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Orchids & onions

ORCHID: To the National Park Service for awarding Austintown Township a $130,000 grant to revitalize the historic Austin Log House on South Raccoon Road in the community. The grant funds will enable improvements to windows, drainage and various aesthetic enhancements to one of the Mahoning Valley’s oldest historical sites. The cabin was constructed in 1814 by Calvin Austin, founder of Austintown Township who served as the first justice of the peace of the expansive Connecticut Western Reserve, from which Ohio was carved. The funding is aptly timed amid the nation’s celebration of its ...

Vote responsibly on local issues in our Valley

Leaders of local governments and public school districts in the Mahoning Valley are to be applauded for accurately reading the room of their 2026 electorate. That keen perception is clearly evident in the relative dearth of additional tax levies those leaders have deigned to place on this fall’s general election ballots. Of nearly 40 issues up for a vote this cycle in Mahoning and Trumbull counties, only six seek new money from taxpayers. The electorate in Mahoning County will face a meager four additional operating levies, while only two such issues are on Trumbull ballots. Of those ...

Hail Marco as classic orator

Back in my college days (American University, Washington, D.C.), required reading included the works of Greek playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Long after graduation they remained on my bookshelf. It was believed for generations that these men, along with philosophers Plato, Cicero and other great minds, could teach us. At too many of today’s colleges and universities we find courses in LGBTQ+ history and, according to Campus Reform, a 2023 course at Harvard “aimed to teach students how to prepare for a diversity, equity, and inclusion-filled future.” Harvard is not ...

MAGA masculinity: Protesting too much

We’ve seen Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lifting weights in snug Levis, sweat pouring down his naked muscled chest. Last February, the secretary of health and human services was “giving body” in the “Rock Out Workout” video. A jeans-clad Kennedy flexes alongside Kid Rock in black shorts, then strips off his shirt and joins Rock in a grotto-like pool. Provocative questions followed. Kennedy has become a hero to a MAGA movement that celebrates masculinity and pushes back against what it sees, not without reason, as an anti-male attitude flooding far-left feminism. I’m not the first ...

In sex assault cases, don’t let prosecution become mob rule

“That it is better 100 guilty persons should escape, than that one innocent person should suffer.” — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) The hardest decision a government prosecutor may ever face is also one of the most important tests of the rule of law: What do you do when you believe a crime occurred, and you believe you know who committed it, but you do not believe you can prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty? The temptation is obvious. A prosecutor is a public official. The alleged victim wants justice. The public demands accountability. The alleged ...

Beginning of the end or end of beginning?

I’m allowing myself to believe that sane people may be in charge of Congress starting next Jan. 20. I know, I know: Polls have gotten our hopes up before only to have them dashed on the rocky shores of political reality. But this time it does seem as if congressional Republicans will finally get their comeuppance for their blind loyalty to Trump. The sense of relief in the land is palpable. We may soon witness the beginning of the end of this daymare — unless Trump goes full-throttled dictator and prevents votes for Democrats in the Senate and House from being ...