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Mirror carries torch for coverage

Eleven years ago, when I first came into office, there was a vibrant and engaged local media regularly attending our county commissioners meetings. They reported on a myriad of important issues for our citizens after listening to their presentation and debate. The media members in attendance were also able to present their own questions for response which resulted in a more informative report for the public. The media in regular attendance at that time included WRTA radio, Altoona-based WTAJ (Channel 10), Johnstown-based WJAC (Channel 6), and the Altoona Mirror. Their coverage ...

New political low has been reached

Character assassination is distinctly the order of the day. This is not to be accepted for the good of the country. It is alive and well. The question is rather obvious and the roots for World War III are well underway. The battleground — whether we like it or not — is in the continental United States. Readers are entitled to ask: “What is going on?” The newest low in national politics has been reached. A distinguished jurist with an impeccable record is smeared unmercifully by opponents only because he has been nominated to the Supreme Court by President Donald ...

Medal of Honor ceremony stirs emotions

Editor’s note: Rita (Lehman) Novak graduated from Central High School in 1962. After her schooling, she raised her family in Windber. Last week, she attended the Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House recognizing her son-in-law, Tech. Sgt. John A. Chapman, who died in action in 2004. Chapman was married to Novak’s daughter, Valerie. Following is Novak’s description of the experience, as told to the Mirror’s Neil Rudel. We were excited to be there and glad John was getting the respect that he deserved. It was a very moving ceremony. I was happy and sad at the same ...

Opioid crisis needs help from above

Most of us, whether Catholic or not, have heard the story of Saint Maximillian Kolbe (1894-1941), the Polish saint who died in Auschwitz, a German death camp. Father Kolbe was a Franciscan priest who volunteered to take the place of an inmate who was sentenced to death. Because three unknown men escaped the death camp, the deputy commander of the camp selected 10 prisoners at random to die in an underground bunker to deter further escape attempts. After two weeks, Father Kolbe was the last one remaining in the bunker, and the impatient guards wanted to empty the bunker. On ...

Lawsuit aimed at Big Pharma a welcome step

One disturbing aspect of the opioid addiction crisis is the legal and commercial avenues through which it was propagated. Long known and abused for their pleasing, analgesic effects, opioids gained force in this latest deadly resurgence amid the marketing of pain-killing opioid drugs. Starting in the late 1990s, pharmaceutical manufacturers downplayed the addictive potential of powerful opioid painkillers and the prescription rates soared to the point where in some states, they outnumbered the number of people living there, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. ...

Beware, Chinese big brother

Upset because Facebook and Google invade your privacy? Be glad you don’t live in China. Facebook and other Western apps are banned there. The government views their openness as a threat. So the Chinese use platforms like WeChat and Alibaba. Now the Chinese government takes data from those platforms to assign all people who use them a “social credit score.” In other words, the government monitors your web activity and gives you a grade. Your purchases, social interactions and political activity will determine what privileges you get. Having a low score — because you ...