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Jinxed: the state and the presidency

Pennsylvania, one of the largest, most populous states in the Union, had produced one president, and by all accounts, that one president was woeful. He was James Buchanan. He was president in the lead-up to the Civil War. The knock against Buchanan, who hailed from Lancaster (where his home, ...

Dems need to show up and show off

President Biden, campaigning in Pittsburgh last Wednesday, promised cheering steelworkers to keep U.S. Steel in American hands, despite a $14.9 billion deal on the table to sell the iconic and one-time industrial behemoth to a Japanese firm. The president's stop came on the heels of the visit ...

Donald Trump’s biggest lie so far

Last Monday, America stopped for 4 minutes to allow for a momentous occasion. No. Not that little solar eclipse thing. I’m talking about Donald Trump’s 4 ½-minute video, in which he supposedly spelled out his “true” stand on the issue of abortion. The whole thing reminded me of ...

A springtime of tragic foreboding

There are some travelers I'd like you to meet. They are from an antique land: America in the spring of 1861. It was April, normal in many ways for the residents of Uniontown. Merchants, such as Calvin Springer, proprietor of the McClellan House hotel on Main Street, and C.S. Seaton and George ...

An airport by any other name is still an airport

U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler has introduced H.R. 7845, a bill “To designate the Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia as the ‘Donald J. Trump International Airport.’” I don’t seek to find humor in many things. That, though, made me laugh. Reschenthaler and six of ...

The war within the Kennedy family

The "real" Bobby Kennedy was 26-years old the day he took over management of his brother Jack's campaign for a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1952. "Tanned and wiry with a mop of unruly hair," according to JFK biographer Frederik Logevall, the new campaign manager was not especially interested in ...