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Anatomy of a made-up conspiracy

After years and years of hanging around the news business, thereëƵs one trick I admit IëƵve never learned: I donëƵt quite know how to fashion a conspiracy out of thin air.I can say with confidence that IëƵve witnessed the shoddiest of the conspiracy merchants these past few months.IëƵm ...

POTUS has handy debt limit solution

ëƵI want to look the president in the eye,ëƵ House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said the other day, ëƵand [have him] tell me thereëƵs not one dollar of wasteful spending in government.ëƵWho believes that? The American public doesnëƵt believe that.ëƵOf course, McCarthy, the Republican leader, ...

Read this: ItëƵs ‘classified!’

I used to enjoy a good political scandal.Finding misplaced government documents doesnëƵt count.Back when they found hundreds of classified documents down there at Mar-A-Lago, that was a nice, juicy, eye-rollable event worthy of a column or two.But since President Biden and ex-vice president ...

Connellsville will honor war dead

Thanks to Judy Keller, I can now put a face to a name. Years ago, I wrote about Bobby Burns. His story was told to me by Rita Smyth for a magazine article I was doing about the Connellsville Canteen of World War II.Bobby was just a kid when Rita knew him. Only a few months out of high school, ...

What’s in a rhyme

Something happened last week that gave me a great deal of anxiety.Just before going to sleep, the words, ëƵStep on a crack and break your motherëƵs back,ëƵ popped into my head.That set off a flurry of thoughts about the origin of that phrase, and its lack of a meaningful interpretation.To be ...

War and the battle cry of freedom

The Civil War was eight years away when a hearing convened in Uniontown to decide the fates of runaway slaves Charlotte, Liz, and Willis Greene, under the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.The year was 1853. The Greenes were the children of Alex and Evalina Greene, former slaves themselves who ...