Breaking News

Editorials

Remembering Ed Crane

Within the last six months, two friends, both pioneers and giants in the world of ideas in Washington, D.C., passed from this world. One, Ed Feulner, was the co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, which became the nation’s defining policy institute for conservative ideas. Now, last week, Ed Crane, the co-founder of the Cato Institute, passed away. Ed Crane built Cato to become the major presence in the nation’s capital for libertarian ideas and policy. My personal involvement with Cato began in 1996 when I was invited to join the national advisory board for Cato’s project ...

Determining what’s equal, fair and farce

When NBC affiliates in Tennessee showed the movie “Necessary Roughness” in 1994, those affiliates were required to give a Democrat Senate candidate 4 minutes and 13 seconds of free airtime. The Democrat was running against Fred Thompson, the actor turned Republican Senate candidate. When Thompson ran for President in 2008, NBC stopped aired re-runs of “Law & Order” that featured Thompson, who had been the District Attorney on the show. The Equal Time Doctrine is not new. But the national press corps, always ready to pounce on President Donald Trump and Republicans, has ...

Fiscal recklessness will have consequences

An analysis by Truth in Accounting on which The Center Square reported in the Feb. 10 edition of the Sun-Gazette finds that Philadelphia will overspend in the 2025/26 budget year by about $17,000 per taxpayer. As we note that this sort of budgeting is unsustainable, we do not want to single out Pennsylvania’s largest city. The budget proposal by Gov. Josh Shapiro, as we’ve repeatedly criticized in editorials the past two weeks, uses assumptions about future laws and the state’s “rainy day fund” to ramp up government spending — despite our Legislature’s clear and ...

Open talks with railroads important

As a railroad center, Altoona has lived with the prospect of train derailments for much of its history. Having lived with virtually all of the pluses and minuses of that industry for so long, including the knowledge of what their ancestors experienced during their lifetimes, people here go about their routines day in and day out without giving much thought to the dangers “built into” a rail operation in the community. Expressed more simply, people here do not shudder when a “monster” train consisting perhaps of nearly a hundred units is bearing down on their town. People ...

Unfair debates not part of budget process

Over the past year or so we’ve noted that the decision to tie the status of marijuana and skills games to the budget was unfair and counterproductive. The concerns we editorialized about were simple: These issues need thorough debate, on their own terms, with lawmakers considering the drawbacks and disadvantages, especially for either legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana. Concerns about how driving under the influence will be investigated and prosecuted, about the impact on workplaces and employers and how to mitigate unwanted effects, about what legal or decriminalized ...

State needs to tackle fraud

It took the threat of federal penalties to push Gov. Josh Shapiro into taking seriously the issue of SNAP errors in Pennsylvania. In our opinion the state has a bigger issue with Medicaid fraud — and it shouldn’t take the threat of federal action to get the state to take the fraud problems seriously. A Commonwealth Foundation report released recently said Pennsylvania charged more Medicaid fraud cases than any other state in 2024, with the state Attorney General’s office reporting $11.3 million in Medicaid fraud recoveries and $44 million in fraudulent charges. That same year, ...