The biggest problem with PennDOT’s proposed project to eliminate congestion in the area of Altoona’s Seventh Street Bridge is that construction isn’t slated until 2022. But based on a front-page article in the March 2 Mirror, the improvement will be worth the wait. Traffic flow, once the ...
There are reasonable arguments on both sides of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget proposal to increase, to $45,000, the minimum salary for the state’s public school teachers. However, what also must be at the forefront of discussions, going forward, are the potential ramifications for ...
The cover of the May 10, 1999, issue of Newsweek magazine asked the question, “How well do you know your kid?” The reason for that question was the nation’s shock over the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., which had occurred nearly three weeks earlier. This editorial ...
Pope Francis said all the right things during the recent extraordinary conference to discuss sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests and coverups by their superiors. But what he did not say has some observers, both inside the church and out of it, upset. Francis summoned 190 Catholic bishops ...
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s renewed proposal for an increase in the state minimum wage, which seemed dead on arrival at the time of his 2019-20 budget address on Feb. 6, might actually still be breathing, as a result of limited “life support” being provided by legislative ...
Cultural resources are a major component of a vibrant community, and Altoona is vibrant for many reasons. In terms of cultural amenities, Altoona is blessed by having the Mishler Theatre as a dynamic centerpiece amid the business, industrial and professional assets that, together, make the ...
There has been no news yet about the progress of an expanded-passenger-rail-service study — involving only the potential for additional trips between Pittsburgh and Altoona — for which the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation hired a consultant approximately five months ago. In ...
Officials of 18 Pennsylvania counties who accepted gifts, trips or meals from companies competing to sell or lease new voting machines ahead of the 2020 elections apparently didn’t break any state law. Nevertheless, state residents — from the counties in question or from any of the ...
Many Americans, including many people living here, remember hearing reports about the serious health problems suffered later by many first responders to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in New York. However, probably only a few area people, by comparison, ever ...
The Altoona Area School Board’s recent vote in favor of purchasing a bank building at Sixth Avenue and 12th Street probably surprised a lot of people. While the board, in prior months, has discussed a possible location for its administrative offices that was not included in the section of ...
The proposal to end Roaring Spring’s 99-year-long alcohol, manufacture and sales prohibition is being met with mixed reactions. That is no surprise. But there’s an established path within state law for deciding such a change, and borough residents, now that the issue has surfaced, might ...
If the Legislature really has lost faith in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, as one prominent state lawmaker has suggested, commonwealth residents need to ask why the General Assembly hasn’t been more proactive over the past decade to try to fix things that legislators ...
Pennsylvania’s state parks again are the subject of welcome attention, just as they were in the summer of 2017, when a long-overdue, first-in-25 years public review of the basic mission of the parks system was launched. But while the examination that was begun about a year and a half ago ...
During his statewide listening tour currently getting underway, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman is destined to hear plenty of support — unfortunately — for legalizing recreational use of marijuana, if a September 2017 Franklin and Marshall University poll remains an accurate barometer ...
(Editor’s note: The following editorial was written by former Mirror Staff Writer Amanda Gabeletto in 2013. We liked it so much, we decided to run it again this year.) Love covers a lot of ground. There is the love between a parent and a child. There’s love for one’s partner, sibling, ...
This part of the Keystone State is taking the Pennsylvania Game Commission to task for wanting to kill more than 2,000 deer in Blair and Bedford counties in a concerted attack against chronic wasting disease, a malady showing up increasingly in the commonwealth’s whitetail population. As the ...
The good news in the immediate aftermath of Gov. Tom Wolf having delivered his 2019-20 Pennsylvania state budget proposal on Tuesday was that lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle spoke confidently about prospects for completing a spending package by the June 30 deadline. Legislative ...
Venezuela is the 10th-biggest oil producer in the world. It may have larger petroleum reserves than any other country. Yet socialism has devastated the nation’s economy to the point that there are shortages of food. About three million Venezuelans have fled their homeland during the past ...
Many area landowners and hunters remain angry about the method the Pennsylvania Game Commission would prefer to use to try to halt — or at least greatly slow — the spread of chronic wasting disease in the state’s deer population. The commission wants to employ U.S. Department of ...
To Americans of a certain age, the conflict in Afghanistan is beginning to look a lot like the Vietnam War. There are crucial differences, however, and they need to be borne in mind. U.S. troops continued to fight — and die — in Vietnam long after Washington stopped trying to win that war. ...