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Citizenship

Editorials

Tuesday was National Voter Registration Day. Wednesday is Constitution Day and Citizenship Day. In other words, it is a week during which Americans are asked to think a little harder about what our founders had in mind when they were signing the Constitution back in 1787, and whether we are holding up our end of the bargain. In 2004, the late U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., (hard not to wonder what he’d have to say about the state of things these days, isn’t it?) tacked on an amendment to the omnibus spending bill that modified the law so that during the federal observance of ...

Funding

Editorials

State lawmakers created the Family Treatment Courts program in West Virginia back in 2019. Two years later, they were pleased enough with the program to make it permanent — under the state Supreme Court of Appeals’ supervision. For a while, this important program — 14 Family Treatment Courts in 18 counties, working to provide resources for parents overcoming substance use disorders while moving toward the safe reunification of families — was funded by federal grants and McKesson Corporation settlement funds through the West Virginia Office of Drug Control Policy. This year, ...

No More Violence

Editorials

When we look at our history, it is a timeline where the major marks are often political and frequently violent — and too regularly both. This is not unique to America. It is not a problem of modern history. It is global and timeless. Assassination has changed the face of the world from Ancient Egypt to the Roman Empire to medieval Europe. It first landed in the United States when Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre in 1865. The most recent example is the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Wednesday as he engaged with supporters and opponents at Utah Valley ...

Disease

Editorials

Southeast Ohio is facing the largest outbreak in the region’s confirmed cases of epizootic hemorrhagic disease in deer. An Ohio Division of Wildlife deer biologist told The Columbus Dispatch this year’s outbreak is the largest he has seen in his career, and that hundreds of dead or sick deer have been reported in Athens, Meigs, Monroe, Morgan, Noble and Washington counties. Mid-Ohio Valley counties in West Virginia have been affected, too. That will mean deer hunters will have to think a little differently about their trips. Pre-season scouts in West Virginia have reported ...

Stop the IRS’s stealth $700 Billion tax increase

Columnists

President Donald Trump has done an admirable job at defanging the IRS, which was converted into a weaponized agency targeting Democrats’ political enemies. Chief Justice John Marshall famously pronounced early in our nation’s history that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.” The Democrats inside the Biden IRS took that to heart. They hired thousands of new IRS agents to harass businesses, rich people and, in some cases, Republican donors. Some of the officers under infamous former IRS enforcer Lois Lerner, the woman who aimed her agency’s auditing guns at ...

Here’s to your healthcare

Columnists

Last week marked the first legislative interim meetings since the end of June, with lawmakers getting a two-month summer break. Well, some lawmakers. Much of Republican legislative leadership spent their summer in planning meetings for a possible special session that did not happen. At one point, there was a hard date set for a special session in July. But then that was moved back to September coinciding with last week’s interims. It should be obvious that a special session — which was to be focused on the Public Employees Insurance Agency (PEIA) — did not occur. While ...