Opinion

Pay attention, kids! It's time for your last social studies lesson before school's out due to budget cuts!

In short, Luke Gehring says this is a big deal?a very big deal, and if you could only see one local show this year, this is the one not to miss. Read on to see why he says so.

With the RNC finished and the DNC underway, conventions and their effects are heating up.

Maybe you noticed, maybe you didn?t, but I was away for a good chuck of the summer. At the Olympics, working a contract gig for NBC editing internal newsletters. So I was there, in London, for sport?s biggest pageantry. Here are some thoughts and observations:

Find your city! Find yourself a city to live in.

The Pennsylvania Division of the U.S. Border Patrol re-fights the Battle of Lake Erie 200 years after Perry!

Now up for discussion: Affordable care, that guy on county council, and voter ID.

Birtherism still lives. I know. I encountered it on Facebook when one of my ?friends? posted a link and a video detailing how President Barack Obama?s long-form birth certificate ? released early in 2011 ? is actually a forgery.

So Mitt Romney was in the news again.

Erie's favorite rascal is back at it.

Here?s a fact. The Earth is warming. The global temperature has risen about 1.3?F in the last 150 years, and two-thirds of that increase has occurred since the 1980s.

This is the 63rd week in a row that I?ve had the pleasure of addressing you, dear Reader readers. That?s roughly 63,000 words I?ve pushed out of this bully pulpit called ?Upfront,? the equivalent of a short novel. If you were to go back and read them all, just like a novel, you?d find recurring themes that permeate that novel as well as permeate our city, our region, and our culture. You?d also creep me out just a little bit, because, come on, who would do that?

Iraq, Swedes, and the bottom of the ocean. Upfront is making some unsubstantiated generalizations.

Bugs is back!

Happy Birthday, America! Here's a history lesson from Upfront.