WASHINGTON — I have a confession to make. I am one of the five remaining Americans who is uncomfortable with vulgarity, put off by profanity and offended by blasphemy.

If, by some crazy chance, you wanted to be well-informed these past few days about the sudden death of Jeffrey Epstein, there was a way.

Back in 2013, thousands of West Virginians came together to urge then Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin to expand Medicaid coverage to low income working adults under the Affordable Care Act.

When I was born in 1932, the world had 2 billion people. Today, the global population has swelled to 7.7 billion. The United Nations projects 11 billion by the end of this century.

There are some very disturbed people in this world. Two showed themselves recently in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, where they killed 31 people total. Nine in 30 seconds in Dayton.

WASHINGTON — To have a recession or not — that is the question.

WASHINGTON — When it comes to gun control, conservatives have been fortunate in their enemies. Every time there is a mass shooting, the left renews its calls for gun control, but it spends a great deal of energy on futile and ahistorical arguments about the wording of the Second Amendment, o…

If you’re playing poker, a handful of aces can be a good thing. If you’re growing up, not so much, especially if the aces stand for Adverse Childhood Experiences.

We keep hearing about this wonderful economy of ours. Jobs plentiful. Inflation low. Interest rates low. Where’s the problem?

At 5:30 on the morning of Aug. 14, 1945, Geraldine Wyatt heard shouting. That evening, she would write to her husband, Bill, who was stationed in Italy, “I was awakened by boys calling ‘Extra! Japan Surrenders!’ Joanna [her sister, who had spent the night] and I ran up the street in our paja…

WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has not been shy about saying what he’s trying to do: prolong the economy’s expansion so that it creates more jobs for those who, in the past, have often felt left out. The Fed increasingly sees itself as a social agency dedicated to job cr…

The administration of Charleston Mayor Amy Goodwin unveiled this week what she called “aggressive” measures to battle vacant and abandoned properties in her city. Aggressive accurately describes the two.

There is a good reason for businesses not to pay wages below a minimum. That’s because they would lose the ability to attract a replacement worker should they need to. And there’s good reason for society to set a minimum wage. That’s because there are always outliers who will pay dramaticall…

It never should have come to this.

WASHINGTON — Watching Democratic presidential aspirants is like watching, a century ago, the 1919 World Series, when discerning spectators thought: Some of the White Sox are trying to lose. Michael Boskin, chairman of President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers and currently at…

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s decision to put away his racist dog whistle and bring out his racist bullhorn has just one plausible explanation: desperation.

The Trump administration has recently proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that could take away food assistance from 3 million or more Americans.

There is an answer to the campaign finance quagmire caused by dark money, should our Legislature choose to implement it. What’s the quagmire? Some spending for candidates or issues are done without disclosure. So, we don’t always know who is supporting whom or what. Here’s the scoop.

WASHINGTON — Nothing unites Democrats more than a deep belief that President Donald Trump must be driven from office. And right now, nothing divides Democrats more than finding the best way to bring this about.

SAN DIEGO — For years, people have told me to stop talking about race and ethnicity. That sort of dialogue, they warn, only divides Americans.

WASHINGTON — The military-industrial complex isn’t bankrupting us — though some on the left still cling nostalgically to the belief that it is. It’s fiction. We need to be clear about this. As I’ve written before, one of the great uncovered stories in Washington is the defense budget versus …

NEW YORK — Britain has a new prime minister, and Donald Trump approves. “He’s tough and he’s smart,” Trump said of Boris Johnson. “They call him ‘Britain Trump.’ And people are saying that’s a good thing. They like me over there.” In fact, according to YouGov, only 21 percent of Britons have…

WASHINGTON — Acting on the principle “Why put it off until tomorrow when you can do the wrong thing today?” the House of Representatives last week voted to repeal a tax that is not scheduled to take effect until 2022. The vote against the “Cadillac tax” was 419-6, a reminder that “bipartisan…

The four Democratic House members who have been repeatedly targeted by President Trump evidently got under his skin because they criticized him and because, unlike him, they are black and brown and were elected by actual majorities.

Some will say that West Virginia’s new Catholic bishop came out of nowhere. The pope’s selection of Baltimore auxiliary bishop, Mark E. Brennan, was a surprise to Vatican observers who look for patterns in papal appointments as if they were tea leaves.

In fall 2001, I taught a sociology class at WVU-Tech. The semester had barely started when the 9/11 terrorist attacks shook the world.

We are a nation of immigrants. Even Native Americans migrated here by crossing a narrow land bridge. Yet America’s attitude toward immigration hasn’t been welcoming like most think. We’ve overreacted to immigrant waves since the 1790s. So, today’s concerns over legal and illegal (unauthorize…

This summer, I’m taking a tip from the Chantix turkey. You may have seen the ads for Chantix, a drug claiming to help people stop smoking gradually. The turkey character is seen trying to quit cigarettes in a calm, slow manner rather than going “cold turkey.” The mellow Galliforme calmly adj…

SAN FRANCISCO — A 29-story office building at 123 Mission St. illustrates the policy puzzles that fester because of these facts: For centuries, tobacco has been a widely used legal consumer good that does serious and often lethal harm when used as it is intended to be used. And its harmfulne…

WASHINGTON — When the racist chant began last Wednesday night — “Send her back! Send her back!” — President Trump paused to let the white-supremacist anger he had stoked wash over him. George Wallace would have been so proud.

Great deeds are possible when people are inspired to do them. We thought a moon landing wouldn’t happen in our lifetimes. Then, President John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural address, told us that it would.

Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., has such a big political crush on Donald Trump that Delegate Eric Porterfield, R-Mercer, may need to take Mooney swimming.

WASHINGTON — Debt is the crux of the matter. If you want to understand what makes the world vulnerable to a global recession or, possibly, something much worse, you’ve got to come to grips with the worldwide debt buildup. It’s not the only candidate for calamity, but it ranks first among the…

There’s been a lot of interest in the f-word lately. Of course, I mean the seven-letter one. To wit, fascism.

Melody Potter, state Republican Party chairwoman, has it right. She supports all Republican officeholders and so should the executive committees until they are no longer Republican officeholders. Specifically, they should stay out of primary elections. Otherwise, negative unintended conseque…

“Time has upset many fighting faiths.”

WASHINGTON — The superb athletes of the U.S. women’s national soccer team, once again winners of the World Cup, shouldn’t be paid as much as their counterparts on the men’s team. The women should be paid more. A lot more.

The date and time that American conservatism morphed into a species unknown to political scientists remains unclear. Nevertheless, following the embryo’s incubation, what emerged then quickly infected an earlier, healthier version of conservatism which now reposes in its tomb.

Seven people died on Independence Day as their helicopter plunged into the Bahamian sea. The remains of the victims have been recovered. The cause of the crash is unknown.

Jeffrey Epstein, the hedge fund manager and self-proclaimed billionaire, was charged with sex trafficking on Monday in federal court, a crime similar if not identical to one for which he was allowed to enter a plea deal in Florida in 2008 and avoid serious jail time.

If the Democratic debates have done one thing, they’ve recognized problems. And some candidates, to their credit, have identified sources of income (taxes) to pay for solutions. They also recommend the tax cuts of 2017 be reversed.

WASHINGTON — If California Sen. Kamala Harris is elected president in 2020 and reelected in 2024, by the time she leaves office 114 months from now she might have a coherent answer to the question of whether Americans should be forbidden to have what 217 million of them currently have: priva…

WASHINGTON — President Trump chose the wrong backdrop for his attempt to make Independence Day all about himself. Standing beneath the majestic statue of Abraham Lincoln, occupying a space where great orators have stood, Trump looked and sounded quite small.

NEW YORK — Today’s crisis of conservatism has produced surprisingly few books that try to understand what exactly has happened to the venerable creed.

I’ve often heard that if you slowly heat the water in which a frog is sitting, it won’t notice anything until it’s too late.

Independence Day is often referred to as the Fourth of July, but is it? That’s one diversionary conversation you might have with your politically strident relatives. Here are details, as well as other fun facts, for discussion to help keep the peace. You’re welcome.

Hypertourism has become the curse of desirable places all over the world. It refers to the swarms of tourists who clog the plazas and narrow streets of prized cultural destinations — Florence, Venice, Barcelona, Prague and others. Party cities, such as Amsterdam, where both prostitution and …

WASHINGTON — What struck me about the first debates among 20 candidates for the Democratic nomination for president was how much they resembled a gaggle of graduate students. All seemed articulate and intelligent. All had a good grasp of the classroom material — in this case, the programs th…

WASHINGTON -- We are now passing a significant milestone. The current economic expansion has become the longest in U.S. history. Previously, the record was the decade from March 1991 to March 2001 (120 months). When the present recovery enters July, it will mark the 121st month of expansion.…