Featured Commentary category, Page 154
Now for the real deal — what is a ‘wall’?
Welcome to the eye of the hurricane. For more than a month, the federal government was in partial shutdown while President Trump and congressional leaders were deadlocked over the president’s demands for money to build his long-promised border wall. Neither side would budge and all the wiggle room for negotiation,...
Walter Williams: Who benefits from democratic control?
In 1976, Gerald Ford won 15 percent of the black vote. That’s the most of any recent Republican presidential candidate. In most elections, blacks give Democrats over 90 percent of their votes. It’s not unreasonable to ask what have blacks gained from such unquestioning loyalty to the Democratic Party. After...
John Stossel: School choice includes ideas, too
Today concludes School Choice Week. School choice is a noble cause. In much of America, parents have little or no control over where their kids attend school. Local governments assign schools by ZIP code. Having choice is better. Whether it’s vouchers, scholarships, charters, private schools or just having options among...
Trump is trapped and tanking in polls
Even this White House, infamous for self-delusion, must realize it’s in deep trouble. Two more polls released Wednesday show the depth of President Trump’s problem. The Morning Consult-Politico poll finds that “57 percent of registered voters disapprove of Trump’s job performance — more than any other survey in Trump’s two...
Jessica Poole: Patients need to ask questions
America’s health care delivery system is undergoing a dramatic shift. More and more patients are choosing office settings and ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs) over hospital-based outpatient units for same-day surgical procedures for everything from total joint replacements to cataract surgery. This shift is attributed to advancements in surgical techniques, pain...
Erica Smith: Good-character requirements violate rights
Rejected for lacking “good- moral character.” That was what the letter said from the Pennsylvania Board of Cosmetology to Courtney Haveman. Haveman had just spent thousands of dollars on beauty school learning to become an esthetician. She had enjoyed learning how to do facials, waxing, tweezing and more. She was ready...
Joe Cicio: DNA of retailing has been compromised
If you think brick-and-mortar stores are in turmoil because of the internet, you would be wrong. Thanks to 40-plus years in retailing, I’ve been fortunate to have worked alongside — and even study — some of the most amazing merchants and retailers who have built the industry’s impressive reputation. I...
Pat Buchanan: At age 70, time to rethink NATO
“Treaties are like roses and young girls. They last while they last.” So said President Charles de Gaulle, who in 1966 ordered NATO to vacate its Paris headquarters and get out of France. NATO this year celebrates a major birthday. The young girl of 1966 is no longer young. The...
Michelle Malkin: Procter & Gamble’s toxic sanctimony
One of the world’s most successful brands committed ideological hara-kiri last week. Recognized around the world as a symbol of manly civility for more than a century, Gillette will now be remembered as the company that did itself in by sacrificing a massive consumer base at the altar of progressivism....
Mitchel Nickols: King legacy makes difference today
When a person is born, we don’t know what impact their birth will make on the lives of others. When Martin Luther King Jr. was born, it would take a number of years to see and hear the things that would transform the lives of so many who had been...
Antony Davies & James Harrigan: Peduto, council should learn facts on gun violence
There are few forces as pernicious as politicians who feel the need to “do something,” but that’s what we have in Pittsburgh in the wake of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting. Predictably, Pittsburgh’s mayor and city council have endorsed various restrictions on semi-automatic weapons. This is nothing but political...
Harold Johnson: Corruption in the Catholic Church
My Catholicism, my faith, states that the Catholic Church consists of the people, and the head of the Church is Jesus Christ. Not the pope, the cardinals, the bishops and archbishops, or the priests and deacons. They are administrators of the Catholic organization, and, yes, they are members of the...
John Stossel: Shutdown not a ‘crisis’
This government shutdown is now longer than any in history. The media keep using the word “crisis.” “Shutdown sows chaos, confusion and anxiety!” says The Washington Post. “Pain spreads widely.” The New York Times headlined, it’s all “just too much!” But wait. Looking around America, I see people going about...
Walter Williams: History of Dems’ immigration flipping
Here are a couple of easy immigration questions — answerable with a simple “yes” or “no” — we might ask any American of any political stripe: Does everyone in the world have a right to live in the United States? Do the American people have a right, through their elected...
Cal Thomas: Cough up, America
When you receive your paycheck and look at the withholding for federal, state and sometimes city taxes, along with Social Security and Medicare, you probably don’t think you’re underpaying governments and want them to take more. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio believes that if you have played by...
S.E. Cupp: Democrats getting down in the dirt with Trump
On the first day of the new year, Nancy Pelosi made a number of promises to the nation as she once again assumed the gavel of Speaker of the House. “We believe that we will not become them,” the Democrat from California said in a phone interview, referring to Republicans....
Peter Morici: Swing voters want solutions, not socialist revolution
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez notwithstanding, the big winners in the midterms were moderate Democrats. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders carefully salted swing districts with young candidates who appealed to minorities, college-educated women and suburbanites who want solutions to problems in their daily lives, not a socialist revolution. The moderate Democrats...
Problems with Pittsburgh’s proposed gun control ordinance
Pennsylvania’s 1.3 million concealed handgun permit holders may soon be considered criminals while visiting Pittsburgh. The proposed gun control ordinance bans everything from so-called assault weapons to starter pistols for track meets. The ordinance prohibits citizens from carrying guns except on their property or in their homes or “fixed place...
Pat Buchanan: Trump should declare emergency
In the long run, history will validate Donald Trump’s stand on a border wall to defend the sovereignty and security of the United States. Why? Because mass migration from the global South, not climate change, is the real existential crisis of the West. The American people know this, and even...
Jonah Goldberg: Recycled ‘Green New Deal’
It’s fitting that the Green New Deal pushed by many but popularized by Democratic phenom Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who had her “60 Minutes” debut last week, is a triumph of recycling. Not of plastic bags or soda cans, but of ideas. Specifically, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal...
Michelle Malkin: Wall a monument for the people
Profligate politicians have never met a multibillion-dollar infrastructure project they didn’t like — except when it comes to President Trump’s border wall. Think about it. Boston’s Big Dig black hole, the nation’s most expensive highway project, burned through $25 billion and was plagued by deadly engineering incompetence, endless cost overruns,...
David Argall: Road map to safer schools
Citizens throughout the country watched in horror last year as a gunman claimed the lives of 17 students in a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. People were heartbroken to see yet another school shooting taking the lives of the innocent. In the midst of this...
Tara Murtha & Susan Frietsche: Nothing ‘pro-life’ about overturning Roe v. Wade
Next week is the 46th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case that affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to access safe, legal abortion. Every year around this time, people who call themselves “pro-life” cite statistics related to the number of abortions in the United States since 1973 while...
Maria Gallagher: So much wrong with abortion ‘right’
We as Americans take our rights very seriously. The right to free speech. The right to freedom of religion. The right to peaceable assembly. But, there is so much wrong with the so-called “right” to an abortion. As we mark the anniversary of the Jan. 22, 1973, U.S. Supreme Court’s...
Colin McNickle: Chaos ahead for Pa. transportation funding?
A nasty storm could be brewing for Pennsylvania’s transportation funding regimen, says the executive director of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. And, it’s all been fueled by dubious state legislation that long has milked the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) for millions of dollars to, in contravention of federal law,...
