Editorial  

Chances are, you know someone who is obese. Obesity is defined as someone who is 30 pounds or more overweight. Statistically, nearly one of every four people in this country is obese. In Lancaster County, more than half of the population is overweight or obese.
That's shocking, but not nearly as sho...

When the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940, there was no posted speed limit — motorists traveled as fast as their vehicles could carry them.




Some lawmakers apparently want a return to those Wild West days, or at least they're headed in that direction.

A bill approved last week b...

Faced with a shortage of funds and personnel, state police commissioner Col. Frank Noonan has proposed a plan to bridge the gap: Close the Ephrata station, turn Lancaster's Troop J headquarters into a station and place those troopers under the jurisdiction of Troop L in Reading. That would save mon...

With the state taking in more tax revenue than expected, politicians on both sides of the aisle are doing what they invariably do — scramble for ways to spend this taxpayer money.




A $27.7 billion spending plan for 2012-13 was approved 39-8 last week by the state Senate. Voting for the...

It's hard to imagine Michael Jordan not playing professional basketball.
Yet, if activities fees now in place in many schools had been in effect in the 1970s, it is conceivable that the man some consider to be the greatest basketball player ever, might never have played the game.
Jordan played high ...

In 1958, a benevolent Congress created a presidential entitlement for former President Harry Truman, who was having trouble paying his bills five years after leaving office.




More than 50 years later, the entitlement is claimed by four surviving ex-presidents — George W. Bush, Bill Cli...

An unfortunate prank he played in high school has come back to haunt Mitt Romney nearly 50 years later.
As pranks go, it was more disturbing and insensitive than most -- bullying a student who later turned out to be gay.
But Romney is not alone among presidential candidates who have had to answ...

Can Pennsylvania get back to its pre-recession unemployment rate of 4.7 percent within the next two years?
State Labor & Industry Secretary Julia Hearthway believes so. To reach — or even reduce — that number, her department has embarked on a series of steps designed to make it easie...

At a time when funding for social services and schools is being slashed, when nonprofit agencies are stretched thin by federal and state budget cutbacks, when state police barracks might be closing to save money, our esteemed state Legislature is hoarding cash.
Nearly $184 million in cash, accordin...

Whether Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar's loss to Richard E. Mourdock in Tuesday's Indiana Republican primary was because of his age (he's 80), his willingness to work with members of the opposition or because of the tea party's influence on the Republican Party is for political scientists to parse.
One ...