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Let logic settle Poland library controversy

The effort to “save” the Poland Library is well-intentioned and even noble. It is also, at this point, misguided and bordering on unhealthy. The Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County has spent the better part of a year — if not longer — studying, documenting, analyzing and contracting with reputable professional consultants about every aspect of the building. On April 9, the Library’s Building and Sites Committee heard everything library staff had learned through their efforts. They learned about the problems with the 25-year-old building, what it would cost to ...

No confidence: Hegseth sacks all the competents on board

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has fired Secretary of the Navy John Phelan. This comes after Hegseth fired Army Chief of Staff General Randy George. Hegseth keeps firing senior leaders, often arguing the fired were “woke,” but the common thread seems to be that they had good relationships with the president and were competent. When I was in college, I would go back to Louisiana in the summer to work for the public school from which I had graduated. The school was in a building that combined K-12, but elementary, middle and high schools were separate entities until after I ...

What has passed is not always what was best

Your memories will try to trick you. I thought about that as I was driving down a street near my house the other day, when I spotted a father walking down the sidewalk, his young daughter slung over his shoulder like a sack of coal he was hauling out of a mine. Her hair bounced along on his back and she looked thrilled. They had been out on a stroll, and she’d asked for a ride: That was the story the image told me. Adorable, I thought, for a second. But wait. What was that look of resignation on the dad’s face? Did I recognize that parental exhaustion myself, that feeling of ...

Orchids & onions

ORCHID: To Austintown public safety dispatchers Kerri Humphreys and Christie Zimmer-Rozzi for their honor received last week as Mahoning County Dispatchers of the Year for 2025. The two received the award from county commissioners for their quick-thinking, detailed and well coordinated response to last October’s fatal explosion at the Phoenix House high-rise in Austintown that uprooted about 140 residents there. The two put into place a massive emergency response protocol that no doubt lessened dangers and likely saved lives. “None of this could have been accomplished without the ...

Let the sun shine in on JobsOhio

Ever since its creation in 2011 by then-Gov. John Kasich as Ohio’s quasi-public nonprofit economic development department, JobsOhio has rightly attracted its fair share of admirers and detractors. Admirers, such as many in business and development circles, have hailed the agency for its leading role in attracting major companies such as Intel, with its $5 billion investment in the Columbus area and Kimberly-Clark, with its $800 million investment in the Mahoning Valley. On the other hand, detractors such as government watchdogs, civil liberties organizations and some state ...

The pope, 3 cardinals and the Iran war

“War is Hell,” said Union General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1879. Pope Leo and three cardinals of the Catholic Church who appeared last Sunday on “60 Minutes,” agree. The problem for these theologians is that for them it appears war is only Hell when it is engaged in by the United States and for the best of reasons. They have little to say about the terrorist regime in Iran or for that matter the slaughter of civilians by Vladimir Putin’s army in Ukraine. These church leaders seem to be engaging in a kind of immoral equivalency. Do they not know that the Islamic regime ...