Featured Commentary category, Page 146
Nicolas Loris: What drives gas prices up — and how we can steer them down
As Memorial Day kicks off the summer season, hotdogs, cold beers and pool openings aren’t the only things on the minds of Americans. AAA expects a record 37.6 million Americans to hit the road and drive more than 50 miles for the long weekend, which means gas prices are also...
Ed Gainey: UPMC exploiting memory of Martin Luther King Jr.
On the evening before he was assassinated in Memphis, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” address to the city’s black community. King foresaw his own death and spoke about the need for others in the movement to carry on. “Like anybody, I...
Pat Buchanan: Who wants this war with Iran?
Speaking on state TV of the prospect of a war in the Gulf, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, seemed to dismiss the idea. “There won’t be any war. … We don’t seek a war, and (the Americans) don’t either. They know it’s not in their interests.” The ayatollah’s analysis —...
Robert B. Reich: The Trump economy isn’t good for everyone
The award for this year’s Biggest Backhanded Compliment to Donald Trump from a Trump Toadie goes to acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who recently predicted a Trump victory in 2020 because “people will vote for somebody they don’t like if they think it’s good for them.” Mulvaney...
Timothy L. O’Brien: Wouldn’t you like to know if Trump can be bribed?
President Donald Trump, courtesy of the Office of Government Ethics, gave the public its annual look at his business holdings on Thursday afternoon. According to Trump’s personal financial disclosure form, his boutique portfolio of golf courses, hotels, real estate and other ventures had revenue of at least $435 million in...
Ken Jennings: I’m rooting for James Holzhauer
When James Holzhauer returns to “Jeopardy!” on Monday night after a two-week hiatus, he will already be the second-longest-running contestant in the venerable quiz show’s history. During his 22-game winning streak, he has amassed almost $1.7 million, getting within spitting distance of the $2.5 million all-time cash record. All right,...
Antony Davies & James Harrigan: Peduto’s equity office more business as usual
Mayor Bill Peduto is rebranding the city’s Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment. It will henceforth be known as the Office of Equity, and will be headed by a chief equity officer. This sounds all well and good, but raises a number of questions, not the least of which is what kinds...
G. Terry Madonna & Michael Young: Choices overwhelming for Pennsylvania voters
Government in Pennsylvania can seem underwhelming sometimes: The lack of a responsive Legislature comes to mind, as does a baffling irrational and inefficient tax system, an indifferently maintained highway system, and a structural framework better fitted to the 19th century than the 21st. But there is one arena where the...
David Hickton: Don’t nickel & dime Pennsylvania’s democracy
The front lines of today’s cyberwarfare battles are not just at Fort Meade. They are in Allegheny County’s Elections Division. And in Erie County. And Butler County. And Indiana County. And all across Pennsylvania. Our elections — and the integrity of your vote — are under threat from nation-state adversaries....
Walter Williams: Fixing higher education in America
Richard Vedder’s new book, “Restoring the Promise,” published by the Independent Institute based in Oakland, Calif., is about the crisis in higher education. Vedder, distinguished professor emeritus of economics at Ohio University, summarizes the three major problems faced by America’s colleges and universities. First, our universities “are vastly too expensive,...
John Stossel: Sex ‘trafficking’ panic
When police charged New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft with soliciting prostitution, the press said the police rescued sex slaves. “They were women who were from China, who were forced into sex slavery,” said Trevor Noah on “The Daily Show.” We’re told this happens all the time. “Human trafficking is...
Donald Boudreaux: What if real wars were fought like trade wars?
Uncle Sam and Beijing are now waging a full-blown trade war against each other. But trade wars are very different than real wars — you know, the violent struggles in which belligerents on one side try to kill and maim belligerents on the other side, and often also to seize...
S.E. Cupp: Trump’s escalation of Obama’s shadow war
If I gave you a pop quiz on recent current events, I bet you’d do pretty well, thanks to a 24-hour cable news cycle, late night talk shows, social media and popular culture. You undoubtedly know that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had their first child. You can likely go...
Colin McNickle: Reversing Greater Pittsburgh’s population decline
As the population continues to decline in Greater Pittsburgh’s seven-county region, sound public policies that could help to remedy the losses go unimplemented, remind scholars at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. Based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimates as of July 1, 2018, the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA)...
Pat Buchanan: Are all the world’s problems ours?
In 2003, George W. Bush took us to war to liberate Iraq from the despotism of Saddam Hussein and convert that nation into a beacon of freedom and prosperity in the Middle East. Last Tuesday, Mike Pompeo flew clandestinely into Baghdad and met with the prime minister. The visit was...
Jonah Goldberg: If Democrats want ‘normalcy,’ why are candidates so radical?
In the 1920 presidential election, Warren Harding won in a landslide by promising a “Return to Normalcy.” Today’s Democrats would be wise to make that same pledge for 2020. They probably won’t, however, which is why President Trump might get re-elected. Harding’s concept of normalcy has been ridiculed and reviled...
Hugh Hewitt: Senate has important work to do. Why waste time subpoenaing Donald Trump Jr.?
There are six vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals, with two more vacancies certain to occur and many more likely to happen before January 2021 as older members of the courts eager to be replaced by center-right judges take “senior status.” Each is nearly as important to preserving liberty,...
Cal Thomas: David McCullough remembers the pioneers
In a country preoccupied with presidential candidates preaching extreme liberalism and even unabashed socialism comes America’s greatest living historian, David McCullough, with a new and needed book. It’s called “The Pioneers” and the subtitle is its theme: “The heroic story of the settlers who brought the American ideal west.” Nowadays,...
Gisele Fetterman: American dream should be for everyone
The American dream is real, and I should know because I’m living it. Unfortunately, for millions of people, that dream has been deferred because of uncertainty surrounding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Our elected officials in Washington must act swiftly to pass House Resolution 6, the Dream...
Bret Grote: The travesty of the Allegheny County Jail
Nelson Mandela said, “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” By every measure, the Allegheny County Jail fails this test. Meant to be...
John Stossel: Independent journalists
“I’m not going to let them bully me out of reporting,” said Tim Pool after recording an antifa protest where angry activists cursed at him. There might have been violence, but antifa’s “de-escalation team” protected him, he says. That surprised me. “Antifa has a de-escalation team?” “They have people who...
Walter Williams: Discrimination & disparities II
Last week’s column discussed Dr. Thomas Sowell’s new book “Discrimination and Disparities,” which is an enlarged and revised edition of an earlier version. In this review, I am going to focus on one of his richest chapters titled “Social Visions and Human Consequences.” Sowell challenges the seemingly invincible fallacy “that...
Bill Peduto, Philly mayor: Why we oppose Pa. Senate gun bill
As mayors of the Commonwealth’s two largest cities, representing more than 1.8 million Pennsylvanians, we unequivocally oppose Senate Bill 531 which is being considered in the Pennsylvania Senate. This bill would pre-empt local jurisdictions from enacting sensible laws to protect their residents from deadly firearms. It gives the gun lobby...
Frank Dermody: Republican ‘dirty dozen’ threaten public safety
Imagine a world where you could commit any crime — even killing another person — but as long as you were the one who called the police and reported yourself, you’d walk away scot-free. That’s the world some corporate special interests are asking extremist Republicans to build for them —...
Pat Buchanan: Let Venezuela decide its own destiny
“Who would be free themselves must strike the blow … “By their right arms the conquest must be wrought.” So wrote Lord Byron of Greece’s war of independence against the Turks, though the famed British poet would ignore his own counsel and die just days after arriving in Greece to...
