The county has done it before, but the latest effort to give residents a safe venue for disposing of unused, unwanted prescription drugs also merits an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

The project avoids the possibility of those drugs ending up in the wrong hands or perhaps posing a danger to other people, wildlife or the environment.

The upcoming Butler County Prescription Drug Take Back Day is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 29 at two locations. They are the state police barracks at 200 Barracks Road in Butler Township and the Cranberry Township Police Department at 2525 Rochester Road.

The collection is being held in conjunction with a National Prescription Drug Take Back Day set up by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

During the collections, no one will be asking questions of the people dropping off drugs. The program is aimed simply at making it easier to safely dispose of medications whose usefulness has expired or when the medication no longer is needed.

The DEA deserves praise for this effort on a nationwide scale, and officials here are right to partner with a local event.

This is a win-win project that ought to be repeated at least once every year.

Another example of the politics-at-the-expense-of-progress attitude in Congress is the current effort to give taxpayers a simpler way to help with national debt reduction.While Republicans have put forth a reasonable voluntary federal-tax-form checkbox proposal, similar to the checkbox for voluntary contributions to the presidential election campaign fund, they couldn't resist a dig at President Barack Obama and Democrats by calling the proposal the Buffett Rule Act.The original Obama-backed Buffett Rule bill, which failed in the Senate in April, would have required top earners to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. Republicans appear to have used Buffett's name in their bill to rankle Democrats.“The Buffett Rule Act is a common-sense alternative to President Obama's divisive class warfare calls for higher taxes, and it allows Warren Buffett and others like him to voluntarily donate more of their money to pay down our national debt,” said Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the bill's sponsor.Buffett has said he and other wealthy people don't pay enough in taxes.If Republicans really wanted to adopt a worthy measure while ensuring the least opposition possible, there were myriad name possibilities for which they could have opted without angering Obama and Democrats.By using a generic name, they could have made any Democratic opposition to the measure seem irresponsible. But the temptation to put politics first shows why there is so little bipartisanship in Washington any more.The GOP was right, but it also was wrong.

It's understandable why the Grove City School Board decided to stop reciting a prayer at the beginning of its meetings. The district could have faced a costly lawsuit if the Wisconsin-based atheist group Freedom From Religion Foundation had proceeded with a threat to sue the district over the prayer issue.But if no district resident ever came forward to protest the prayer, there was no justification for the out-of-state group to involve itself in district matters.If some resident or residents objected to prayer at the meeting, they should have been the ones to come forward to protest it.The district has more than enough local concerns to attend to without having to deal with complaints from someone without any ties to the district.The Freedom From Religion Foundation should flex its muscle in locales where its presence is sought, not where its presence is a nuisance, as it apparently was in Grove City.From the standpoint of taxpayers, the Grove City board acted correctly, but, based on what's been made public, such action should not have been necessary.