EDITOR: Often young people, children and grandchildren, have a much greater aversion to death than do the elderly who accept the inevitable and, because of ongoing illness and loss of control of their own lives, are ready to move on.

….The [Center for Rural Pennsylvania] study found that more than 80 percent of the students who leave a traditional public school to attend a charter school enroll in one whose performance on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests is inferior to the school they left.

The poll takes into account the 12.7 percent registration edge Democrats have in the state, [Corbett Campaign manager Mike] Barley said, an edge unlikely to be reflected in turnout on Election Day.

DRUG WAR CHRONICLE: Canada’s “Prince of Pot” Marc Emery has finally returned home after spending just over 4 ½ years in US federal prison for selling marijuana seeds over the Internet. From his base in Vancouver, BC, Emery parlayed his pot seed profits into a pro-marijuana legalization political juggernaut.

..[T]the well-funded summer camp, which plucks an elite group of teenagers out of the cauldron of the Middle East and sets them down in the wilds of Northern Maine each year, is taking place this August in the immediate aftermath of the third, and bloodiest, Israeli military incursion into Gaza since 2008…

If the election had been held on the day the voters took the poll, Wolf would’ve taken 49 percent of the vote to Corbett’s 24 percent, with 25 percent of voters undecided, according to the poll. View the entire poll at the bottom of this entry…

But this time in Iraq, our mission can be limited, with progress measured to determine whether the costs are worth the security benefits. That’s because the primary mission is not the removal and reconstruction of the Iraqi government; our real undertaking is to stop the radical terrorist group, ISIS (also known as Islamist State), from having a safe haven in Iraq…

Wolf, 65, a York County businessman and former state Department of Revenue secretary, told Tribune-Review reporters and editors on Tuesday that his legislative priorities are a severance tax on natural gas, a progressive approach to income taxes, connecting Pennsylvania regions through better infrastructure and expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act to receive federal dollars…

Folmer met with constituents whose children have epilepsy who heard how certain forms of marijuana can curb potentially fatal seizures. The evidence they provided dispelled his “preconceived notions,” and now Folmer is half of a bipartisan team looking to legalize cannabis for medical use in Pennsylvania.

HARRISBURG PATRIOT-NEWS Column: After three years of revenues falling short of expectation, Illinois is parting ways with the private management firm it hired in 2010 to run its state lottery.

“Maybe we are understored. Maybe there are retail chains clamoring for space here. But how wise is it to build yet more retail space within a stone’s throw of existing space that’s struggling?”

Pennsylvania is in the bottom 10 in the United States. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics show our state taxes only covered 35.8 percent of public education costs for 2010.