The Smithgall campaign served to point out areas for improvement in the management of the city. Mayor Gray would be wise to pay heed to constructive criticism.

The median wage — half of workers make more, half less — came to $27,519 last year, virtually unchanged from 2011. Measured in 2012 dollars, the median wage was down $4…

If marijuana is widely legalized for recreational purposes (only Washington State and Colorado have taken that step), the consequences are far from clear. But assuming the argument that alcohol and marijuana are “substitutes” bears out, that could be good news, especially for road safety. Of the two substances, alcohol is far more hazardous.

“Hauling in money from gambling is an easy out for politicians. It lets them avoid making tough calls – either holding back spending or collecting more money through taxes,” editorialized the Harrisburg Patriot-News last week.

Though the presentment suggests McQueary saw an anal rape, McQueary later testified he did not directly observe that. He said he heard rhythmic slapping and saw a naked Sandusky closely positioned with a boy, concluding it was a sexual act.

FINANCIAL TIMES: Public investment in the US has hit its lowest level since demobilisation after the second world war because of Republican success in stymieing President Barack Obama’s push for more spending on infrastructure, science and education.

Based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former administration officials and outsiders who worked alongside them, the project was hampered by the White House’s political sensitivity to Republican hatred of the law — sensitivity so intense that the president’s aides ordered that some work be slowed down or remain secret for fear of feeding the opposition. Inside the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, the main agency responsible for the exchanges, there was no single administrator whose full-time job was to manage the project.

An argument can be made for eliminating football from the activities of all high schools due to the potential damage to players through concussions. But if a school is going to have a football team and if it has one of the larger student bodies in the region, the team should not lose game after game, many by lopsided scores.

DRUG WAR CHRONICLE: After last weekend’s International Drug Reform Conference in Denver, a clear picture is emerging of which states are likely to be the first to follow Colorado and Washington down the path of marijuana legalization.

In 2003, researchers went to Indonesia to collect cores of sediment from the seas where water from the Pacific flows into the Indian Ocean. They compared the levels of magnesium to calcium in the shells of Hyalinea balthica, a one-celled organism buried in those sediments, in order to estimate the temperature of the middle-depth waters where the organism lived, about 1,500 to 3,000 feet below sea level.

Mayor Rick Gray advocated to NewsLanc on behalf of the “green infrastructure pan.” However, when our publisher, a long time real estate developer ask to meet with City Planner Randy Patterson to discuss the storm water system, Patterson with Gray’s support rebuffed him.

NEW YORK TIME: The architect of a recent legal crackdown on Wall Street’s dubious mortgage practices was not the attorney general, a United States attorney or a rising star in the Justice Department. Instead, it was Leon W. Weidman, an unassuming 69-year-old career prosecutor, toiling away in anonymity 3,000 miles from Washington…