The culture of Harrisburg would be best described as “clubby.” After legislative sessions at the State Capitol on Third Street, lawmakers and their staffs often head toward the wide selection …
For its San Diego convention in the summer of 1996, the Republican Party was anxious to avoid the acrimonious tone of its gathering in Houston four years earlier. So the GOP turned to its most…
The Biden administration is hesitant to call our competition with China a new Cold War, even though Beijing has zero qualms about making the parallels with our decades-long struggle with the S…
In an age in which religiosity is waning, the notion that a person would forgo a medical treatment, perhaps even a life-saving one, because of sincerely held faith must be difficult to understand.
This has been a year marked by terrifying news about climate change: extreme weather, massive wildfires, persistent drought in some areas and catastrophic flooding in others.
For more than a year the world has been fixated on developing and deploying a vaccine for the coronavirus, but scientists have been working for decades to come up with a vaccine for another de…
In Wisconsin, families are suing two school districts for dropping their mask mandates, claiming it resulted in their children’s coronavirus infections. In Illinois, a lawsuit alleges a meat p…
It was a president named George Washington who said, “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led like sheep to the slaughter,” and right now Merrick Garland is lead…
Here is where the Old Contrarian (me) seeks to diminish the importance of what Old Yeller (not the 1956 children’s book, but the 45th president of the United States) did the other day by trave…
It has been a rough few months for the internet.
If there is one universally recognized principle in American political life, it’s that the president of the United States should want Christmas to come off without a hitch.
It usually doesn’t require the award of a Nobel Prize to demonstrate how wrong-headed Pennsylvania state legislators can be in crafting public policy based on their own ideology rather than th…
Americans continue to have a dim view of Congress. And for good reason.
The symbolism of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize goes far beyond its tribute to Maria Ressa and Dimitry Muratov, independent journalists fighting for freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia.
It has become common in some circles to call the Jan. 6 Capitol riot an “armed insurrection.” That leads to a few questions: How many rioters were armed? And what weapons did they have? What w…
How do you know it’s time to legalize marijuana?
Facebook’s critics have long argued that the social media giant is bad for consumers, bad for children and bad for the country — a serial abuser of its users’ privacy, an amplifier of misinfor…
It would be easy to have fun with the idea of Sen. Ted Cruz wandering into the land of #freebritney.vAfter all, this is a man whose association with pop culture tends to be as the butt of its jokes.
Gifted students have to check their privilege and get over themselves.
Education is the scaffolding that supports everything about society.
Congressional testimony by whistleblower Frances Haugen drove home an important message: Facebook is actively harming millions, perhaps billions, of users around the world with a host of algor…
FORT WORTH, Texas (TNS) — When I called to schedule an annual well-check appointment for my son, I was told that he would need to wear a mask in the office.
I read state Sen. Cris Dush's guest commentary in the Oct. 4 edition of The Era and noticed he did not establish the need for for an investigation of our elections. The reason for this is simp…
As they prepare to spend $1.2 trillion on a bipartisan infrastructure deal, along with a vastly larger sum on a party-line social-policy bill, Democrats might be expected to defend their ambit…
A press conference is supposed to be a give and take. Somewhere between a dance and a duel, it depends on both sides taking turns. The speaker gives a statement. A reporter asks a question. Th…
PITTSBURGH — In December 1833, a young man from Chester, N.H., moved to Washington to take up a position as a clerk in the House of Representatives, spending his first day touring the city wit…
“The decision to have children has always struck me as an essentially selfish one: You choose, out of a desire for fulfillment or self-betterment or curiosity or boredom or baby-mania or peer …
My first reaction when I read the secret details from the Pandora Papers about how the world’s rich hide their assets was: What else is new?
Divorce usually isn’t a good idea, and that’s especially true of a nearly 250-year-old continental nation.
There are times for the government to protect information.
It was the week that President Joe Biden and the Democratic majorities in Congress came face-to-face with reality.
SCRANTON (AP) — One of the many ways in which Pennsylvania lawmakers have coddled the natural gas industry is by exempting it from some aspects of environmental regulation that apply to every …
Sustainable energy. Renewable energy. Green energy. Those are all buzz words I’m sure you’ve heard in recent years.
Remember the media cheers for Sen. John McCain when he stopped the effort to repeal Obamacare? McCain was a Republican frustrating a Republican policy goal, which was enough to earn the highes…
DETROIT (AP) — When Facebook was down for most of the day on Monday, did you miss it, were you relieved or some of both? Social scientists have compiled an expansive body of research that show…
