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Orchids & onions

ORCHID: To William and Linda Roemer for donating a masterpiece painting by famed 20th century German-American artist Josef Albers to the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown. The Roemers donated the 1957 oil-on-Masonite work titled “Homage to the Square: Now” in memory of William’s parents, James and Helen Roemer. James Roemer, many will recall, was a leading industrialist in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys as president of the former Sharon Steel Corp. The colorful abstract work is a splendid addition to the Butler’s permanent collection. Through their gift, the ...

Spring into season of road work zones with extreme caution

Fasten your seat belts — literally and figuratively — as the start of spring this weekend and the coming of Easter usher in exciting periods of renewal and improvement on personal, spiritual and even practical fronts. Nowhere will that renewal be more visible than on the streets and highways of the Mahoning Valley as the spring and summer work-zone construction season rolls into full swing. But with so much-anticipated renewal to many of our congested and potholed thoroughfares also comes the increased potential for life-threatening danger. Even without the added hazards of large ...

Should America have a red line?

President Trump has acted as no other president has by unleashing a war on Iran whose objective is not only preventing the ayatollahs from ever building a nuclear weapon but ideally (though unmentioned) replacing the fanatics with leaders more friendly to Israel and the West and delivering freedom and prosperity to the Iranian people. With two more terrorist attacks last week — one at Old Dominion University in Virginia and the other at a synagogue and Jewish school in Dearborn, Michigan, is it time to talk of terrorists crossing a red line in this country? How many more terrorist ...

The energy policy we could have had

Oil, oil, oil. The war with Iran has oil prices soaring. And no thanks, President Trump, for your other war, the one against green energy. As Americans freak over gas prices, they are taking another look at electric vehicles. But guess what? Most domestic automakers dropped ambitious investments toward that end, leaving car lots bereft of these gasoline-replacing vehicles, at least American-made ones. It didn’t have to be that way. Barack Obama and Joe Biden launched serious programs to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Trump trashed those ambitious plans to bring Americans ...

Silent attacks on personal freedom

During the first Trump administration, the FBI quietly spent $5 million on Pegasus, an Israeli-developed software product known generically as zero click. Zero click permits the user to download the contents of another mobile or desktop device without tricking the user of that device into clicking on a viral link. When FBI Director Christopher Wray was confronted with evidence of this purchase in 2021, he stated under oath at a congressional hearing that his agents did not and would not use it; but they bought it because they wanted to understand how it worked. He claimed that it was ...

Our civilian-military bond is cracked

On Tuesday, TMZ published a story with a dramatic all-caps headline, “PETE HEGSETH BLEW BILLION$ ON FRUIT BASKETS, LOBSTER,” that was accompanied by a manufactured photo of the secretary of war surrounded by a bunch of plastic lobsters. The initial story was followed by several other “news” organizations repeating the claims. If you’ve never covered the military, or served in the military, or if you don’t have any family or friends in the military, this would appear to be a shocking story. But it’s not — not even remotely. It is a common practice for the Pentagon ...