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‘Focus on Education’ meetings

This week we plan to begin “First Friday Focus on Education” meetings in the Learning Lab at Kump Education Center, 401 S. Randolph Avenue across from Kroger, at 4 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 7. Several people have shown their interest in helping teachers and coaches provide opportunities that students need to become healthy and effective citizens. This week we will discuss basic education issues including but not limited to the following topics: 1. Safety: As a young teacher I believed that we were “not just babysitters,” but as a parent and grandparent I earnestly hope ...

Certificate of Need program

As debates rage about health care regulation, West Virginia’s Certificate of Need (CON) law has come under increased scrutiny, but the reality is this program plays an important role in helping ensure access to care for all West Virginians. Critics argue that this program stifles competition and drives up costs. However, removing the CON program would devastate our state’s delicate rural health care ecosystem and ultimately harm the very communities these critics claim to champion. West Virginia’s rugged geography and sparse population create unique health care challenges. Our ...

Grateful for winter

As has been true for so many across the country, including those in the deep south, the winter of 2025 has been a memorable one in the West Virginia mountains. I have heard many stories of winters past that left indelible memories. Cafeteria trays transformed into sleds on the front campus hill, epic snowball fights, and trudging through feet of snow to reach class seem to be rites of passage for D&E students. The recent bout of wintry weather that began in very early January has been the most significant I have experienced in my nine winters in Elkins. Snow measured in feet rather ...

House flipping

The fight over whether to appoint a Republican or a Democrat to the 91st District House of Delegates seat is a fascinating one for me, a former legislative staffer who nerds out over these kinds of questions. I’ve had a story in the papers nearly every other day regarding the writ of mandamus lawsuit filed by the West Virginia Democratic Party, so I won’t go into the minute details. But here is a summary: Voters in the 91st District in Berkeley County vote for Republican Joseph de Soto in the May over Tammy Hess and former delegate Don Forsht. De Soto won the November general ...

Is Trump the second coming of Jackson?

The portrait of Andrew Jackson has returned to the wall of the Oval Office, put up in time to greet President Donald Trump as he entered for the first time as the 47th president. It’s a choice Democrats are poorly positioned to criticize, even though the seventh president owned slaves and ordered the Southeastern Indians west on the Trail of Tears. Inconveniently, Jackson was long a Democratic icon, nominated for his second term in 1832 by the first Democratic National Convention, and there is something to be said for the man who founded what is now the world’s oldest political ...

Invitation to worship

The tone was set by Franklin Graham’s invocation. Preachers are a fixture at presidential inaugurations, but until now they’ve confined their words to asking the Almighty to bless the new president and his family and to guide the nation to goodness and mercy. The prophets were popular choices. Not this time. Graham used the opportunity not to praise God but to worship Donald Trump. Regarding the inauguration, Graham exulted, “Look what the Lord has done!” It was a theme the most glassy-eyed Trump acolytes have sounded since the Pennsylvania assassination attempt — that God ...