Breaking News

Other Commentaries

May the American flag forever wave

Sorrow so deep that it can be seen but not said. “Strong men grasped each other’s hand, none able to express their sympathy to the bereft except by look.” A tide of sorrow swept over the small village, a silence of sadness breached only by the occasional “outburst of anguish from some broken-hearted mother, wife or friend.” This gripping account of the emotional impact of losing a loved one in battle was written about a small village in Pennsylvania when word reached them of their grievous losses at Gettysburg. The same scenario played out 81 years later when word ...

Kick-starting an economic revolution

PIKEVILLE, Ky. — On Election Day 2016, Jonathan Webb found himself on a lavish cruise liner with America’s elite, gliding along the Atlantic outside of Miami. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, was there, and so were Quentin Tarantino, Erin Brockovich, TV legend Norman Lear and singer will.i.am. Celebrity chefs were stationed at different eateries; yoga gurus offered spiritual talks and meditations. Webb, who was working with the Obama White House at the time, was used to being in rarefied company. But still, he found the experience surreal — and it was about to get ...

Conspiracy theorists see no gray

The Trump presidency is often a kind of political “Rashomon,” with partisans on either side looking at the same facts and coming to wildly different conclusions. So it’s all the more remarkable that the central controversy of our time isn’t a fight over one story with different interpretations of shared facts, but a fight over two different stories altogether. For devotees of prime-time Fox News, the only story that matters is how the Deep State — i.e., partisans in nonpartisan disguise at the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Justice — worked to either ...

Bill would improve state redistricting

Anyone who has observed the political slime that has been Pennsylvania’s redistricting map changes of recent months should be heartened that even some members of the sitting Legislature are embarrassed enough to change the process. The Senate’s State Government Committee this past week approved an overhaul of how Pennsylvania draws districts for the Legislature and Congress. The goal of Lisa Boscula, a Northampton Democrat, the prime sponsor, is a more fair, less political process for redistricting. The composition of the proposed redistricting commission and the manner in which ...

County jails housing wrong people

It may shock you to learn that county jails have become the largest mental health facilities in America. County jails and taxpayers dollars are increasingly being used to detain pre-trial offenders and house inmates who suffer from serious mental illness and developmental disabilities; the majority of which do not pose a public safety risk. Although offenders must be held accountable for their actions, most of these individuals have not committed serious crimes. A more effective use of our limited resources is to safely provide supervision, treatment and support in the ...

Seeing both sides of Betsy DeVos

People hate Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. When she spoke at the Kennedy School of Government, students held up signs calling her a “white supremacist.” When she tried to visit a school, activists physically blocked her way. The haters claim DeVos knows little about education, only got her job because she gave money to Republican politicians and hates free public education. Of course, education isn’t really “free.” Taxpayers spend $634 billion a year on it. It’s laughable that activists claim conservatives “cut” education spending. Funds per student ...