Adirondack Daily Enterprise Aug. 17 The discussion over whether or not New York state should continue requiring its students to pass five Regents examinations before graduating from high school misses a larger point. For too many students, the work they do from kindergarten through 12th ...
Voters in every state, including ours, ought to be outraged at what is going on in Maine. There, massive outside intervention in an election is occurring — and the Russians have nothing to do with it. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, made headlines last year when she announced she would ...
A new complaint is coming from President Donald Trump’s critics — though the wiser politicians among them probably will hesitate before saying too much. Some analysts were predicting this week that the federal government’s budget deficit during the coming fiscal year will exceed $1 ...
Beijing just blinked. True standoffs, with both sides unyielding over their differences, seldom occur. Most of the time, one side sticks to its position for a time, then signals it may be amenable to compromising in order to avoid further unpleasantness. Sometimes we say that, in such ...
Utica Observer-Dispatch Aug. 9 Rep. Anthony Brindisi pretty much summed it up. “Social media has changed the way people communicate and has opened a Pandora’s box for abuse and harassment in ways we could not have anticipated. This case is an example of that and we must be ...
Getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan would be quite a coup for President Donald Trump. It would give him a foreign policy advantage going into next year’s election — one no Democratic candidate could criticize. But would it also be setting the stage for a bloodbath? Would it mean a ...
Ohioans have a specific reason for concern about mass murderers. The current round of angst regarding them was sparked in part by the deaths of nine people in Dayton, at the hands of a deranged gunman who was prevented from killing even more by the swift action of police, who shot him ...
Police officers and sheriff’s deputies are accused regularly — and as a class — of being too eager to use violence, especially against African-Americans. Those who have that attitude ought to consider what happened Wednesday night in Philadelphia. During the day there, police went to a ...
Law enforcement authorities agree that one key to curbing certain types of crime is to sever the supply-and-demand link. Fewer drug addicts means less demand for pushers and thus, fewer of them, for example. Federal officials don’t seem to be doing a very good job of that in regard to ...
An Oregon man is lucky his idea of testing the Second Amendment did not result in his death. Another man, in Ohio, may be about to learn amassing an arsenal, then talking about mass shootings, isn’t funny at all. What on Earth is wrong with these people and, sad to say, what appears to be ...
The apparent suicide of rich pedophile Jeffrey Epstein while in federal custody continues to make headlines. For a time, the murder of vicious gangster James “Whitey” Bulger at a federal prison in West Virginia was big news. But what about the other prisoners who die violently while in ...
A 33-year-old Southern California man’s murderous rampage Wednesday was a reminder of the futility of relying on gun control laws to curb violence. He used knives to kill four people in Santa Ana and Garden Grove. After the man was apprehended, one police official described him as “full ...
A comment about hate crime that is both disturbing and in a way encouraging was made a few days ago by a woman who apparently was a victim of it. Police in Sterling, Ohio, are investigating an explosion that reduced a home to rubble. Fortunately, no one was injured — because no one was home ...
Middletown Times Herald-Record Aug. 2 As the nation mourns those killed and wounded in yet another mass shooting fueled by the kind of hatred echoed far too often in far too many places, we in New York can take comfort in an accomplishment that shows what fairness and compassion look like ...
The Plattsburgh Press-Republican Aug. 1 When the founding fathers of our remarkable nation wrestled for an astoundingly brief period in 1787 to conceive and compose our Constitution as the outline of our government, they overcame mountainous disagreements to “invent” democracy as we now ...
The Wall Street Journal Aug. 6 The Dayton and El Paso shootings have spurred familiar calls for more gun control, and by all means let’s have a debate. But the focus should be on denying weapons to the potential killers rather than on gun laws that may be politically satisfying but ...
Really thinking about what we read so often in the wake of mass killings is the only way we Americans can find a way to curb them. Taking the easy way out by concluding, as presidential candidate Joe Biden apparently has, that outlawing so-called “assault rifles” will do the trick, is ...
Exactly why the pitiful, sick weaklings who murdered 31 people in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, committed their horrific deeds may never be known. But as always, the reaction has been calls that the government do more to prevent mass killings. Stricter gun control laws already have been ...
The New York Times July 30 Before President Trump picked Dan Coats to be the director of national intelligence, Mr. Coats spent 24 years in Washington as a member of the House and the Senate from Indiana, serving long stints on both the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed ...
Sometimes good things can happen in Washington. One did this week when the Senate approved a common-sense bill to help veterans of military service. Among those pushing for the measure, the Veteran STEM Scholarship Improvement Act, S 2011. It was introduced by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. ...