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A (Cove) teaching moment lost and gained

The heckler’s veto has become a powerful force in American public education. Don’t like a book in your child’s school curriculum? Stand up at a board of education meeting, shout your condemnation and get the book banned from the school library. It has happened, again and again, despite the educational value of the books that have been shuffled off to storage or the recycle bin. A heckler’s veto was exercised recently in the Spring Cove School District when the complaints of an unspecified number of Spring Cove Middle School students resulted in “Lift Every Voice and ...

Other voices: Legislation will help nip illegal machines

By Frank Noonan No doubt exists that Pennsylvania is home to tens of thousands of illegal gambling machines. These are the games you find in mini-casinos, gambling dens, and other locations that attract crime. They are ruining our neighborhoods and downtowns in record numbers and none of us wants these eyesores in our communities. They need to be shut down. The best way to get rid of these machines and the problems that follow them is for state lawmakers to pass legislation to regulate and tax legal skill games. The measure calls for providing funding for law enforcement to ...

War on drugs is ‘abysmal failure’

What is most troubling is the biases on display with the Altoona Mirror editorial on April 18 (“Overdoses at prison troubling.”) It reinforces common but erroneous beliefs about substance abuse. It lays the burden of this terrible occurrence at the feet of those who suffered because of it. I understand general consternation about hospital waits, but it was directed at the sufferers (worded as the irresponsible paying their debt to society). The consternation was about being inconvenienced by the priority given to the potentially life threatening situation of those overdosing. ...

Hunting’s ‘us vs. them’ culture must end

The Pennsylvania Game Commission comes under scrutiny for many decisions. The simple truth is their Board of Commissioners are unpaid political appointees devoting their time to managing hunting and wildlife resources. The decisions they make can be thankless and not without scrutiny by all parties. Certainly, some of their decisions are right, some arguable, and yes, some wrong. But like most things, you hear little when things go right, and a lot when things go wrong. They have had recent questionable expenditures and hired and later fired a lobbying firm due to legislative ...

Be an astute consumer of election info

When I became Secretary of the Commonwealth, I vowed to visit all 67 county election offices to hear firsthand about the challenges they face when running elections. Although I ran elections in Philadelphia for 10 years as a city commissioner, I knew that other counties face far different challenges, and no two counties are alike. For example, in Philadelphia, a staff of about 125 people administer elections. But some rural counties may have only one or two employees to register county residents to vote; manage the mail ballot process; test the voting equipment; assign polling ...

Local bar association seeks new verdict

The Blair County commissioners recently decided to terminate their relationship with the local law firm of Evey Black Attorneys, LLC, a relationship which spanned over five decades. In an Altoona Mirror article dated March 13, 2024, Commissioner Board Chair Dave Kessling is reported to have said the switch to a Pittsburgh-based law firm is to save money and because he felt no local firm could handle the work. The Blair County Bar Association takes issue at the way in which the decision to outsource legal services to an out-of-county law firm was made and the perception that local law ...