Pennsylvania

The Obama administration is once again riding to the rescue of U.S. Muslims persecuted by Republicans. That’s the takeaway from Monday’s lead National section story by Katie Shepherd (who claimed without evidence that "anti-Islamic rhetoric and discrimination surges this presidential election year"): “To Township, It’s a Zoning Issue. To Justice Dept., It’s Discrimination – The Federal Agency…

The establishment press is thrilled over the City of Philadelphia's enactment of a 1.5 cents-per-ounce "soda tax" last week. Monday morning, Mayor Jim Kenney signed the legislation which its City Council passed last week. Especially unseemly is the virtual euphoria over how so-called "public health" advocates gained their long-sought foothold into using the tax system to dictate personal…

Ed Rendell, the chairman of this year's Democratic National Convention, stepped in it bigtime in a Sunday interview with billionaire businessman and radio talk show host John Catsimatidis. He got in even deeper trouble with supporters of candidate Bernie Sanders when he tried to explain himself. Though there's plenty of hostility in the Republican Party these days, there's no shortage of it…

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait admires Bernie Sanders’s willingness (eagerness?) to raise taxes so as to “finance the kind of social benefits American liberals would prefer.” That’s why Chait is disappointed that Sanders opposes Philadelphia’s proposed three-cents-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened drinks, revenue from which would fund citywide pre-kindergarten and other programs. In a Tuesday…

In an utterly amazing and totally unexpected coincidence, Verizon is reporting that there has been a spike in vandalism and sabotage against its facilities since workers went on strike on April 13. (That's sarcasm, folks.) Paul J. Gough at the Pittsburgh Business Times has reported the company's claim that "there have been more than two dozen cases of what it called sabotage to cables and its…

The top law-enforcement officer in the Keystone State, Democrat Kathleen Kane, is in trouble for allegedly abusing the powers of her office. Yet in briefly noting the story in their Cheat Sheet digest on Thursday, the Daily Beast omitted any reference to her party affiliation.

ABC failed to cover on Wednesday’s World News Tonight the criminal indictment of Democratic Congressman Chaka Fattah (Penn.) on charges related to alleged racketeering and conspiracy that resulted in the misuse of campaign funds and federal grant money for his personal gain. Surprisingly, the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News covered the story and labeled Fattah as a Democrat in news briefs…

On Friday, Curtis Houck at NewsBusters reported that "the Harrisburg, PA newspaper The Patriot News announced that both they and their online site PennLive.com 'will very strictly limit op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage.'" As of three years ago, the newspaper claimed weekly circulation of 476,000. Its current hype to advertisers boasts of "500,000 unique…

In light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to make gay marriage legal nationwide, the Harrisburg, PA newspaper The Patriot News announced that both they and their online site PennLive.com “will very strictly limit op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage.”

Many of you probably saw the network news reports about the United Airlines flight yesterday that returned to Dulles International airport when a crazed passenger yelling something about Jihad was restrained by other passengers. What you might have seen only on local but not on national broadcasts was a crazed Pennsylvania State University professor who began ranting loony left slogans on a…

The New York Times has a story today about the Diocese of Harrisburg's decision to ban high school boys from competing against girls in school wrestling. This is the second day in a row that the Times has covered this story, and there is nothing new of any substance in today's piece.   Today's news story on the Pennsylvania Catholic high school wrestling policy merited 978 words. By contrast,…

Give the New York Daily News credit for surfacing a video which originally appeared at Ed Notes Online, a publication whose "about" page says it opposes "the education corporate-based reforms ... undermining the public school system" and exposes "the motives behind the education deformers." The video shows Michael Mulgrew, the president of New York City's United Federation of Teachers,…

I suspect that more than a few readers have noticed, with likely little surprise, that there hasn't been a lot of national establishment press attention paid to how Obamacare has been working out in the real world since it officially went into effect on January 1. Non-existent HealthCare.gov security? Who cares? Patients turned away from emergency rooms voluntarily (because they don't want to…

On the front of Tuesday's Style section of The Washington Post is an article titled "Hallowed ground, restored to its roots." The Post assigned gardening writer Adrian Higgins, who wrote of an "elaborate celebration of the 150th anniversary of the president's original remarks" at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1863. But nowhere in the 25-paragraph story about clearing the landscape is there any…