Pardon us for asking, but has the emergency rulemaking process to get West Virginia through the COVID-19 pandemic lost its way?
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
Two major social realities evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics oppose are abortion on demand and gay marriage. From my conversations with acquaintances in both church groups locally, this is as true in West Virginia as anywhere else. Without those two issues, much of the religi…
Monday, September 21, 2020
This editorial appeared in the Washington Post on Friday.
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
WASHINGTON — California, our national warning, shows how unchecked progressives inflict progress. They have placed on November ballots Proposition 16 to repeal the state constitution’s provision, enacted by referendum in 1996, forbidding racial preferences in public education, employment and…
Sunday, September 20, 2020
The planning process for a new Ohio River bridge has cleared its first hurdle, but there are a few more to go before dirt is turned or concrete is poured. And it could be 10 years before the first cars drive across the bridge.
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
In an interview Tuesday morning with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, CNBC host Jim Cramer addressed her as “Crazy Nancy.” Here’s the transcript:
Saturday, September 19, 2020
This editorial appeared in The Washington Post this week:
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
Friday, September 18, 2020
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
CAMDEN, S.C. — “Is Doomsday here?” Joe Biden asked Monday during a blistering speech about the West Coast fires and several tropical storms brewing offshore.
The time may have come for Gov. Jim Justice to throw away his color-coded maps.
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
Thursday, September 17, 2020
No doubt about it. We should have done it a long time ago, but our changed lifestyle during COVID-19 made us very much aware that it was time to pull the plug on our landline.
Gov. Jim Justice is caught in a Kobayashi Maru — a no-win situation designed to be unsolvable. He can’t open schools fast enough to please some people, and he doesn’t dare keep them closed to please others.
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
Gov. Jim Justice is losing control of the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic at the very worst time, as cases and deaths in West Virginia continue to rapidly rise.
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
New cases of COVID-19 are declining across the country, so it’s tempting to wonder whether the worst of the pandemic is behind us.
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Sometime in the next three to five years, if all goes according to schedule, the drive from Huntington to Charleston and back will be less wearying.
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
To mask or not to mask: That is the question.
Monday, September 14, 2020
School board has wrong priorities
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
Back in 1872 when Collis P. Huntington and others founded Ensign Car Works to build railroad cars and car parts, and in 1899 when Ensign merged with American Car and Foundry Co., the word “brownfield” had yet to come into widespread use, if it existed at all.
The following editorial appeared on Bloomberg Opinion:
Saturday, September 12, 2020
The Charleston Gazette-Mail discussed the Brooke County plant in an editorial on Sept. 11:
Dave Peyton
Friday, September 11, 2020
Have you visited the 9/11 memorial in Spring Hill Cemetery? There are three monuments dedicated to the sites where the planes were crashed. There is also a carillon that chimes on the hour and plays music on the half hour. The memorial was dedicated and erected by the family of Paul Ambrose,…
Thanks to the upcoming election, readers have asked if we would publish their column-length opinion pieces. We’re always looking for new local columnists who can consistently contribute to the opinion page, so here are a few guidelines if you would like to try.
In reading Dave Peyton’s 1988 column about Grandma Peyton’s barn and Pet the cow, my mind floated back 80 years to 1940, a time when my family lived on a farm, had a barn and a cow named Pet.
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
To paraphrase an old song, “What the World Needs Now Is …” a vaccine and/or treatment for COVID-19. We are all so ready to get back to living pre-pandemic lives.
The end of the 2019-20 school year was unlike any other in our lifetimes. So was the first day of the 2020-21 year.
Wednesday, September 09, 2020
If you wondered whether President Donald Trump has much support locally in his re-election campaigns, what happened on and along the Ohio River Saturday afternoon should have eliminated any doubts.
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
Tuesday, September 08, 2020
American greatness, once self-evident and plainly delineated, has deliquesced into a thing at once debatable and obscure.
What if our leaders in Charleston were advocates for our most vulnerable populations? What if we consciously elected leaders who have dedicated their lives to serving our community? Folks who live in House of Delegates District 17 have a chance to find out.
Wednesday of last week was an emotional roller coaster for me. Up to the heights of joy as my fellow member at St. Stephen Catholic Church in Ona, Kent Stutler, 67 and handicapped by a bad leg, was found not guilty of murder. Down to the lows of shock and grief as I learned that my fellow H-…
Monday, September 07, 2020
This editorial appeared in the Washington Post.
SAN DIEGO — This Labor Day, I find myself working through a few thoughts about labor and employment. I’m particularly curious about how these concepts were changed by the damnable year of 2020.
Were the lockdowns a mistake?
A lot of conservative Republicans tell me that Democrats pander to minority groups, and not because they genuinely care about these people, but because they need their votes.
Sunday, September 06, 2020
WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump frantically tries to frighten voters with the specter of “anarchists” and “looters” and planes full of black-clad “bad people” coming to menace your suburban neighborhood, take a trip down memory lane. Recall those desperate days of 2018, when the natio…
Following are tributes and remembrances of former Herald-Dispatch columnist Dave Peyton after his death Wednesday afternoon.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration’s first grave test approaches, not silently on little cat’s feet but in the noisy stomping of totalitarians’ boots. In 2021, Taiwan might provide the most perilous U.S. moment since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
This column by Dave Peyton first appeared in 1988. It was a favorite of many readers and is offered again.
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
It’s no secret that West Virginia needs better access to high-speed internet service. From manufacturers who need enough bandwidth for transferring large amounts to data across the ocean to children doing their school lessons from a fast food parking lot while school is shut down because of …
Saturday, September 05, 2020
A familiar saying when a famous person dies is “the passing of an era.” In Dave Peyton’s case, that is partially true. The news business is changing, and Dave definitely was a man of his time and a man for his time.
I am concerned about schools starting back in-person next week in Cabell County. Recently we had a huge jump in new positive coronavirus tests, statewide, with our percentage positives of those tested at an alarmingly high rate. Cabell isn’t doing terribly, but our number of active cases is …
WASHINGTON — At the beginning of the summer, it seemed to many commentators as if the riots flaring across the country were beside the point. It’s obvious why people thought it was more important to talk about the death of George Floyd under the knee of police officer Derek Chauvin than the …
Friday, September 04, 2020
With barely two months until Election Day, the U.S. faces a shortage of one critical resource: poll workers. Thanks to the threat of COVID-19, many of them — especially seniors — will likely stay home. Without sufficient staffing at polling stations, voters may have to wait for hours before …
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
The scourge has been unprecedented, abrupt and sweeping. Since February, our world has been dramatically altered. Yet change always brings opportunities as well as challenges, and we are a resilient people. Here are a few likely long-term macro impacts from the pandemic.
Thursday, September 03, 2020
Here it is almost Labor Day, and we’re still dealing with the COVID-19 virus.
It’s obvious: 2020 is one miserably stressful year. COVID-19, politics, racial issues, schools, the economy and more have us searching for positive activities that mesh well with a pandemic’s limitations. One such option is to join Marshall’s Lifelong Learning Program (LLP), now on Zoom, but…
Wednesday, September 02, 2020
Around mid-afternoon Sunday, I drove down U.S. 52 to the Ohio side of the Greenup Locks and Dam for some camera time. I knew the sun would be against me, but I went anyway, as I had to get out of the house.
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
Tuesday, September 01, 2020
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
Agree? Disagree? Respond to this Letter to the Editor here: https://www.herald-dispatch.com/site/forms/online_services/letter_editor/
A few election cycles ago an oversized postcard arrived in our mail, courtesy of the West Virginia Republican Party. It had a sketch of a Bible on one side with a huge red X drawn through it. The legend said: “This is what will happen if you vote for the Democrats.”
