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Why are so many Ohioans in favor of book bans?

Editorials

School book ban trends come and go, but there are always groups of people who want to keep their children from having access to reading material that might expose them to new ideas or, worse, ask questions. The problem is particularly bad in Ohio, which ranks third among the states in PEN America’s study of school book bans for the 2025-26 school year. The free-expression advocacy group counted 117 instances of school book bans in the Buckeye State during that period. Only Texas and Florida were worse. Across the country, 11,982 books — 7,370 unique titles — were banned in public ...

Medicare for nobody, courtesy of Democrats

Guest columnists

Political pros will remember that a dozen or so years ago, the Democrats produced a famous (or infamous) TV ad showing a man wheeling an elderly lady in a wheelchair up a path to an overlook on a mountain. At the end of the ad, the man pushes the woman out of her chair and off the cliff. The person pushing the wheelchair was a lookalike of Paul Ryan, the then-Republican speaker of the House. The idea of the ad was that congressional Republicans had a secret plan to take away Medicare from elderly Americans dependent on the program. There was never any such doomsday plan, just a series ...

Why the death penalty can be pro-life

Guest columnists

The value of something is reflected by the punishment given for destroying it. Two very different death penalty cases have been in the news recently. Each raises a different objection to capital punishment. At the end of last month, Tennessee officials gave Christa Pike what was supposed to be a lethal injection. Pike survived. She has left the hospital and is back in prison. What went wrong and whether Tennessee will execute her — again — is unclear. This case is an example of the logistical objections to the death penalty. Some object to the cost of executing an inmate and ...

Why must Ohioans pay for Medicaid for millionaires?

Editorials

A recent review of Ohio’s Medicaid enrollment by state Auditor Keith Faber’s office found plenty of people enrolled who should not be receiving benefits — and it is not perhaps the group of people some low-aiming politicians hope you would expect. According to a report by The Center Square, the audit found 3% of Buckeye State residents receiving Medicaid benefits have more resources than allowed. In fact, “several” of those people are millionaires. Further, Faber’s office reported more than 3,000 people receiving state Medicaid benefits are dead. Ohio spends approximately ...

Beware the charm of our rising chatbots

Guest columnists

Leave it to a comedian with a national TV platform to express what troubles a lot of us, even if we hesitate to talk about it — for fear of being ridiculed as backward-looking worry warts. "When the people who are making AI are scared of AI, it's time to shut the whole thing down until we can figure out what the hell is going on," Bill Maher declared on his HBO program, "Real Time With Bill Maher," back in April. He was responding to various speculations, in many cases erroneously attributed to leaders of the frontier artificial intelligence labs, assigning percentage likelihoods of ...

What’s next for Ohio's school voucher program?

Editorials

Thursday’s ruling by the Ohio 10th District Court of Appeals that the state’s EdChoice voucher program is unconstitutional will no doubt ruffle some feathers in Columbus. Good. Judge David Leland, who wrote the opinion for the three-judge panel, says the program violates the state constitution because it funds a separate school system, according to a report by The Blade, in Toledo. That violates the mandate for a SINGULAR public education system. It was the panel’s opinion that the voucher program also lacks meaningful state oversight, is unavailable to many rural Ohioans ...