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Crosson shares spotlight with others, grateful to ‘cast of all-stars’

Having good teachers is important. Having great teachers is necessary. And you find them in every community, in every school. Students at Mifflin County High School are fortunate to have the newly-crowned National Teacher of the Year Ashlie Crosson teaching them. A 2007 graduate of Lewistown Area High School, Crosson is a product of the Mifflin County School District. She has come back home to impact the lives of future generations by teaching English and leading the journalism program. But Crosson will be the first to tell you that her success was the result of having an all-star ...

Taxes aren’t the only skill game issue

Sooner or later, the state Legislature and Gov. Josh Shapiro will have to come to an agreement on a path forward for skill games that have popped up in bars, taverns, veterans halls and convenience stores throughout the state. State courts have ruled the games aren’t illegal gambling because they are games of skill rather than games of chance that are limited to casinos. The state Supreme Court said last summer that it will consider an appeal by the state Attorney General’s office of a lower-court decision that found that what are often called skill games are based on a player’s ...

Space is final frontier for law and order

In 2015, a rare moment of U.S. congressional unity passed the Space Act — to mine asteroids as if they were open seams of ore and harvest planets like unclaimed farmland. Quietly signed by President Barack Obama, it now reads as a premature act of enclosure: staking titles in a realm we scarcely understand. Though some expressed concerns at the time, it was justified by the idea of inevitable progress. Such naivety evaporated with Donald Trump. Space had been humanity’s last commons, shielded by a 1967 Outer Space treaty. Trump declared it dead in 2020, signing the Artemis ...

Hunters should be more involved in policies

State Rep. Daniel Maloney, R-Pike Township, made several good points during a recent visit to Lycoming County. Maloney was invited to speak at a sportsmen’s listening tour by state Rep. Joe Hamm, R-Hepburn Township. As reported in the outdoors section of Tuesday’s Sun-Gazette, he shared concerns about the pace at which the state is learning about chronic wasting disease and about oversight on how grant money connected to game and wildlands management is spent. His concerns on those two issues, perhaps, can be solidly connected to a third question the lawmaker raised: Is ...

What other papers are saying: Monitoring kids’ online activities necessary

A U.S. District Court judge’s decision to strike down Ohio’s requirement that children under age 16 must have parental consent to use social media and some gaming apps is being viewed as a victory by trade group NetChoice, which represents TikTok, Snapchat, Meta and other companies, and some First Amendment advocates. But it is important to read all of what Judge Algenon Marbley had to say on the matter. Marbley did not say the intent of the law was not commendable. He said it went too far. Marbley said the law “resides at the intersection of two unquestionable rights: the ...

Take out Iran’s nuclear facilities now

Before basketball's 24-second rule, there was a tactic called freezing the ball. The team that was ahead would attempt to run out the clock by holding onto the ball as long as it could to deny the opposing team an opportunity to score. That looks like what Iran is again doing – "freezing" negotiations while finishing the final stages of nuclear enrichment on the way to building a deliverable nuclear weapon. It is important for the U.S. to take Iranian leaders at their word. Failing to do so and believing the regime will pull back on what some of their leaders have said is a ...