WASHINGTON — I get what Joe Biden was trying to say, but I’ll never understand how he tried — and utterly failed — to say it.

Whatever Kyle Kashuv’s defenders would have you believe, using the n-word 12 times in one sentence is not a youthful indiscretion. It’s not like Senior Skip Day or drinking Natty Boh in someone’s basement; it’s not a word that accidentally falls out of your mouth, and its offensiveness is no…

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., argued that Democrats need to pay far more attention to rural America if they ever want to take back the Senate. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., urged his party to be more open to people of faith. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., spoke for new …

WASHINGTON — That the Democrats’ two evenings of dueling oratory snippets this week are called “debates” validates Finley Peter Dunne’s prediction that “when we Americans are through with the English language, it will look as if it had been run over by a musical comedy.”

Either Gov. Jim Justice is confused or I am. His idea of the governor’s job and mine don’t seem to mesh. I view the governor like a basketball coach, coaching players from the team bench. He appears to want to coach state government from the parking lot and communicate with players by flip p…

As Iowa journalist Robert Leonard talks to voters around his state, he finds himself baffled at the national portrayal of Joe Biden’s dominance in the presidential campaign.

WASHINGTON — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, is a man from the 1930s. If you didn’t believe that before, you certainly should believe it now. Sanders last week gave a powerful speech at George Washington University defending his i…

“It is a great advantage to a president,” said the 30th of them, “and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man.” Or, Calvin Coolidge would say today, a great woman. While today’s incumbent advertises himself as an “extremely stable genius” and those who …

WASHINGTON — When the president of the United States sides with a murderous dictator over our own CIA, you would think it would be big news. When that dictator is a communist who has threatened the United States with missile attacks, you would think leaders of the Republican Party might be a…

Sarah Krause is leaving West Virginia for good. She grandly announced her departure in Sunday’s Gazette-Mail after describing her mounting frustration veering into exasperation.

What Would Ronald Reagan Do?

Delegate Isaac Sponaugle, D, Pendleton, has taken Gov. Jim Justice to court because the West Virginia Constitution says, “They shall reside at the seat of government during their terms of office ...”

NEW YORK — Whatever the ultimate outcome of Donald Trump’s conflict with Mexico, one consequence is already clear. He has undermined one of the most impressive American foreign policy achievements of the last three decades. Mexico used to be a reflexively anti-American country, radical and r…

Elmo Cook knew nothing about it.

”And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech, Jan. 20, 1961

If you want to know what revenge looks like, you don’t have to look much further than the latest version of the “ominous omnibus” education bill passed by the West Virginia Senate. It seems to me that they want to make an example of what can happen to working people when they dare to fight b…

Independence Day is a time for reflection on your history. Whether your forebearers came as a slave from the coast of West Africa, as an escapee from debtor’s prison in Ireland, a victim of persecution in Germany or an adventurer on the Mayflower, you most likely can trace your background to…

Editor’s note: This column was originally published Sept. 2, 2007. It is being re-published in recognition of the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

The 75th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, will be observed with a variety of coverage looking at the overall picture. Over 40 soldiers from Kanawha County landed in Normandy on D-Day. These are biographies of three who died in Operation Overlord, better known as the N…

That was a pretty stunning story about the White House asking some Navy officials to move the warship USS John McCain “out of sight” during President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Japan. The obvious fear was that sharing any stage with the war hero would unhinge the president. McCain died l…

If a union wanted to convince West Virginians we should reinstate the prevailing wage law, they might commission a study, conclude that it didn’t have “much” of an impact, and argue, “So, why not reinstate it?” Further, they may reason, since reinstatement won’t be done by our Republican-con…

Politically speaking, 2020 is a long time from now. But, if close associates keep undercutting him, President Donald Trump will soon find himself with nothing but, as Springsteen put it, “boring stories of glory days.”

WASHINGTON — We may be on the cusp of an upheaval in global trade. Since World War II, the international trading system has operated on the premise of “most favored nation (MFN),” meaning that concessions granted to one country must be extended to all countries in the system. The trade stand…

WASHINGTON — What would a president have to do, hypothetically, to get this Congress to impeach him?

WASHINGTON — The cascading effects of U.S. protectionism on U.S. producers and consumers constitute an ongoing tutorial about what Daniel Patrick Moynihan called “iatrogenic government.” In medicine, an iatrogenic ailment is one inadvertently caused by a physician or medicine. Iatrogenic gov…

WASHINGTON — Permit me a question to every truly fair-minded person in our country. Imagine that one party packs the Supreme Court with ideologues and the other party does absolutely nothing in response. Isn’t this abject surrender to an unscrupulous power grab?

Robert Moses, the imperious titan of New York City’s parks, called them “the outward visible symbol of democracy.” Moses’ observation is ironic because during his 40-year career he ruthlessly consolidated and deployed the powers of the state to build that city’s sprawling system.

The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce does a great job of representing the economic interests of its members. It can kill bills with a frown and win without even showing up. That’s been true with both Democratic and Republican majorities.

Lucian Truscott apologized to those who died.

The anti-vaccine folks are providing us with so many cases of measles that I am seeing spots before my eyes. In recognition of their Olympian denial of both research and common experience, I offer the anti-vaxxers additional morsels of medical advice that they may find tasty.

NEW YORK — Many of us have been waiting for a new Sputnik moment, the point at which the challenge from China spurs America to get its act together. We may now be witnessing such a watershed, but in Beijing. The Trump administration’s decision to blacklist Huawei — the world’s seventh-larges…

Earlier this month, The Washington Post ran a story about “work twins,” people in a workplace who were often mistaken for colleagues of similar ethnicity.

WASHINGTON — It’s often said that when our founders wrote the Constitution, they had a leader like Donald Trump in mind when they included various safeguards for our liberties and against abuses of presidential power.

WASHINGTON — After correcting for inflation, wage gains remain sluggish. In April, average weekly earnings for nonsupervisory workers were up 3 percent from a year earlier, to $785.55. Meanwhile, prices as measured by the consumer price index were up 2 percent.

Politicians around the country have shed a lot of crocodile tears for coal miners and their families in recent years. I suspect that many of these have been theatrical in nature.

The Loan Shark Protection Act would limit the interest charged on credit cards to 15 percent. A 15 percent cap would be too low — naively too low. Too bad the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, weren’t more careful, because their clumsy approach hands amm…

One is solid, the other is squishy.

WASHINGTON — It’s a long-standing joke among journalists that the go-to political headline in a pinch is: “Democrats in Disarray.” Somewhere, somehow, it’s probably true.

WASHINGTON — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just released its latest statistics on U.S. births. Boring, you say. Not so. Historic birth patterns tell us a lot about where the country has been — and where it might be going.

The results are in.

The aftermath of the Great War brought about the formation of the American Legion, when members of the American Expeditionary Force met in Paris from March 15-17, 1919. With 463 registered for the meeting, possibly more than 1,000 attended.

Good evening, graduates and friends of Don Knotts Senior High, the home of the Fighting Cowards.

“Public has spoken, but will politicians listen?” At least that’s the claim of a May 8th op-ed headline in this paper regarding education reform. Well, has the public spoken? No. But you have to read the fine print in the West Virginia Department of Education’s report to understand.

WASHINGTON — A man who worked in a boxer’s corner in a 1962 match against Cassius Clay, as he still was known, explained why the referee stopped the fight in the fourth round: “Things just went sour gradually all at once.” It can be like that when government dabbles in protectionism.

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the referees.”

When my husband, writer David French, criticized Franklin Graham for political double standards, the backlash after his recent National Review article revealed the fallacy of the evangelical “lesser of two evils” voting strategy in 2016.

Happy Days are Here Again — for some people. The ultra wealthy are doing very well, thanks to tax breaks and an administration that favors them in many ways.

Special counsel Robert Mueller III wrote to Attorney General William Barr to accuse Barr of “... fail(ing) to capture the nature, context and substance” of Mueller’s 400-plus page report. In other words, Barr distorted the entire report. Sadly, Barr has prostituted himself to the service of …

There were some rough and embarrassing moments in the last legislative session, but some good things came out of it.