It’s not always easy for the general public to gain a complete and clear understanding of a school district’s financial situation. That’s why we believe Richmond Heights Schools is taking the right approach by hosting public information sessions on district funding. Around 30 people attended an April 20 session looking at the March failed tax levy. News-Herald reporter Frank Mecham reported on the program that also examined what Richmond Heights Schools will do in the future to deal with a predicted increase in students from Belle Oaks Marketplace, a new housing and shopping development. Topic ..read more

Imagine your party’s presumptive nominee for president is about to stand trial for paying off a porn star he allegedly slept with just months after his wife gave birth to their son. The allegations alone are seedy enough. Then throw in witnesses like the unfortunately named former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, former Playboy model Karen McDougal, convicted felon Michael Cohen, and the whole sordid affair is a pretty gross but revealing look at the presidential contender’s inner circle and private life. This would ordinarily spell doom for the presidential candidate — and his party ..read more

What the Biden administration is doing to the Title IX civil rights law, the purpose of which is, among other things, to ensure equality between men’s and women’s sports, reminds me of a childhood game. We kids would sit in a circle and one would whisper something to the one next to them, who would repeat it to the next one and so on. Then the last child would say what she or he had heard. It usually bore little resemblance to what the first whisperer had said. That was the joke. Something similar occurs with much of the legislation coming out of Congress. Regulators, who are account ..read more

There’s no record of Edmund Burke — the great Irish-born British statesman and father of modern conservatism — actually saying what is often attributed to him: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” But it does capture his worldview well enough. It also captures a renewed, possibly short-lived triumph of courage and wisdom within the Republican Party. Amid threats to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson for allowing a vote on aid to Ukraine, Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, captured the party’s own divide between the good and the rest in colorful terms on ..read more

With all that is occurring in our political and cultural life, there are signs some Americans have had enough. Google recently fired 28 employees from its New York and Sunnyvale, California, offices for protesting the company’s cloud-computing contract with Israel. The reason given by the company’s vice president for global security, Chris Rackow, as reported in The Wall Street Journal, was that the sacked employees “took over office spaces, defaced our property and physically impeded the work of other Googlers,” violating company policies. They apparently aren’t familiar with t ..read more

After Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel Saturday, President Biden reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “You got a win. Take the win.” Most of the weapons, the first Iran had ever fired on Israel from its own territory, were successfully intercepted. “From its own territory” is a very loaded qualifier. It speaks to both the complexity and the stupidity of the situation. Iran has been attacking Israel for decades, but not from its own soil. Instead, Iran has given Hamas and Hezbollah weapons, training and other support to do its dirty work from Lebanon ..read more

Was it as bad for you as it was for me? Sending Washington money we earn, but Washington doesn’t, I mean? It’s not just being part of half the nation that pays taxes while the other half doesn’t that bothers me. It’s the waste and unnecessary programs and agencies that have long outlived whatever usefulness they once had (if they were ever necessary). And still President Biden wants to raise taxes even more without proposing a single dollar be cut to reduce our unsustainable $34 trillion debt. As The Washington Times reported: “ (Biden) wants to impose a 25% minimum tax on all income ..read more

Many of us like to visit local parks for recreation or relaxation. But a lot of park guests don’t engage in any other activities to improve those properties. There are however, people who have formed a nonprofit group that demonstrates its dedication to a park in Lake County that’s located along the Lake Erie shoreline. The Friends of Headlands Beach State Park has a mission statement that includes goals to support, promote, protect and preserve the park in Mentor and Painesville Township by holding special events, fundraising and making improvements. The group also aims “to promote the educat ..read more

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference. It had been a very good five years for Republicans, starting with his own election in 1980 and, for the first time in 28 years, a Republican Senate. He began by thanking the various groups in the room: the American Conservative Union, Young Americans for Freedom, National Review, and Human Events. “When you work in the White House, you don’t get to see your old friends as much as you’d like,” he playfully said. And then, he delivered a line that would become famous: “And I always see the CPAC spe ..read more

Donald Trump issued a lengthy statement on abortion this past Monday. It is the latest of several positions he has taken on an issue that continues to be hotly debated. Each statement is supposedly a matter of Trump’s “conviction,” though some have been contradictions of previous statements. These have included his longstanding pro-choice position before he ran for president, to pro-life, and now pro-life with important caveats. Clearly his statement is one that conforms more to polls than principles, which is nothing new. Trump starts with his support for IVF treatments, a subject r ..read more