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Orchids & onions

Editorials

ORCHID: To Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins and Christopher Becker and Mike Burnett on his staff for their ongoing work to reestablish meaty habitual criminal statutes with tougher penalties in Ohio law. In recent years, such taut and escalating prison sentences and fines for repeat felony theft, burglary and drug offenders have been watered down or rescinded in efforts to reduce prison crowding. But as veteran Prosecutor Watkins effectively argues, “Confronting repeat offenders with decisive consequences is essential to protect the financial well-being of our neighbors and ...

Why the Blanche nomination should be rejected

Editorials

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is not qualified to be the attorney general of the United States because he has demonstrated a hopeless conflict between the rule of law — which he has taken an oath to support — and his sense of personal loyalty to President Donald Trump, whom he represented for several years in a notorious but frivolous criminal case in New York. What to do about a nominee as chief law enforcement officer in the land who has and will not disavow this conflict? Reject him. Here is the backstory. For America’s first 100 years, there was no Department of ...

All must play role toward productive, safe academic year

Editorials

Change is in the air as about 70,000 students trek back to more than 200 schools in the Mahoning Valley beginning next week for the traditional start to an exciting new academic year. Changes in personnel, curriculum, technology, security and more await many students, staff and faculty in districts large and small. The mission of all of them, of course, is to improve the educational climate for pre-schoolers through college students. As a result, optimism rightly abounds. In Trumbull County, one of the biggest and most visible changes takes place at the state-of-the-art Trumbull ...

The real stink of Musk

Editorials

Elon Musk will be spending $100 million to $120 million in at least eight states to help elect Republicans in November, according to The New York Times. Musk’s spending is set to begin next month, targeting Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan and Ohio, and potentially North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. Musk will also spend in House races in states including California, Wisconsin, and Washington. The money won’t be spent only on TV advertising. Musk’s “America PAC” is lining up firms that focus on knocking on voters’ doors. Fake grassroots. But Musk’s money ...

Sound off!

Letters to the Editor

DJT has many forks in the road concerning his Iranian war. He continues to take the wrong ones. Secretary of War Pete (Hegseth), along with DJT, keeps wasting billions of dollars, killing our soldiers and alienating our global allies. His bombing of bridges and the desalinating plants will bring war crime penalties. I hope they end up in the Hague. Why do we continue to get involved in wars? Is it too much testosterone? We need more women in government decision-making. — Southington Our leader in Washington has quite the conundrum. Should he follow orders from Saudi Arabia and stop ...

The Iran war is eating Trump’s presidency

Editorials

An Iran war that was supposed to be brief, and then was supposed to be over, is imposing an increasing price on Donald Trump’s presidency. We’ve seen a second term of a Republican administration go this way before. There are distinct echoes of George W. Bush’s Iraq War — the conflict that Trump has long excoriated — in the president’s predicament. Now, the Iran war is different from Iraq. There is no ground invasion, no regime change, no occupation, no counterinsurgency. The casualties aren’t close to the same scale, and Donald Trump has been fighting Iran for ...