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Dear Annie: Their stepmother oversteps

Columns

Dear Annie: I have been divorced for four years and share custody of my two children, ages 11 and 14. My ex-husband remarried last year, and I truly wanted his new wife to have a good relationship with the kids. At first, I was grateful. She was kind, showed up to their games and made an effort to include them. But lately, it feels like she is trying to become their mother instead of simply being their stepmother. She buys them clothes without asking, signs school forms, gives punishments and recently told my daughter she could come to her with “anything she wouldn’t feel ...

The central question of power in America

Columns

Behind this election’s dominant issue of affordability lies the record concentration of wealth at the top of America. The richest 0.001% of Americans — a handful of extraordinarily wealthy men — now control more of the nation’s wealth than at any time in modern history. To be sure, wealth is not a zero-sum game in which the riches of those at the top necessarily come at the expense of everyone else. But power is a zero-sum game, because the more of it that is held by some people, the less of it is held by others. Wealth cannot be separated from power. Great wealth becomes ...

Latin America’s many trumps

Columns

Latin America is turning right, and it’s a vindication for President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In some ways, the Cold War never really ended in the Western hemisphere: Socialism has haunted the nations of Central and South America long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the same Cuban regime the Soviet Union propped up for decades remains in power to this day. The hard left thought it had cemented control over Venezuela, too, thanks to Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro — until American forces snatched Maduro right out of his bed back in January and took ...

Dear Annie: My time doesn’t matter to her

Columns

Dear Annie: I have been married to a dear man for more than 40 years, but for much of that time, I have felt as though we are not really a team. My husband can be very kind in practical ways. He will happily run errands, fix things around the house and do small tasks for me. But when I truly need his support, especially during stressful or important situations, he often disappears emotionally. He does not defend me when it matters, and if I ask him to help with something difficult, even something he is experienced and qualified to handle, he may simply say, “I want nothing to do with ...

Local journalism is woven into the fabric of our communities

Columns

Across Pennsylvania, from small towns to major cities, a common thread quietly weaves communities together. It draws attention to a local high school’s championship hopes, the detectives who solved a decades-old cold case, a proposed data center seeking approval in a township or the celebration of a hometown business reaching its 100th anniversary. That thread is local journalism, and it is an essential part of the fabric that binds our communities. National Newspaper Week offers an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the role local news organizations, both print and digital, play ...

Christa Pike and the incomplete justice of death

Columns

Why do we kill? It’s a question unlikely to ever be answered to any degree of satisfaction, but one I found myself asking the other day after hearing about the botched execution of convicted murderer Christa Pike. In reading about the story, I learned that Pike and I are almost the same age. It occurred to me that while I was finishing up high school and preparing to go off to college, she was torturing and killing a Job Corps classmate who she thought was trying to steal her boyfriend. She’s been in prison ever since — spending most of the time on death row — while I’ve ...