguishing blazes, including formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, benzene, asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls, smoke, carbon monoxide and perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Commonly known as PFAS or “forever chemicals” because of their persistence...
Lawrence McCullough: Pittsburgh can use the arts to fight intolerance
Pittsburgh has the opportunity to take the lead in a federal initiative that enlists the arts to inspire empathy and combat intolerance. United We Stand: Connecting Through Culture is a set of strategies and funding resources introduced by the Biden-Harris administration to counter the corrosive effects of hate-fueled violence on...
