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Columns/Opinion

Trump’s need to destroy meets environment

One word best describes Donald Trump’s environmental policy: sick. The president has an obsessive urge to ravage nature just for the heck of it. Exhibit A is his crusade to weaken environmental regulations against the very wishes of those being regulated. Trump seems bent on destruction as an end in itself. He has worked to destroy America’s ties with its traditional allies. He’s striving to destroy the Affordable Care Act — and, with it, health coverage for millions of Americans. Now it’s the environment’s turn. Trump tries to hide hostility toward environmental ...

Trump China policy working

By Greg Autry Los Angeles Times (TNS) On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, CNBC interviewed Peter Navarro, who had been an economic advisor to the Trump campaign and would soon join the administration to advise the president on trade and manufacturing policy. Navarro outlined President Trump’s economic plans: cutting taxes, reducing regulation, cutting energy costs and reforming trade. He predicted strong growth and a Dow moving past 25,000 based on these pro-growth policies. The Trump administration has delivered on every one of those things, but you’d never know ...

Kavanaugh reboot: Democrats could plead insanity

When the Supreme Court, under a previous ideological majority, was handing down decisions favorable to the left, Democrats were fine with deferring to that third branch of government to achieve what they declined to produce in legislation. Some Democrats in conservative states took the position that it wasn’t their fault that cases voters regarded as constitutionally wrong and morally unprincipled were being decided. Blame the justices, not them. The assault on the court has become worse now that Democrats see their primary avenue to legal and cultural change slipping away. The ...

Cruelty knows no categories

Until recently, I had not agreed with Trump administration officials on anything having to do with immigration. But on Sept. 9, the acting chief of Customs and Border Protection, Mark Morgan, said at a news conference that it would be “appropriate” to extend temporary protected status (TPS) to Bahamians in the wake of the devastating Hurricane Dorian, and that “history” supported the use of TPS in situations such as this. He was right. President Trump, of course, lost no time in shooting down the idea, warning of the “very bad people” from the Bahamas who would hurt U.S. ...

Celebrating Buckwheat season is a Preston County tradition

Buckwheat season is upon us. This week, folks will dig into traditional buckwheat cakes and sausage, watch King Buckwheat and Queen Ceres float by in the parade, admire one another’s exhibits and generally enjoy our county’s 78-year-old tradition. As I understand our history, buckwheat played a part in West Virginia’s slow recovery after the Great Depression. A fast-growing, easy-to-cultivate cereal, buckwheat provided good animal feed and a backup for when other crops failed. After buckwheat harvest, farmers could relax and enjoy a respite. In 1938, residents of Preston ...

We’re told our institutions will save us

Once upon a time, there was an ideal. It was called the United States of America. And in 2016, the presidency of the United States was captured by the flamboyantly incompetent star of a TV reality show, a man who doesn’t believe in any ideal beyond his own enrichment and aggrandizement. Some shaken observers assured us everything would be all right. The institutions of democracy — the courts, the Congress, the media and the agencies of the government — would save America from the worst consequences of one of its worst decisions. “The Guardrails Hold,” exulted the headline ...