Deciding whether a person is eligible for Social Security disability payments is time consuming, sometimes complex, and requires no small amount of documentation. But this nation, which, for the most part, prides itself on being compassionate, has, for the past half-decade, been guilty of an ...

Pennsylvania government and state taxpayers will have to live with ramifications from the commonwealth’s latest credit downgrade, regardless of when full funding of the $32 billion 2017-18 state budget, passed nearly three months ago, finally is accomplished. On Wednesday, Standard & ...

Pennsylvania’s child welfare system is broken. That was the finding of Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, whose “State of the Child” report was released last week. And it confirms what we in York County already knew. The yearlong audit described a system overwhelmed by new state ...

Blair County is testimony that, despite the vast amount of information available via the internet, community libraries retain their importance. They deserve the government funding they receive, and they deserve business and public financial support — as well as remembrance in estates — to ...

In many towns and cities, some members of minority communities do not trust police officers. Many in law enforcement work to build trust among those they serve. Clearly, however, enforcing the law is the department’s overriding priority. We pay police officers and sheriff’s deputies to ...

For eight years, it seemed as if then-President Barack Obama had unleashed every weapon in the bureaucracy’s arsenal against the coal mining industry. Then, Obama invented some new tools to harass coal country. In that context, President Donald Trump’s plan to roll back the regulatory ...

Pennsylvania’s Act 47 was a godsend for Altoona, but the city’s exit on Wednesday from underneath the distressed-municipalities program’s financial umbrella plants the seeds for many positive opportunities in the years ahead. Current and future city officials must work unceasingly to ...

The reputation of the national Beta Theta Pi fraternity is facing further damage that needs to be addressed quickly and correctly. Whatever positive contributions its now-banned chapter at Penn State University might have made at the university and in the State College area community over the ...

Residents of America’s hurricane-stricken regions will experience growing impatience and frustration as the days and weeks ahead drag on, some of those residents having to deal with damaged or devastated homes, others without the everyday conveniences of electrical service, water that’s ...

For Americans old enough to remember the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, the images of airliners striking the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York are etched forever in their minds. Beyond that, they cannot forget the additional shock and fear that they experienced upon hearing that ...

Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives returns to work Monday with a 2017-18 budget-funding plan, but it’s a proposal not without serious questions, the most important of which is whether there’s any chance that the Senate will concur. The Senate has had its own plan on the table for ...

Diplomats sometimes engage in hyperbole to make their points. But what Nikki Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said earlier this week may be the literal truth. Haley spoke during an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Monday. It was called after it was confirmed ...

There’s no way to determine the full impact of the 1,600 driver education presentations conducted by Pennsylvania State Police troopers last year at schools, businesses and before community groups — sessions that deal with driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and the consequences ...

The Pennsylvania Lottery’s insatiable lust for additional revenue, having spilled over last Tuesday to its Match 6 game, evokes speculation about what might happen next. Will Match 6, sooner rather than later, become a twice-a-day game like many of the lottery’s other offerings? Will ...

Today’s Labor Day observance should focus not only on how American workers have enabled this nation to remain an uninterrupted economic engine with positive impacts around the world. On this holiday, people of this land also should be reflecting on how America’s workforce will mobilize on ...

President Donald Trump’s order reviving a Pentagon program making certain military equipment available to local-level police departments is controversial. That’s understandable. However, for the most part, police having access to such powerful gear wasn’t a matter of contention — ...

Brace yourself for another round of propaganda aimed at Israel. Expect to hear new allegations our only reliable ally in the Middle East is attacking Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for no good reason. Except that there will be a reason — self-defense. Yehiyeh Sinwar, the new leader of ...

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin won last week’s Stating the Obvious Prize when he predicted Congress will approve an increase in the government debt limit sometime in September. Of course lawmakers will approve a new debt ceiling. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth by both ...

The front page of Monday’s Mirror highlighted the work of more than two dozen people who turned out Sunday for what’s become the annual Juniata River Cleanup. Sunday, which marked the fifth year of that worthy endeavor, while geared mostly toward removing large items from the river such ...

An important question hanging over Pennsylvania’s state government is whether the commonwealth’s credit rating, which already is one of the nation’s worst, is destined to deteriorate further. As the current stalemate continues over fully funding the nearly $32 billion 2017-18 budget ...