DES MOINES — If the 2020 presidential campaign has accomplished nothing else, it has revealed the extraordinary talent of Pete Buttigieg.

Controversies over the presidency and abuses of executive power dominate the news cycles. Another grave issue, however, also demands our utmost serious consideration — our failing Congress.

The Daily Independent on local counties’ Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions:

West Virginia officials are trying to salvage as much of the state’s $18 million investment in the Heartland Intermodal Gateway facility, but there is one potential buyer who does not want it: Norfolk Southern Corp.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accuses our president of murdering Iranian General Suleimani. For a moment look at history outside her tiny New York City world: In 1936 Hitler kicked the French out of the Rhineland, a violation of the Treaty of Versailles. What did the League of Nations do in respo…

As West Virginia continues to fall short on revenue collections, Gov. Jim Justice said his budget proposal is “very conservative” in his State of the State Address. But Justice missed an important opportunity in his speech to get ahead of budget shortfalls that would put students first, hire…

One advantage of being older is that you understand fluctuating international relationships. America’s friends and foes have changed over the years; they will continue to do so.

For a state and nation already on notice that our long-term health is deteriorating, news at the beginning of this week sounded disturbing wakeup calls.

During bowl season, I watched some of the contest between University of Cincinnati and Boston College. It wasn’t pretty. UC was clearly superior, but that shouldn’t have been the case. BC is in the Power Five and UC in the Group of Five. Just 110 miles downstream, the University of Louisvill…

This is absurd! From what the news released, the Huntington Board of Zoning Appeals in July 2019 issued and zoned the Kulture Club facility and gave a permit to owner Charon Reese. Did they not do a background check and see she had already had an arrest record?

The Journal of Martinsburg, West Virginia, published this editorial on Jan. 7 regarding West Virginia’s general revenue budget so far this fiscal year:

I was virtually born in the Guyandotte Methodist Church before it became the Guyandotte United Methodist Church. I can’t remember when or who the Methodists merged with to change the name to the United Methodist Church.

What a drama! The president of the United States has been impeached by the House of Representatives and awaits trial in the U.S. Senate. This has happened only three times in U.S. history.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail published this editorial on Jan. 3 regarding the death of the founder of the West Virginia Air National Guard:

In light of recent events, it will interest people in this area of West Virginia to know that February 1-8 is National Gun Violence Survivor Week.

World War III came and went, and nobody noticed.

In my commentary published Dec. 10, I misstated from memory concerning reference to the Watergate Building and Daniel Ellsberg.

Fred Pace’s otherwise excellent report on health care spending (“Health care costs rising faster than wages,” Dec. 29, 2019) leaves out one factor that as a longtime health insurance broker I see as hugely significant. The Affordable Care Act is forcing insurance companies to give much more …

Sometimes publicity about West Virginia is cringe-worthy. A decade ago, our state’s obesity became a well-known weighty subject. A few years later, our tragic opioid overdoses were viewed worldwide. We’ve publicly acknowledged those problems by working to change their negative effects.

I am in total agreement with the letter from Mr. Phil Parlock concerning the excessive police ticketing on I-64 by the town of Milton (“Milton police have no business on 64,” Dec. 27). His comment is that some small West Virginia towns have reached out to annex sections of major roads, then …

No matter where you look, the news is bad — very bad.

The list of anti-Semitic attacks in the New York area in December is appalling, a litany of hatred that calls out to be condemned and countered.

For some unknown reason, without even the courtesy of a sign, all the restrooms at Ritter Park were locked on Monday, Dec. 23; unlocked on Tuesday, Dec. 24; and locked again on Christmas Day, Dec. 25.

It’s been reported that when President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were planning the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 someone cautioned Bush: “If we invade Iraq, we could be stirring up a civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites.” Bush responded: “I thought they were all M…

I would like to respond to K.L. Vance’s letter of December 27. His name-calling and insults by calling Democrats “donkeys” and “jackasses” show that he is a Trump supporter. It’s right out of the Trump playbook.

The New York Times published this editorial on Dec. 30:

Although I usually enjoy reading Dave Peyton’s columns, I do take exception to the one appearing on December 25 on the topic of Christmas. He writes, “Most American Jews will celebrate Christmas today in the middle of Hanukkah,” apparently because Jews “have fallen to the holiday hoopla like…

Just had to laugh out loud at some of the crazy ideas that were tossed about by the crazy liberal Democrats — Crazy Bernie, Uncle Joe Biden and Dizzy Lizzy Liz Warren and others. Who do they think would pay for everything they want?

In the wake of a New Year’s Day shooting that left seven people injured, Huntington Mayor Steve Williams said Thursday he is asking City Council members to amend zoning ordinances to prevent new bars from opening within the city. The shooting occurred at an establishment called Kulture at 11…

On a secondary road I travel frequently live two people who either get along well or not at all, I suppose. One flies a large Trump flag from his flagpole. The other, who lives within sight of the first, has a Bernie sign on his carport and another in his yard.

The Bluefield Daily Telegraph published this editorial on Dec. 29 regarding a backlog of items awaiting DNA testing at the state’s crime lab:

On Dec. 21, The Herald-Dispatch carried a column indicting the “LGBTQ community,” although the writer’s rant pretty much concerned only the tiny “T” group. One question was: Should an evangelical baker be required to serve a same sex couple? I am an agnostic on this, but I feel whatever the …

Man is not an animal. Why use animals for research? I Corinthians 15:39: “All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.”

Last month, my iPhone 6 crashed; I was crushed. I and millions, maybe billions, of people worldwide are now dependent on an object that only reached the mass market a dozen years ago. As we ring in 2020, a time which sounded wildly futuristic in my youth, our phones remind us of the amazing …

It is interesting to observe how the liberal media are attempting to parlay the recent Christianity Today editorial condemnation of President Trump to recruit those who identify as evangelical and who turned out to get President Trump elected in 2016. (Note: In a recent poll, “evangelicals” …

The email (misspellings and all) started out as if it were an apology.

As an openly queer chaplain who is serving at WVU Medicine, I was glad to read that faith leaders spoke about why their faith calls them to support the West Virginia Fairness Act at a roundtable at the Capitol on Dec. 3. The Fairness Act would ensure that LGBTQ West Virginians are protected …

There has been a coup in Bolivia toppling the popularly elected president Evo Morales. President Morales, Vice President Alvaro Garcia and most senior members of the Morales administration were force to resign on Nov. 10. During his 13 years as president, Morales had moved his country forwar…

In a recent letter, Steve Flesher of Huntington got almost all his facts wrong.

High above a gorge in the Malaga region of Spain, locals and visitors may traverse a swaying walkway from one cliff to another, looking down upon a 325-foot drop. As we navigate the passage between 2019 and the new year of 2020, it feels as if we are stepping gingerly, as we would on the bri…

A democracy does not rest on the rule of law. A democracy is rule by majority where an individual, and any group of individuals composing any minority, have no protection against the power of the majority. We see this now as the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives are attemptin…

The United States won’t have to worry about the Russians and China. They won’t have to fire a shot to destroy the USA. The Democrats in Washington are doing a fine job of that.

Milton has all that it needs to be: a quaint, homey small town with nostalgic buildings, jobs, development nearby and friendly people who greet one another with smiles.

The Journal of Martinsburg, W.Va., published this editorial on Dec. 20 regarding the arrests of three people nearly a year after the death of a West Virginia girl:

Reports from the experts indicate that fewer West Virginia deer, especially bucks, were killed during the past deer killing season than in many years before.