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Fight for true representation

Someone once told me that feeling gratitude without expressing it is like wrapping a present you never give. My thoughts have returned to that idiom several times since the Legislative Reapportionment Commission first attempted to eliminate the 82nd District in its current form. It was on my mind as we went through a holiday season with presents under the tree. I am incredibly grateful for all my constituents who have spoken out about the proposed changes to how they would be represented in the statehouse, so I want to publicly thank all of them now. And, I want to encourage others ...

Best wishes and goodbye, for now

First, belated holiday greetings to all. Here’s hoping the joy of the season follows you into 2022! For nearly 14 years I have written this crime and justice column. I believe it is the only weekly column dedicated to those two topics, issues that affect the lives of all of us. I write today to say so long, for now. As many readers know, one of my longtime concerns has been the predatory guardianship system in this country. Called conservatorship in some states (think the Britney Spears case), it is a court-approved procedure whereby a judge, often on the flimsiest of evidence, ...

Thank you, Sen. Joe Manchin

The saying, “One man with courage makes a majority” has been attributed by historians to different sources. But regardless of who said it, there is one man who stands out today worthy of this description. It’s West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. Manchin has been a one-man show in the Democratic Party, standing often in solitude, holding feet-to-the-fire of his president and his party’s leadership, pushing back on the massive and irresponsible spending avalanche in the Build Back Better act. Now, Manchin has slammed the door, saying he can’t vote for the bill, effectively ...

Proposed legislative district map changes harmful to Juniata Valley

Mifflin County, Juniata County and the Path Valley in northwest Franklin County share common infrastructure, social services agencies and major industries. The way of life emphasizes honesty, family values, farming and Biblical principles. It is a region united … for now. The Legislative Reapportionment Commission has devastatingly pinched, cleaved, divided and hacked up the region’s commonalities in the new state House and Senate district maps preliminarily approved by that commission on Dec. 16. Under the new maps, the district I’ve been blessed to represent — the 82nd ...

Playing with fire on Russia’s borders

Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko has cleared out the encampment at his border crossing into Poland, where thousands of Middle Eastern migrants had been living in squalor. Two weeks ago, that border crossing was the site of clashes between asylum-seekers trying to push through the razor wire and Polish troops resisting with water cannons. While the crisis between Warsaw and Minsk has not ended, it appears to have been temporarily eased. Behind the clash was the recent election in Belarus that the European Union saw as fraudulent and Lukashenko’s interception of a ...

It’s not what’s under the tree that matters…

The first recorded decorated Christmas tree was created by a group of local merchants in Latvia (let’s hear it for the entrepreneurs!) in 1510. They decorated the tree with artificial roses, danced around it in the marketplace and then set fire to it (not a practice I recommend). The tradition evolved from there, making its way to the United States in the 1800s, introduced here by German settlers. Nothing symbolizes the holiday season quite like a beautiful tree aglow with lights, laden with shiny ornaments, tinsel, with a splattering of treasures crafted by little hands created from ...