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Editorials category, Page 76

Pope Francis, first Latin American pontiff, dies at 88
Editorial: Public schools and private info
Privacy and a public job are often at odds. Take a job with a government agency, and you are answerable to everyone. More than that, everyone feels a little bit (or a lot) entitled to ask questions about your job, your paycheck, your hours and exactly why you were hired....
Editorial: Where do bright ideas come from?
The visual representation of a good idea is usually a light bulb. Since Thomas Edison’s popular invention was, in itself, a stroke of inspiration, it seems apropos. It’s the symbol that is instantly recognizable in cartoons and comic strips. It doesn’t require a word to convey an idea. But it’s...
Editorial: Coronavirus is not alone
Every sniffle is starting to make people wonder about the latest looming monster. Coronavirus. Specifically, it is Wuhan coronavirus, a novel variety of a large family of viruses that include the hundreds of microscopic bugs that cause what we affectionately call “the common cold.” But nobody is afraid of a...
Editorial: Open records, not open identity info
Newspapers are big fans of open records. We want to be able to find out what our government and public entities are doing. What did they buy? What did they spend? Where did the money come from? Who did something wrong? How was it punished? How was it corrected? What...
Laurels & lances: Out of the box and in the pool
Laurel: To wacky new ideas. Hey, maybe Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto’s thoughts about gondolas connecting the Strip, the Hill District and Oakland is a little out there. Or maybe it’s up there? But give credit where credit is due. It’s definitely something new and different. The idea isn’t about the...
Editorial: Who should pick the Lt. Gov.?
Elect a president and you get his running mate, too. It’s like a buy-one-get-one-free offer. You don’t get to split the deck. You don’t get to take George H.W. Bush but swap Dan Quayle for Newt Gingrich. You don’t get Jimmy Carter without Walter Mondale. It’s all or nothing. With...
Editorial: Hazing can’t be dismissed
Hazing can be easy to dismiss as a common team-building activity, or even a comic exercise. It isn’t. Hazing is that time-honored practice of taking new members of an organization and putting them through a series of ritualized tests or torments. It might be beatings or degrading psychological abuse. It...
Editorial: DUI is deadly serious
How serious does a crime have to be in order to be considered a “serious crime”? In a precedent-setting opinion delivered this month, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals called a Montgomery County man’s DUI a grave enough offense to preclude him from buying a gun. Raymond Holloway Jr....
Editorial: Marketing message money well spent
There is a lot that goes into altering the way a community is seen. There can be problems to fix. There can be changes to make. There can be new paths to follow. But there is also the message that needs to be spread. Hey, we’re still here! Things are...
Editorial: Literacy can be more than reading
When people think about literacy, they tend to think about the obvious. Can you read? Can you write? Can you navigate the written word enough to make it through your daily life, weaving around street signs and menus and bills and notes from your kid’s teacher? All of that is...
Editorial: Learning about campus sex assault
There are things you need to go to college to learn. How to design a skyscraper. How to perform brain surgery. How to split atoms. There are things you shouldn’t have to learn in college. Like how to keep your hands to yourself. That’s more of a kindergarten thing. Nonetheless,...
Laurels & lances: Cookies, phishing, kidney and overtime
Laurel: To aiming high. The 2.36 million boxes of Girl Scout cookies sold each year averages out to about 150 boxes per scout. But Stella VanWhy, 6, of Arnold thought she could sell 2,020 boxes this year. Her leader suggested something more realistic, so the Daisy Scout came up with...
Editorial: Hempfield still has issues to address
Hempfield Area School District’s residential tax assessment appeals program will be ending. Eventually. On Monday, the board voted 7-2 to discontinue the broadly criticized program that served as a back-door reassessment for properties with a $250,000 difference between fair market value and selling price, as calculated by district-hired law firm...
Editorial: The black and white of guns
It is easy to paint any issue in pure, unyielding black and white. Abortion. Environment. Poverty. Health care. Energy. Immigration. Taxes. Everything can boil down to pro or con. But is that accurate? Almost never. Let’s look at guns. Pennsylvania is often tagged as a gun-friendly state. It’s hard to...
Editorial: FDA should scrub in on recall
There are things that are done with an abundance of trust — things done with the belief that they are safe. Like surgery. When going into an operating room, people are vulnerable. They know things can go wrong, but they also trust everything that can be done to ensure it...
Editorial: Reaching for the dream
There once was a man who had a dream. He stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He looked back 100 years to a great day in American history and spoke about how far we have come, but he also...
Editorial: Is gambling too convenient?
Legal online poker made $2.5 million in its first full month of being legal in Pennsylvania. That’s not a lot in the great scheme of things. It’s less than 1% of the state’s December gambling revenue. But it’s a start. The question isn’t how much will it grow from there....
Editorial: Bus routes are connections, not prizes
One of the hallmarks of a how well a community works is always transportation. Are the roads paved? Are they plowed? How bad is the traffic? And how good is the public transit? According to a report from trip-planning app Moovit, the people of Pittsburgh have it pretty good compared...
Laurels & lances: Develop, restart, honor
Laurel: To realizing big change can start small. Pittsburgh is looking beyond big development projects and placing emphasis on rebuilding neighborhoods and modeling transformation with its own blighted properties. Mayor Bill Peduto made the announcement Wednesday, pointing to the potential impact that rehabilitating neighborhood business districts and the city-owned buildings...
Editorial: Small businesses are tariff casualties
Not every company that uses steel is a global giant. They aren’t all traded on the stock exchange. They don’t all employ thousands. Sometimes it’s a small company with small margins. But manufacturing matters whether it’s a major power or a minor one. That is why many buckled in for...
Editorial: Cut through sticky red tape
It was supposed to signal something that was important. In a pile of government documents — decimated forests of paper and ink — ribbons of red tape would signal that one sheaf was more weighty than the others. But red tape spreads like weeds and it wasn’t long before everything...
Editorial: Clean air takes hard work
Before you do anything hard — anything that might be painful or take great effort — you are often advised to do something to steel and steady yourself to do what needs to be done. Take a deep breath, you are told. But how do you do that when the...
Editorial: Working together in new year
January is that time of year when you might think about starting over. It’s not just about resolutions. Everything about the new year speaks of starting over. You have a new insurance deductible. Your vacation days reset. It’s the perfect opportunity to set goals and try to make new habits,...
Editorial: Turnpike crash showed hospital skill
One car slams into another at an intersection. It might be no one’s fault. Slick roads. A blown tire. Something goes wrong, and now there are people that need help. This scenario has people brought to emergency rooms everywhere every day. It can mean sudden, serious injuries that focus the...
Editorial: Donation is gift of life
The math surrounding organ transplant is amazing. In 1953, there had never been a successful transplant of one person’s organ into another person’s body. Today, 67 years later, it happens every day. According to the World Health Organization, about 100,800 people have the life-saving procedure annually. About 70% of those...


Editor's Picks

Front Porch Theatricals’ musical ‘Baby’ is a labor of love

Washington townhouse on the market for $1,225,000
Folk legend Bruce Cockburn gives uplifting performance at City Winery
‘Champagne & Chapeaux’: Westmoreland Symphony’s annual soiree for a good cause
Jimmy Stewart’s P-51 Mustang stops in hometown for museum anniversary
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