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Thanks for ‘Screen Time Awareness’

Thank you to Randolph County School Counselors for organizing the local “Screen Time Awareness Week” activities in Elkins.  The goal of this event was to encourage students to spend more time with their families doing activities that do not include cell phones, computers, or televisions.  It was delightful to host school children and their parents or grandparents visiting Kump Education Center. Counselors are aware of the changes that screens make in the social behavior of children. Adults use screens more frequently now to keep kids occupied and to teach academic subjects in ...

All eyes on Hegseth

Watching Secretary of War, or is it defense, Pete Hegseth, trying to transmit the latest from the front is a fairly queasy exercise. He tries to be definitive but casually dismisses every concern by stressing that you “Don’t need to worry about it”. Compare his facile analysis with Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine’s sharp and incisive reports. Caine sees War as serious, not a game to play on a phone. He is not optimistic nor pessimistic; he is just the facts, and nothing but the facts. Hegseth blends many of the worst traits of the Viet Nam style of optimism without ...

Beware the Ides of March

William Shakespeare gave us a great line with the warning to Julious Caesar to “beware the ides of March.” But that warning should have been given to the House of Delegates a few hours earlier Saturday on the final day of the 2026 legislative session. I’m referring to the trainwreck of parliamentary procedure and calendar management regarding House Bill 5537, the bill that became the vehicle for this year’s version of Raylee’s Law to help protect children when they’re parents or guardians try to pull them from public school while under CPS investigation.  The state ...

‘Easy way out’ may not be so easy after all

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how it’s “taking the easy way out” to use GLP-1s to lose weight. That may be true. But then again, you might be able to say the same thing about virtually every medical advancement. When you boil it down, chemotherapy is “taking the easy way out” of testicular cancer. Penicillin is “taking the easy way out” of a bacterial infection. The MMR shot is “taking the easy way out” of getting the measles. You could be suffering and dying along with everyone else who’s had the problem since the beginning of time but, instead, you’re ...

Trump reverses Obama

Donald Trump has always been the anti-Obama. He rose in opposition to President Obama and has reversed many of his Democratic predecessor’s policies. But perhaps no Trump undertaking runs more directly counter to Obama’s approach than the Iran War. Obama sought to accommodate the Iranian regime, while Trump hopes to topple it. Obama tolerated an Iranian nuclear program, even if one theoretically constrained by a nuclear deal, whereas Trump wants to destroy it. Obama facilitated the rise of Iranian power in the region. Trump, in contrast, is endeavoring to crush it. Back ...

Political parties on perilous ground

As Donald Trump’s Republicans look askance as he launches what looks to some like another long-term war in the Middle East, and as the anti-Trump Democrats hold up Homeland Security funding in what looks to some like prioritizing illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens, one is tempted to ask, what’s going on with America’s political parties? Something close to self-harm, you might answer. And yet it is apparent that the U.S. parties, the oldest and third-oldest in the world, are not in as much trouble as many old parties abroad. In Britain, both Conservatives and Labour are ...