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The fentanyl flood into the US: Why can’t we make it stop?

About 11 times every hour, about 250 times a day, an American citizen dies of a drug overdose. The most frequent culprit is fentanyl. The most popular mode of delivery is fentanyl-laced heroin, fentanyl mixed with cocaine or illegally produced OxyContin pain pills containing fentanyl. And it’s not just hardcore addicts who are dying. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports overdose deaths skyrocketed to a mind-boggling 93,000 last year, a 29% increase over the previous year. The death rate is now so frightening a bipartisan group, called Families Against Fentanyl, ...

Careful, thoughtful investigation is necessary to restore faith in elections

For nearly a year, our Commonwealth has been tied in knots by doubts surrounding recent elections. No matter whether you supported Donald Trump or Joe Biden in the 2020 election, everyone should have confidence in the results of that election. That is the only way our system works. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Pennsylvania. The underhanded actions of our disgraced, now-former secretary of state cast doubt upon the fairness of the process, and our new acting secretary has done everything in her power to shield that process from transparency. This includes undercutting the ...

Aftermath of Afghanistan debacle

In Afghanistan, the mission failure appears complete. The trillion-dollar project to plant Western democracy in a Muslim nation historically fabled for driving out imperial intruders has crashed and burned after 20 years, and the Taliban are suddenly back in power. After investing scores of billions in training and arming a force of 350,000 Afghani troops, the U.S. could not stand up an army and a government that could survive our departure. And the final U.S. departure from Hamid Karzai International Airport may become, like JFK’s Bay of Pigs, a synonym for American debacle. ...

COVID exposes ugly side of ‘single-payer’ health care

Democrats are busy trying to ensure a victory in the 2022 elections. If public opinion plays any part (and if the elections are honest), they’ll likely lose in even larger numbers than in 2020, which was bad for them, President Joe Biden’s “victory” notwithstanding. But the Democrats in power are very, very good at gaming the system; we can expect them to exploit “fear porn” associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. They will demand the continuation of practices that are rife with potential for fraud, such as ballot harvesting and mail-in ballots, and fight tooth and nail ...

Falling in love with my hometown

I am not a habitual listener to country music, but recently on a road trip I decided to leave my normal genre of music and expand my musical horizons. As I spun the radio dial, it landed on a country station. I listened to the words, and they reminded me just how deeply this music is rooted in the simplistically beautiful American way of life. It celebrates God, country, family, love, loss, nature, bonfires, backroads — oh, and pickup trucks. I was especially moved by the story told through a collaboration featuring Kelsea Ballerini and Kenny Chesney, entitled “Half of My ...

Freedom in the time of COVID-19

“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.” — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) As the world watches the disastrous ending of America’s nearly 20-year occupation of Afghanistan, we cannot lose sight of what is happening here, just below the media radar. I hope I am wrong, yet I see a time of great suffering coming soon for those of us who cherish, articulate and defend personal liberty in a free society. I hear it coming in the media drumbeat over the spread of the delta variant of COVID-19 and the demonization ...