Opinion

A Republic or an Empire?

The Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, embraces two value sets. The first is natural rights, and the second is limited government. After 250 years, neither value has survived, and the opposite of each currently prevails in America. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration in three days while staying at a rooming house in Philadelphia. He had been greatly influenced by the British philosopher John Locke. Locke is the godfather of the theory of natural rights, which he extrapolated from the natural law teachings of Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) ...

NBA champs? It's the New York Knicks... finally!

It has been 53 "short years" or "just" 19,698 days (May 10, 1973) since the New York Knicks were NBA champions. Richard Nixon was president, dealing with the Watergate scandal at the time. The Paris Peace Accord all but ended the Vietnam War as major combat troops were exiting the region. Baseball legend Jackie Robinson, the man who integrated sports, had died just seven months prior. Spiro Agnew became the first vice president to plead guilty to a criminal offense and resigned, with Congressman Gerald Ford being selected as Nixon's new vice president. I was in my sophomore year of ...

Editorial cartoon

A look at the past

Research for a project like our upcoming America 250 publication is always interesting work. It is interesting to look back at old newspapers and see what the important issues of the time were. The challenge, of course, is that it is hard to stay on task, and the temptation to read through all of the old stories and study the old pictures is usually too great. It can turn what starts out as a straightforward search for a specific topic into many minutes spent reading about the past. That was the case when a copy of our Progress Edition from 1975 turned up. Dated Feb. 28 of that year, ...

Not Following the Example of President James K. Polk

A president orders the onset of hostilities -- war -- without authorization of Congress and without much in the way of making a case with the public. His troops win important victories and decapitate large parts of the government of the enemy. But in the enemy capital, no one surrenders or will even negotiate seriously. That leaves the president with the unhappy choice of launching a new military attack on the central focus of the enemy, one riskier and less certain of success than those before, or of declaring an incomplete victory, well short of his essential objective, and just ...

Ross Gallabrese: Impacting the community

This is a special time for our area. The annual Greek Food Festival held at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church has just completed its three-day run, the city is preparing for this coming week's Dean Martin Festival and communities through the Tri-State Area — and the rest of the United States — are putting the final touches on their Fourth of July celebrations. There are some pretty interesting numbers associated with all three of those events. The Greek festival, for instance, just celebrated its 40th anniversary. The Dean Martin Festival will be returning for its 30th ...