Opinion category, Page 393
Editorial: Excela-Butler merger should preserve community focus
Excela Health plans to merge with Butler Health System. “I think it’s going to make Excela stronger,” said Latrobe city manager Terry Carcella. “The bigger you are, the better you are.” That’s a little simple, but let’s hope it’s true. The merger lowers the number of hospital organizations in the...
Letter to the editor: Casey’s abortion flip-flop may cost him
Like father, like son? Maybe not any longer. Bob Casey Sr., a Democrat and governor of Pennsylvania from 1987-95, was an avid Catholic and strong voice for issues involving children’s health and well-being. He was an anti-abortion advocate and was successful in getting abortion-control legislation enacted in Pennsylvania. He was...
Letter to the editor: Bible really ought to be banned, too
This letter comes in response to Megan Tomasic’s article “Hempfield school board to continue discussion of books available to high school students” on the board’s discussions of requests to ban certain books as inappropriate, too sensitive, too sexual for high school students. I posit that the board would have to...
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of June 6
Mallard Fillmore cartoons for the week of June 6....
Editorial cartoons for the week of June 6
Editorial cartoons for the week of June 6....
Mona Charen: Retire these gun myths
The aftermath of a horrific mass shooting is not the time one would usually turn to a humor site, and yet, The Onion had an insightful take on Uvalde. The headline: “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” And here’s the kicker: The Onion has...
Letter to the editor: Abortion is disobeying commandment
Letter-writer David Ninehouser (“Jesus never preached about abortion,” May 20, TribLIVE) tells us “Jesus speaks not one single, solitary word about abortion.” I refer Mr Ninehouser to the Ten Commandments, which were in place prior to Christ’s coming. The Fifth Commandment tells us, “Thou shall not kill.” Abortion is the...
Letter to the editor: Prayer is not enough to save the innocent from assault weapons
After a shooting of many innocent people, innocent children, we pray; then another and another massacre, and we pray, as we should. But prayer is not enough. I believe that we are given choices to make, making the wrong ones; we then punish ourselves. We need to take responsibility with...
Letter to the editor: Require military service for weapons
In the early 1980s, I purchased a 12-gauge shotgun at Sears in the Westmoreland Mall, and I walked through the mall to carry it out to my car. Unthinkable today, as society’s views on weapons have changed in the last decades. In reflecting on those changing societal views, I think...
Editorial: Nelson’s college voucher bill leaves many questions
Pennsylvania needs to find a solution to funding its state and state-related universities and addressing the crippling student loan debt Keystone State students receive with their diplomas. It has been a growing problem for years as tuition costs climb. Many people blame the universities themselves and a top-heavy increase in...
Letter to the editor: Lies endanger our society
Years ago, when Walter Cronkite presented the CBS news, you had a high degree of confidence that what you were watching was accurate. The reason for this was a little-known FCC policy called the Fairness Doctrine, which stated that since the airwaves belong to the public, a certain percentage of...
Letter to the editor: Pittsburgh’s accessibility, affordability set it apart
It’s the inaugural Saturday night of my new residency in the Roosevelt apartments here in the City of Bridges. The streets, four floors below, bellow with discordant beats and samples that waft through my window. The accessible pedestrian crosswalk signal beeps off tempo to the live jazz at Con Alma...
Joseph Sabino Mistick: A second chance to save our children
After Sandy Hook, many people thought that surely Congress would act. The slaughter of 20 6- and 7-year-olds at their school by a 20-year-old mentally disturbed male was impossible to comprehend. The killer used a military-style weapon and high-capacity magazines to kill innocent babies. In an address to the nation...
Dr. Andrew Smolar: Guns shouldn’t be in teachers’ arsenal
Mrs. Bird didn’t speak a word of English in our first day of seventh-grade French. It’s one thing to sign up for a language that celebrates pastries and bicycle races, but it’s another thing to feel totally lost. Such was my plight for the first week of French. But I...
Sounding off: Where is our decency and common sense?
I am a gun-owning wife of a military veteran, daughter of a lifelong member of the NRA and mom to a son who was on his school’s rifle team. I would never relinquish our weapons. However, as a responsible gun owner, I am appalled that those on the right have...
Kate Centellas: Decades after Winnetka school shooting, the trauma remains
When I glanced at my phone and saw the notification of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, my hands started to shake and I turned my phone off for a few hours. I was one of many children impacted by a school shooting when I was the age of the...
Gene Barr: Turning Pa. around means meaningful tax reform
The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said states are the “laboratories of democracy.” That still being the case, policymakers in Harrisburg would do well to note how the current state of affairs is being scored by governors of other states — and, in turn, chart a new...
Letter to the editor: Consider a rescue for Adopt a Cat Month
They may be America’s most popular pet, but our country’s felines desperately need our help. Not only are thousands of newborn kittens joining the millions of cats already in shelters across the country during spring’s “kitten season,” but a decrease in funding and supplies at many shelters further threaten these...
Letter to the editor: Protecting children from authorities
I believe that every day, Family Court judges knowingly send children to be sexually abused, physically abused, mentally abused. I came to this conclusion because statistics show that 60% of the children found to be sex trafficked in the United States come directly through the child protective services (CPS) system;...
Editorial: McCormick-Oz debacle is lawmakers’ fault
The counting of the ballots ground the neck-and-neck race to a near halt, becoming contentious as the candidates argued over whose votes would be counted and whose wouldn’t. If you think this is about David McCormick and Dr. Mehmet Oz and the Republican nomination in the U.S. Senate battle in...
Letter to the editor: Open primaries would benefit all
Regarding the letter “Keep Pa.’s primary as is”: Pennsylvania voters should not have to just “join the party” for a choice between something better than the lesser of two evils in November. In 2020, I can’t have been the only one who wondered why, with 330 million people in this...
S.E. Cupp: Buffalo, Uvalde and the American psyche
Over the past two weeks, we have all mourned and grieved, reeling from a double-whammy of horrific mass shootings — one in Buffalo and another in Uvalde, Texas. The first targeted a Black community, and was, according to the murderer, motivated explicitly by racism. The second, inexplicably, targeted elementary school...
Gary Franks: School prayer could stem mass shootings
It is truly the minds, hearts and souls of those who kill people that must be altered. Due to Supreme Court decisions rendered in 1962 and 1963 that prevented American children from doing what every member of Congress does every day — have a prayer before commencing the day or...
Kathi Boyle: GOP agenda dangerous for area seniors
Republicans are finally being honest about what they intend to do: raise taxes on lower- and middle-income Americans and sunset federal programs like Medicare and Social Security after five years. The GOP plan not only threatens my financial security, but the health and security of all Americans. It is cruel....
Leonard Pitts Jr.: So much for the good guy with a gun
So much for the good guy with a gun. That, you will recall, was NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre’s preferred solution to America’s epidemic of firearms violence. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun,” he said, “is a good guy with a gun.” He said this on...
