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Opinion

New prison is needed

Letters to the Editor

I would like for this to go in on the Opinion page because I am speaking from experience. RHU stands for Restrictive Housing Unit. The hole is what it is nicknamed. This is where people go that were fighting or violated prison rules. You people that are saying “not in my backyard” should spend a day locked up and see just how crowded the jail is. I was put in RHU for no reason except for overcrowding and have to sit here for a couple weeks. F Block, E Block and J Block are still the original jail when it was built in 1868. It’s time for a new jail. So stop saying “not in ...

Optimism over airport rewarding

Editorials

Optimism already is paying off for the Altoona-Blair County Airport. It is important that there be no interruption in it, going forward. Last July, officials in charge of the local air facility — specifically, the Altoona-Blair County Airport Authority — were knee-deep in planning for redirecting the airport’s 30-passenger jet service away from Philadelphia International Airport, which increasingly had been judged an inconvenience to most Blair-based air travelers, from a directional standpoint. Now, the optimism that was the foundation for that successful move, effective last ...

War is not a good answer

Letters to the Editor

I remember the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” as the cover story of why we needed to go to war in Iraq, when the real truth of the matter was the desire to get rid of Saddam Hussein. In the days just before, when the go-to-war sabers were rattling, I participated in a bonfire circle where we prayed for peace. Our leaders at the time were not listening. Ultimately, 4,419 American lives were lost and 31,933 were wounded at a financial cost of just over $1.1 trillion dollars. And here we are again. Jumping in as the aggressor in a war which we are told is necessary to ...

Biden, Harris were the real ‘kings’

Letters to the Editor

A recent letter-writer talked about Donald Trump trying to be King. Maybe they forget it was Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that were in office when they shut down America. They closed schools, businesses and started this work from home BS. They made us wear masks, they made our kids wear masks, they would not allow us to go see loved ones in nursing homes. We could not go to restaurants if we did not show our vaccine card. We could not fly unless we showed our vaccine card. This is what a king does, not what Trump is doing by trying to bring America back to where it was before Biden‘s ...

Public notices must remain accessible

Editorials

Some state lawmakers seem to think they have come up with a way to modernize how local governing bodies get the word out about their meetings, pending actions, tax increases, new ordinances and other measures. But Senate Bill 194 — which resurrects the idea of putting public notices on governmental websites — is another way to keep the public in the dark because the idea begs the question: “Who’s going to see them there?” Public notices have long been published in the classified section of local printed newspapers. Those who follow local governments regularly monitor that ...

President’s policies may affect your family

Letters to the Editor

You don’t have to be a Democrat to consider that our president’s policies may very well affect someone in your family or someone in millions of families worldwide. Consider his refusal to fund Harvard Medical School’s ongoing research. Visit the school’s website and read the history, discovery section to see the lifesaving discoveries whose momentum has been shut down for no sensible reason. Starting in 1799, Benjamin Waterhouse introduced the smallpox vaccine to the United States and helped gain acceptance for the new procedure. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes identified the ...