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Pessimism is a destination that leads to defeat in politics

If you have been paying attention to media reports, many politicians, including some Republicans and those often-wrong pollsters, believe the November election is a foregone conclusion. According to them, Democrats will win a House majority and possibly take over the Senate, too. History proves it, they say, because the party out of power almost always is victorious in midterms. Except when it’s not. Two recent examples should give Republicans hope. In 1994, the year many people remember, a “Republican Revolution” headed by Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich and his Contract ...

Ohio SB 461 would fight indoctrination with more of same

Students across the country have already shown what they think of the government-mandated “intellectual diversity centers” popping up in some states. Further, voters’ rightful displeasure with such a blatant attempt at government overreach has been evident. Yet calculating politicians just can’t help themselves. Ohio Sen. Jerry Cirino, R-Kirtland, has introduced Senate Bill 461, Enact the Strengthening Ohio Civics Act, which would give the Salmon P. Chase center for civics, culture and society — a purportedly independent unit within Ohio State University — “all the ...

Compassionate Dolly Parton was rich in so many ways

One of the unfortunate realities of getting older is finding that the people you like begin to die. There are some, maybe, who are taken before their time and others who go at the end of a complete life, but either way the obituaries pile up. When Dolly Parton died the other day, I felt the weight of another passing. I never met her, but she represented more to me (and to many others, I imagine) than her songwriting, her acting and her singing. I saw in her the way poverty can shape a person — slash their outsides and scar them in ways that never fully heal — while still failing to ...

Americans fail to understand rarity of liberty around world

This well-known rhetorical flourish at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence needs closer consideration. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” it states. Look through history and you’ll find little evidence that most people experienced these self-evident truths. Until the West led the way in abolishing it, slavery was an accepted historical institution. Notre Dame Professor Keith Bradley once ...

Ohio business prosperity not getting to all corners yet

Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel took a victory lap of sorts after CNBC said Ohio is the No. 1 state for business, with a nine-stop “Heart of Opportunity Tour” that wrapped in Springfield at the National Advanced Air Mobility Center of Excellence. Other stops were in Cleveland, Youngstown, Toledo, Lima, Piketon, Middletown, Columbus and Cincinnati. Regarding his stop in Springfield, DeWine said. “The investments we’re making in aviation infrastructure, workforce, research and innovation are creating an environment that’s allowing companies to build the future of ...

Thank you, Dolly, for your music, humor, public service

Since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I am told, I was not surprised to hear Dolly Parton say in an interview that she once entered a “Dolly Parton lookalike” drag queen contest in Los Angeles unannounced — and lost. Parton, who died a week ago today at age 80, enjoyed telling that story, which illustrated, among other things, that it wasn’t always easy to be Dolly, even for Dolly. “Nobody applauded,” she said in a May 2025 radio interview, “like a little trickle that was probably David, my hairdresser.” Go figure. Maybe she looked too much like the ...