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Mother’s Day and annual Kid Connection event come together

The notion that Mother’s Day falls on the same weekend as the annual Kid Connection is arguably the best type of coincidence. Youngsters ages 2-12 have the opportunity from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. today to spend bonding with mom over events like Kid Karaoke and milkshakes in downtown Lewistown. The free event offers resources to help connect families with support agencies, according to Cassandra Goss, chairperson for Kid Connection. The event, Goss explained, has become a staple in Mifflin County. We hope that parents will take this as an opportunity to share stories about when they were ...

Governor’s secrecy is unacceptable

Gov. Josh Shapiro continues to shroud his conduct — the business of taxpaying Pennsylvanians — in an unacceptable level of secrecy. As a Spotlight PA report in this past weekend’s edition of the Sun-Gazette noted, in the previous year Pennsylvania’s governor accepted about $12,000 in tickets to sports events from a nonprofit organization, Team PA. The nonprofit refuses to disclose who its donors are. As Spotlight PA’s reporters Stephen Caruso and Angela Couloumbis succinctly put it, “the secrecy leaves taxpayers in the dark about who underwrites the outings and what ...

Lawmakers do right on stalking law

As technology continues to change, our laws and our sense of justice must adapt to meet the new technological landscape. One such aspect of that evolution is the use of devices by predators to secretly track the locations of the victims — particularly women — that they are stalking. “Whether it’s a creep at the bar or an angry ex-partner, this is a new avenue that they can use to non-consensually track somebody without their knowledge,” Adam Dodge, CEO of digital safety education company EndTAB and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Digital Justice Advisory Committee, ...

Presidential debate is needed

Is President Biden going to debate Donald Trump as the November election nears? “I am. Somewhere. I don’t know when,” Mr. Biden said Friday in an interview with Howard Stern. “I’m happy to debate him.” Nice to hear, though we’ll believe it when we see it. If the 81-year-old President wants to skip the stage this fall, Mr. Trump’s refusal to debate his GOP primary opponents has handed Mr. Biden an easy excuse. Now Mr. Trump, who for the record is 77, is demanding to debate early and often, because he wants to suggest that Mr. Biden isn’t up to taking hard ...

Eradicating blight can boost quality of life, economic development

Let’s say you’re house hunting, and you find a property that seems to check off all the boxes. Enough space, the roof is solid and so are the heating and cooling systems. And the price is reasonable. There’s one catch, though. The house across the street has long been abandoned. Its paint is peeling, yellowed curtains wave in broken windows, the grass is knee-high and someone has spray painted an obscenity on a side wall. You assume that the house is a year-round domicile of a whole variety of rodents. With that, you decide to keep on looking. That illustrates the ...

LNG permit ban simply unreasonable

As Dave Callahan, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, noted in an op-ed column in Thursday’s Sun-Gazette, the natural gas industry creates “good-paying energy jobs in towns and communities across the commonwealth” and plays “a critical role in promoting U.S. energy independence.” But as Callahan noted this, he also noted that these are not his words — the quotes instead come from Pennsylvania’s two Democratic senators, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Scranton, and Sen. John Fetterman, D-Braddock. Callahan is correct that support for this vital industry has an important ...