Two months into my first semester at Purdue University, there was a Ku Klux Klan rally at the Tippecanoe County Courthouse, across the Wabash River from campus.
Someone left me a voicemail the other day.
Is it really news that Karen Bass will become the first female mayor of Los Angeles? In an era when women have already run Chicago, Phoenix, Fort Worth, Charlotte, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Boston, the gender of the new Los Angeles mayor should not have dominated the head…
If you eat turkey this week, give thanks to Sarah Josepha Hale (1788 — 1879). Why? She’s the reason turkey is the feature on Thanksgiving. Fact is, she’s largely responsible for Thanksgiving itself.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., doesn’t give a damn what I think, and one could hardly blame him. He has fared well enough on his own.
A political house built on mass delusion cannot stand. That lesson was delivered the hard way to the Republican Party when its anticipated “red wave” turned out to be a nosebleed, compliments of voters who’d had enough of the Big Lie and its extended family of false beliefs.
As expected, Donald Trump announced Tuesday evening that he’s running for president again in 2024, a week after Republicans turned in one of the worst midterm performances in 80 years for either party with a member of the opposite party in the White House.
Why did Democrats beat expectations that they’d get swamped on Election Day? Was it Republican attacks on abortion rights? Was it a misreading of how much the public blamed Democrats for inflation? And what about the role played by fear of crime and the perceived chaos at the border?
A little more than seven years ago, I visited good friend Shannon Wells in Portland, Oregon.
Well, that election didn’t settle anything. Republicans and Democrats traded some seats, but neither party really lost. However, Donald Trump did. So much so that I think he will be remembered as the second Harold Stassen of the Republican Party. Here’s more.
The sites of horror — the places where mass murder happened — are seared into my memory. Holocaust sites like the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz, or Kigali, where the Hutus butchered the Tutus, or the Falls Road in Belfast, where many died over the decades of strife.
It was always surprising to hear voices on the fringe left downplay the COVID-era spike in crime. Still more amazing, though, were the grown-ups in the Democratic Party who seemed to be giving them a sympathetic listen.
Democrats lie in the deepening graves they keep digging. They thump their heads bloody against brick, wondering why the wall won’t fall. They add one and one and get zero.
The party of forcing 10-year-olds to have babies should have seen it coming, as the “red wave” was reduced to a backwater ripple in the midterm elections.
I’ve heard a lot of people and local politicians call this a fairly quiet election cycle in West Virginia, and I have to agree. I didn’t see as many ads on TV or online, or hear them on the radio.
When I was a kid of 5 or 6, I used to make cassette tape snippets of the football announcers’ voices. Then I’d run into the next room so I could hear the description again and relive what I saw.
Annual inflation increased from 3.2% in 2011 to 8.3% in 2022. What’s that got to do with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.? Without him, it would have been worse. Here’s more.
I love “The Lord of the Rings.” It’s my favorite book (or series of books depending on how you look at it) and I think one of the reasons it endures is because author J.R.R. Tolkien deliberately steered clear of allegory and went for something he saw as more effective, which is applicability.
Few of the damnable sorts plodding about American life are more damnable than the politician, whose annual hour in the election limelight is at hand once more.
Are you better off now than you were two years ago? Back then, your president was telling you that your racist, sexist, homophobic, antisemitic or ethnocentric weakness made you a better citizen. Today, Joe Biden reminds you that those traits are handicaps. Today, we are light years ahead.
If I were one of those people who believed the song “Country Roads” wasn’t really about West Virginia, I wouldn’t center my case on the geographical features listed in the first few lines of the tune (they do, after all, exist partly in the state). Instead, I would point out that John Denver…
Russia has many reasons to regret its savage war on Ukraine, but a very lasting one will be how it supercharged Europe’s plans to end its dependence on that country’s oil and gas. Europe was already well into a campaign to replace fossil fuels with clean renewable energy, mainly to slow clim…
Food, clothing and shelter are basic issues in scripture and on the table now for an increasing number of Americans. The country has become polarized between the rich and poor, haves and have-nots and those who can survive and those who will not.
I left my blue jeans on the bathroom floor.
You know that Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was severely beaten with a hammer inside their home Friday. Law enforcement told CBS News that this was “not a random act” and that the suspect’s social media posts showed that he spread conspiracy theories about Hol…
Drag queens are men who perform dressed up as women. Once an underground art form, drag shows have gone mainstream. Today they are widely regarded as innocent fun: The wildly popular “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is in its 14th season.
Incognizance of history begets banality, particularly in populist and pop culture swirls, where Watergate analogies are trotted out by clods who couldn’t tell a tape from a tap.
If the GOP retakes the U.S. House of Representatives next month, West Virginia’s representatives, who are certain to be Carol Miller and Alex “The Phantom” Mooney, will march in lock step with the party’s leaders, Reps. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. McCarthy has…
I’ve got a kid in elementary school at the age where he is supposed to be making the transition from “learning to read to reading to learn,” as the cliche goes.
Tourism in Salem is wild, with 100,000 visitors descending on this historic Massachusetts town on any given day. Traffic is gridlocked, and there are virtually no parking spaces left. The mayor told visitors to go to satellite parking lots and take shuttle buses downtown. Then, the satellite…
“Did she reach out to you?” the woman asked me.
My credit card shuts down when the balance gets too high. Congress, however, sets its own limit. Well, get ready for the debt ceiling debate again as we’re fixing to hit the current limit of $31.4 trillion in 2023. In the meantime, how’d we get here? Should we raise it? Here’s more.
As Russian forces continue their retreat on the battlefield in Ukraine, Moscow has turned to attacking stationary civilian targets that don’t shoot back. It’s pathetic. And Russia’s failure to intimidate Ukraine through wanton destruction can be seen in the flow of the two peoples.
Having no better ideas, some people pursue public trust principally by means of duplicity in hopes it will be downed by dupes voting accordingly.
Throughout 10 public hearings, the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6 has brought forth a tsunami of evidence to convince all but the terminally closed-minded that Donald Trump calculated a premeditated attempt to bring an end to American democracy.
April 15 used to be a dreaded day on the calendar for most Americans, including reporters.
We can well understand Joe Kent’s grief over the death of his wife. Shannon was a U.S. Navy cryptologic technician who tragically died in a suicide bombing in Syria.
All hail the brew pub. Or alehouse, barrelhouse, bistro, bottle club, cabaret, dive, joint or nightclub, just to name a few synonyms cited by Merriam-Webster.
Last week, Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., introduced a bill to return the United States to the gold standard (House Resolution 9157). Purportedly to reign in Washington’s irresponsible spending habits and to fight inflation. Poppycock. He’s ignoring its harm. Here’s more.
About five years ago, when I was still commuting from Kentucky to Charleston every day, I ran into a local politician in the grocery store near my house. He was part of the Greenup County Commission, one of the first governing agencies I covered when I was cutting my teeth as a young reporter.
We are a nation of immigrants, and, in many ways, this is one of our greatest strengths. But today, we are struggling to understand how we should address the flood of immigrants coming into the country. This is not the first time we have wrestled with this issue; if we are honest with oursel…
As newspapers teeter and some fall, gaps are widening with a few scattered souls scrambling to fill the void.
A day without Elon Musk is an OK day. Not that I don’t like him. He’s a business genius, after all, who launched the electric-vehicle future. He helped preserve online access in a battered Ukraine by sending over 12,000 Starlink terminals that work with orbiting satellites. Ukraine thanked h…
I’ve never smoked pot. I prefer to cope with stress without getting gunk in my lungs.
Everyone praying at once, aloud, always puzzled me.
Public education was a major concern of West Virginia’s founders. Article 12, Section 1 of the state constitution says: “The Legislature shall provide, by general law, for a thorough and efficient system of free schools.”
Would the United States send troops from West Virginia to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion? “Yes, if in fact, there was an unprecedented attack.” That’s what President Joe Biden said. Here’s why.
“I sympathize with the victims of Hurricane Sandy and believe that those who purchased flood insurance should have their claims paid,” then-Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis said upon voting against a $9.7 billion aid package for Sandy’s victims in 2013. But, he went on, letting the program increase…
Some corporate executives are crooks in suits. Some corporate newspaper executives are crooks in empty suits.
Count me among those with serious doubt that large numbers of pitchfork and torch-wielding MAGA believers will take to the streets, as Donald Trump seems to hope, should he be indicted.
