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Bernard LaFayette Jr. was a leader guided by love

Editorials

When I read about civil rights activist and minister Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr. passing away earlier this month, I thought about how almost all the heralded foot soldiers of the civil rights movement who were momentous leaders during my youth have left us. LaFayette’s passing comes in the wake of the death of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a much more well-known figure, although LaFayette also worked on social justice initiatives in Latin America and South Africa. He was one who tirelessly labored behind the scenes, organizing voter registration drives in Selma, Alabama, which helped ...

Silent attacks on personal freedom

Editorials

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 ...

The energy policy we could have had

Editorials

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 ...

Kudos to Pat Ginnetti for a job well done

Letters to the Editor

DEAR EDITOR: I am writing this in praise of our Mahoning County Engineer Patrick Ginnetti, who, in my opinion, has done a tremendous job at keeping up with road paving including resurfacing some county roads that I don’t think had ever been paved. It used to be difficult to travel a lot of country roads close to us, because they were filled with potholes, and had surfaces that had deteriorated, making them treacherous to navigate. Now when my husband and I drive along those same roads we marvel at the great job that has been done to make them passable by blacktopping. I ...

Should America have a red line?

Editorials

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 ...

Trump gets us in another ‘no-win’ war

Letters to the Editor

DEAR EDITOR: The definition of “ignorant” is lacking knowledge and training; i.e., uninformed. Our military is taught and trained to not follow illegal orders. If this is true, who is responsible for the noncongressional declaration of war with Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq? The four “no-win” conflicts cost many lives and permanent lifelong injuries. Plus, they cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars, and the military contractors made billions of dollars that could have been used here in the United States. Are our military and the American people ignorant ...