Tag: featured

Chronic Pain & Opioids: Debunking The Myths

What is chronic pain? Chronic pain is a progressive disease of the nervous system, caused by failure of the body’s internal pain control systems. The disease is accompanied by changes in the chemical and anatomical makeup of the spinal cord. Chronic pain is a malignancy, in the sense that when it goes untreated, it increases in intensity and spreads to areas that weren’t previously affected, damaging the sufferer’s health and functioning.

Who is Peter Mekeel to practice pain medicine?

The column “Just a regular guy…hooked on pain pills” is a disgrace to Lancaster journalism and a lapse in the judgment of not only the columnist, that as far we know is not a physician let alone a specialist in pain medicine, but also of his editors.

But it isn’t just irresponsibly bad journalism because of the misinformation and conclusions it implies, but because it jeopardizes the very lives of hundreds of persons living in Lancaster County who suffer from great pain.

LETTER:Anti-intellectual, angry, ideologically mind locked, and vested interest, culture

What is so mind numbing is the repetition (ad nauseum) of simplistic, irrelevant, and/or erroneous, economic cliches like “deficits are always bad, spending cuts are always good, tax cuts are always good, the wealthy create jobs, etc etc. Plus, there is the equally irrelevant ideological cliches like the absolute good of smaller government, freedom of the marketplace, personal responsibility, entitlements are bad etc.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court upholds beer sales at Wegmans stores

From the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday upheld sales of beer at Wegmans stores across the state, potentially opening the door for beer sales at other supermarkets and big retailers. In a unanimous decision, the seven justices found that the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board properly granted licenses to Wegmans Food Market Inc. to sell beer at eating areas in its supermarkets.

LETTER: Wikileaks and the Drug War

The latest Wikileaks “dump” generated a firestorm of headlines and opinion, much of which echoes those expressed almost four decades ago following publication of the Pentagon Papers. Although the stimuli for both unauthorized releases of classified information were foolish, expensive, and fundamentally dishonest American wars, the two people most responsible for the exposes could not be more different.

Supermarkets sale of wine coming to county

According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, “Shop ‘n Save said Thursday that four of its local stores now have self-serve wine kiosks.] Supermarkets in Bethel Park, at Century Square in West Mifflin, along Route 8 in Shaler and on the Scott/Heidelberg border have the machines that dispense a variety of wines. Every kiosk has a built-in breathalyzer to ensure buyers aren’t intoxicated, plus features to prevent underage buyers from making purchases.

Pardon us: Shame on the Obama administration

Our founding fathers, understanding that laws and their administrations are imperfect and that special circumstances merit special treatment, provided the president with the power to pardon individuals convicted of a federal crime.

Yet we are told by the Associated Press that “President Barack Obama has granted the first pardons of his presidency, to nine people convicted of crimes including possessing drugs, counterfeiting and even mutilating coins.

Library System Administrator resigns post

Lancaster, PA- At a special Library System Board meeting held on Monday, November 29 at 7:00 pm, Susan Hauer, Administrator for the Library System resigned as Library System Administrator, a position that she held since October of 2003. Hauer will be leaving her post along with the current Library System Board to allow for a new start for the public library services in the County.

INTELLIGENCER NEW ERA

Letter to the editor entitled “Saddened by Pledge dispute” by Jack Schuring asks “When did it become commonplace to not be proud of this country.”

WATCHDOG: This is a fair question. Of course questioning governmental policies has always been countenanced. But Mr. Schuring is correct that a large segment of the population is losing respect for our nation’s goals.

There are two major causes:

PA needs real reform

From the BEAVER COUNTY TIMES: … But in the overall culture of things, going after state-funded vehicles should rank low on Corbett’s priorities. If he wants to bring about change Pennsylvania residents can believe in, Corbett must go after two areas that cry out for reform – campaign finance laws and ethics standards for the judiciary.

LANCASTER INTELLIGENCER NEW ERA

The Intell editorial “GM bailout pays off” points out the GM bailout “has returned billions of dollars o the public treasury, GM is still a major American employer – with many more workers at affiliated car dealers- with interesting vehicles now for sale and in the pipeline.”

Tea Partiers (and others) should watch Charles Ferguson on Charlie Rose

Tea Partiers are simply barking up the wrong tree, turning their ire on high government spending and the so called ‘welfare state’ but missing the main cause of the joblessness and fiscal deficits. If they devoted twenty minutes to watching the Charlie Rose conversation with filmmaker Charles Ferguson concerning his forthcoming documentary “Inside Job” on how the financial industries (‘Wall Street’) have systematically lied, cheated, stolen and exploited America…