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�The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.� – George Orwell, “1984.�

In the latest move away from transparency in state government, the state Public Energy Authority has drafted rules for a new law that requires authority approval before power companies can decommission coal, oil, or gas-fired power plants that omit any requirement for public notice of public…

I’ve never followed state high school sports, knowing that if my high school were somehow magically transported to West Virginia, it would dominate in all sports. (Heck, we won the Virginia state high school football championship a few years back.)

Republicans are now in their ninth year in power in West Virginia, and as the old saying goes, the chickens are coming home to roost:

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., recently launched a media blitz touting the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Welp, as predicted here last weekend, the Legislature stumbled and bumbled its way through a special session that was by no means extraordinary.

With myriad crises facing the state (most of them, including Corrections, foster care, first responders, caused by ongoing systemic underfunding), Gov. Jim Justice and legislative leaders are stumbling and bumbling toward a special session — or not.

As the days count down to the departure of 50 West Virginia National Guard soldiers to Texas, at cost to state taxpayers of some $1.5 million, Gov. Jim Justice doubled down on social media crowing about his response to what he calls the “Biden Border Crisis.�

Gov. Jim Justice and company recently celebrated a record budget surplus for the just-ended 2022-23 budget year – although as Justice and Revenue Secretary Dave Hardy admitted, the surplus was wildly inflated by deliberately and significantly underestimating state revenue collections.

In the month since passage of the federal debt ceiling bill, we’ve heard little about how the claw-back provisions in the legislation will be carried out.

Glad to see CBS News finally pick up on Gov. Jim Justice’s outrageously grotesque giveaway of millions of taxpayer dollars otherwise known as the “Do It For Babydog� sweepstakes.

As I’ve noted frequently, Democrats are terrible at messaging. State Democrats’ inability to get their message out to voters over the past few years likely contributed mightily to West Virginia flipping red.

The U.S. Census Bureau continues to release data from the 2020 census, recently including population trends from 2010 to 2020, and it’s not good for West Virginia.

West Virginia is facing a Corrections crisis that threatens to explode like a power keg at any moment.

Politics has always been something of a funhouse mirror, distorting reality to fit preconceived opinions.

Things may look grim at the moment for West Virginia Democrats, but history tells us there may be a glimmer of hope heading into the 2024 election cycle.

West Virginia politics is a bundle of contradictions, as we’ve seen recently.

I was walking down Quarrier Street last fall when I heard a familiar voice call out to me, asking the question, “Whatever happened to ethics?�

It’s no surprise that the state Republican Party last week welcomed into its flock Delegate Elliott Pritt, a one-time card-carrying Socialist Party USA member, given how enamored the state GOP is with the welfare system.

I generally don’t have occasion to quote conservative media pundit Ann Coulter, but a comment she made following Janet Protasiewicz’s double-digit win over Dan Kelly in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race caught my attention.

Gov. Jim Justice, state legislators and statewide elected officials have a fiduciary responsibility to the people of the state to run it in a fiscally responsible manner, a responsibility that they are shirking more and more frequently.

At one point in my statehouse reporting career, I found myself going through stacks of personal emails to and from Gov. Bob Wise (I won’t go into the circumstances here, but you can look it up). One thing that stuck with me was Wise saying that he would not indulge in more than one glass of …

You would think that, having covered the Legislature for thirty-some years, there would be nothing new to see. But the 2023 legislative session featured some firsts (and rarities) for me.

One of my favorite German words is schadenfreude, which roughly translates as deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others.

Our legislators act like they are hell-bent on turning West Virginia into a fundamentalist Christian theocracy.

Sen. Rupie Phillips, R-Logan, made news recently for opposing state funding to attract Form Energy, a manufacturer of high-capacity energy storage batteries, to West Virginia, stating, “This is coal money that we’re giving to a woke company.�

Gov. Jim Justice has always treated the office of governor as a vaudeville act, but never more so than when he staged his latest dog and pony show, a so-called tax reform roundtable.

Now that the 60-day 2023 regular legislative session has passed the midway point, we can see some themes emerging.

Public schools across the state are in crisis mode.

Perhaps the time has come to take down those “welcome� signs at the state lines, as the Legislature continues to pursue increasingly unfriendly policies this session.

Last week I wrote about how Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, and Senate leadership were obliterating any pretense of transparency and accountability by ramming through legislation on the Senate floor without one wit of committee review, public hearings or input from experts, the pub…

In my thirtysomething years covering the Legislature (leave it to me to sneak in an obscure pop culture reference), I’ve come to respect and admire the legislative process.

Despite Republican supermajorities, the Legislature is approaching the start of the 2023 60-day regular session Wednesday with anything but unanimity.

Jim Justice’s contemplation of a run for U.S. Senate seems to be more a matter of it being a prize he thinks he can win, as opposed to being a public service opportunity he covets.

What a peculiar election night it was.

One of the key reasons for Gov. Jim Justice’s inexplicably high approval ratings is his uncanny ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth on any given issue.

As I’ve referenced before, I’ve been reading a lot recently about the founding of the nation, and one of the most fascinating elements is how the Founding Fathers, after some starts and fits, established the three branches of government, exerting checks and balances on one another.

For some time, I’ve been fascinated by the Founding Fathers’ glaring contradiction of embracing the noble concept that all men are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights while ignoring the reality that tens of thousands of Americans were enslaved.

The West Virginia Legislature reached an offensive, deceitful new low last week in ramming through a near-total ban on abortion in the space of less than 24 hours, with little advance notice and no public input.

In “Cool Hand Luke,� the great Strother Martin utters the immortal phrase, “What we’ve got here is … failure to communicate.�

Editor's note: This column has been updated. 

Now that I’m paid by the column, and not by the hour, I appreciate it when readers help out with some of the legwork on column items.

Here we are, 16 days since the debacle of a special session adjourned until further notice, and we’re still waiting for the appointment of a House-Senate conference committee on the bill banning abortion (HB 302).

If the end of Democratic control of West Virginia can be traced to 1996, when members of the majority party sabotaged Charlotte Pritt’s gubernatorial campaign, then the end of Republican control might have begun this past week with legislation to effectively ban abortion in the state.

Of the six governors I’ve covered, Cecil Underwood was one of the brightest.

It’s encouraging to see legislative leadership taking legislative interim meetings more seriously these days.

For 122 years, long after Brown v. Board of Education and long after state public schools integrated, the state constitution retained a provision prohibiting mixed-race schools.

A couple of weeks ago in this space, I commented about how Republican supermajorities in the state are not assured indefinitely, particularly if the party continues to move further and further to the right and continues to hold positions that are counter to the beliefs of a majority of Americans.

In recent days, there’s been a lot of braggadocio coming from the Justice administration over a projected $1.2 billion state budget surplus for the 2021-22 budget year, which ends next week.

One of the most dramatic changes I’ve observed in my three decades-plus covering state politics was West Virginia’s transition from a predominately Democratic state to predominately Republican.

After five months of semi-retirement, I have to say I don’t miss the grind of daily news coverage, with one possible exception.

As a ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä Gazette-Mail editorial astutely noted, Republican operative Greg Thomas’ recent op-ed piece criticizing coverage of the disqualification of Andrea Garrett Kiessling as a state Senate candidate never addressed the seminal issue in the case: That the preponderance of evidence c…