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Spirit of giving alive and well

Editorials

It is great to see, during the holiday season, that Belmont County organizations continue to think about their neighbors in need. This time, the Belmont County NAACP, the Belmont County Department of Job and Family Services, Local AFSCME 3073, and Belmont County Unify came together recently to provide Aldi gift cards to residents in need. More than $5,000 was raised by the coalition, and the gift cards will be given out to Belmont County residents who are SNAP benefit recipients. Those residents each will receive $40 gift cards to Aldi — which happens to be just enough to buy a ...

Inside the Biased Broadcasting Corp.

Columns

Two friends email from London about the editing scandal that led to the resignation of two top officials from the British Broadcasting Corp. The resignations followed exposure of the splicing together of two parts of a speech by President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021.The edits made it look and sound like the president was urging his followers to violently attack the Capitol. One emailer said the first “B” in BBC should stand for bias. That reminded me of what some conservatives called CNN during the Clinton administration (the Clinton News Network.) The second writer said the ...

The government shutdown was pointless, dumb

Columns

Our long national nightmare is over, but the Democratic psychodrama isn’t. The longest shutdown in U.S. history — with increasing pain points across the country, especially among travelers — is ending, while the Democratic recriminations are just getting started. “It’s complete BS,” was a relatively mild take on the deal from one congressional progressive. As a rule of thumb, government shutdowns are bootless exercises. They don’t work because the party that causes the shutdown, thinking that it will provide leverage, invariably gets blamed for the shutdown and ...

We should be prepared for election interference

Columns

Democrats and other democracy well-wishers are spilling gallons of ink and a profusion of pixels on the question of whether ending the government shutdown was a blunder or not. I submit that either way, it won’t matter very much if at all in 12 months — and the 2026 elections are where our attention needs to pivot right now. After the most depressing year in American politics of my lifetime, the 2025 election results were like a defibrillator shock to a moribund body. The landslide percentages achieved by Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill; the record-smashing turnout in New ...

There’s a hate for everyone in Washington

Columns

Perhaps hate is too strong a word, but I am so disgusted by Washington, D.C., and just about all the politicians there. Democrats just lost a shutdown fight they tried to claim no responsibility for and then — with the help of the press — pivoted to Jeffrey Epstein. It turns out one of Epstein’s major private boosters was the author Michael Wolff, who plotted against President Donald Trump with Epstein. Michael Wolff, like Michael Avenatti before him, was a regular Brian Stelter guest on CNN. CNN and MSNBC have gone wall-to-wall with coverage of the new Epstein revelations, of ...

There was a time when Donald Trump was not considered a racist

Columns

Trump Derangement Syndrome prevents those who dislike President Donald Trump from giving him credit for virtually anything. In the first nine months of Trump 2.0, his detractors fail to credit him for: Securing the southern border in a matter of weeks; gas prices now at a four-year low; the steep decline in the price of eggs; a stock market hitting record highs, benefiting the nearly half of American adults who invest in the market either directly, via mutual funds or through 401(k)s; income growth exceeding inflation; inflation at 3%, less than the 5% per year average under ...