Free Republic

DILLONVALE, Ohio -- Barack Obama attended a barbecue and grilled Republicans on the economy yesterday in eastern Ohio, a region cool toward him in the March primary and important to his chances this fall. Obama, spending his third day in the state since Friday, spoke at New Philadelphia yesterday and greeted supporters at a farm in Dillonvale, south of Steubenville on the edge of economically hard-hit Appalachian Ohio. He argued at Kent State University's Tuscarawas campus that Republicans are not discussing the economy at their convention in St. Paul because of how bad it is, and that the GOP and...

In the town of Shenandoah, Penn., parishioners at a local church offered up prayers for peace - a peace that was broken the night of July 12, when Luis Ramirez, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was beaten to death The crime shocked people in this small, Appalachian town, reports CBS News correspondent Seth Doane. A late night street fight punctuated by ethnic slurs ended in Ramirez's death. Four high school students, all on the football team, are charged in connection with the homicide. (...) the county's Hispanic population - up 65 percent since 2000 as a new wave of immigrants...

“The Appalachian voting bloc will be critical in the … 2008 presidential election,” former Democratic National Committee executive director Mark Siegel says. Yet his broad statement comes with its own geopolitical caveat: location. “It all depends on what part of Appalachia you are talking about,” says Siegel. “If they live in Pennsylvania and Ohio, then, yes, without a doubt they are the key voters. If they live in West Virginia, then no, because for the Democrats that is not a state that is in play.” Appalachia is not a single state but a region that has its own unique frame...

"Hick." "Hillbilly." "Redneck." "Inbred." "Cracker." "Ridge Runner." I heard and self-effacingly used them all when I left the mountains of Appalachia to attend college in the great metropolis of Williamsburg, Va., in the '80s. I was mercilessly ribbed as a rube when I brought along my sky-blue JCPenney suit—with reversible vest—and my stack of Willie and Waylon albums, and entered a world that was as foreign to me as I must have seemed to my fancy William & Mary roommates from the private schools. Imagine my surprise at their surprise when, thinking nothing of it, I casually mentioned that I...

This time it's a duly certified, establishment-vetted, card-carrying member of the Mainstream Media who's been caught, tried and convicted by the always watchful PC Police. This time it was no Howard Stern or Don Imus, or even a football coach lettin' 'er rip at a press conference. This time it was NBC's own, always respectable if not downright pedestrian Andrea Mitchell, aka Mrs. Alan Greenspan. Goodness. What did she do? It seems the lady went and referred to an area of southwestern Virginia as "redneck, sort of bordering-on-Appalachia country." Ooh-wee!The linguistically delicate of southwestern Virginia are still squealing. These easily...

It isn’t just West Virginia. We saw those same lopsided majorities for Clinton -- three and four to one -- in southwestern Pennsylvania, western counties in Virginia, and eastern Tennessee. We’ll see more such blowouts in Kentucky’s eastern counties on May 20. Who are these people and what are they thinking? They live along a geographical belt of the country roughly corresponding to the Appalachian Mountains stretching from upstate New York to Alabama. Many call the area Appalachia and describe the people as “backward”. Such characterizations are both unfair and inaccurate. These people have been there a long time. Migration...

Barack Obama met with reporters Friday in Indianapolis and admitted the obvious: "We've had a rough couple of weeks. I won't deny that." The next couple of weeks will show just how rough. The roiling controversies -- over his remarks about rural voters and his ties to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. -- have cast new doubts over the Illinois senator's ability to win over white working-class Democrats. Tuesday's two primaries will offer fresh data on his appeal. Sen. Obama is strongly favored in North Carolina, while Indiana is seen as a toss-up. If Hillary Clinton gets...

WISE, Va. - Presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama on Wednesday focused on the struggles of the nation's poor — from rural Appalachia to Washington's urban Anacostia — in competing speeches that underscored the fierce fight for the Democratic nomination. Edwards was wrapping up his eight-state poverty tour with stops in Virginia and Kentucky, the latter where Democratic icon Robert F. Kennedy spoke nearly 40 years ago in his plea to help the nation's forgotten. Unwilling to cede the issue to Edwards, Obama spoke at a recreation center in the nation's capital, and in a jab at his rival,...

Southern Appalachian Multiple Use Council P.O. Box 1377 Clyde, NC 28721 828-627-3333 NEWS RELEASE For immediate release June 25, 2007 Contact: Steve Henson, Executive Director Southern Appalachian Multiple-Use Council, 828-627-3333 Environmentalists Lose Court Battle to Stop Timber Harvesting in Eastern National Forests Clyde NC – In a summary judgment ruling last week Federal Chief Judge Sandra Beckwith (Southern District Ohio) found that the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USF&WS) and the US Forest Service (USFS) had properly followed federal law and biological assessments in planning and implementing forest management practices on several eastern national forests including the Pisgah National Forest...

I am getting really sick of the Mexican Invasion costing so many jobs in the Southwest Virginia- East Tennessee area. My husband is a brickmason. He is the 5th generation mason in his family- our son is the 6th. Up until just a couple of years ago brickmasons had contractors ringing their phones off of the wall wanting them to do work for them. My husband had to turn down dozens of callers because he couldn't do it all. Things have sure changed . Now, a lot of contractors in this area have gotten dollar signs in their eyes and...

More than $500,000 has been seized so far as authorities continue an investigation into illegal gambling and its possible ties to public corruption in the small town of Appalachia. Authorities say the money -- about half of it from safe deposit boxes and the rest in various bank accounts -- is linked to three Main Street gambling establishments suspected of paying off town officials in exchange for an agreement that local police would not interfere with their business. Special prosecutor Tim McAfee compared what authorities have discovered so far to organized crime more likely to be found in Chicago or...

Appalachia Mayor Ben Cooper was jailed today after a judge increased his bond from $25,000 to $100,000. Cooper’s attorney said she expects he will be able to post the bond, at which point he will be placed on house arrest. The question of whether Cooper will be allowed to continue to serve as mayor was left unresolved after a hearing in Wise County Circuit Court. Circuit Court Judge Tammy McElyea – who increased Cooper’s bond after hearing evidence that he illegally possessed a gun after being convicted of a domestic-related assault – said she will decide later whether the terms...

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Democratic candidate for governor Eliot Spitzer told a Manhattan gathering that the upstate economy is so bad the region looks like Appalachia, a comment that an aide to one rival said insulted a vast part of the state. "If you drive from Schenectady to Niagara ... it looks like Appalachia," Spitzer said, according to MarketWatch's Thursday edition. The financial news Web site, owned by Dow Jones & Co., recounted Spitzer's Sunday comments in a column headlined "Spitzer runs and stumbles." The column said Spitzer made the comment "to laughs," a characterization denied by Spitzer spokesman Darren Dopp.

Fourteen indicted in Appalachia election fraud probeFriday, March 03, 2006 By STEPHEN IGO Times-News WISE - Fourteen individuals, including the mayor/town manager of Appalachia, a town councilman, and two law enforcement officials, were indicted by a Wise County grand jury on multiple counts stemming from an alleged conspiracy to conduct election fraud during the 2004 town elections. The indictments show the investigation hasn't been just about pork rinds, Special Prosecutor Tim McAfee said during a press conference at the Wise County Courthouse. The investigation into allegations of voter fraud evolved from early reports of attempted vote buying before town elections...

Unless you're sitting by a sunny window, the chances are that the light falling on this page was produced by the burning of coal. Currently, more than half the electricity generated in America is coal-produced. While coal may be abundant in the United States, it's far from cheap. Occasionally we get glimpses into what our coal consumption really costs our country. The miners who keep us in coal deserve our thanks, our respect and our commitment to developing alternative sources of energy. The health of our economy, our environment and our families depends on it. To calculate the true cost...

PIKEVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- The towering mountains that frame this Appalachian town have been a hindrance to growth, forcing homes and businesses to crowd together side by side on precious little flat land. That could change under a plan by Pikeville leaders who recruited a coal company to flatten two mountaintops to make room for the town of about 6,300 to expand. Appalachian towns like Pikeville that have exhausted all useable land have no choice but to look to the mountaintops, City Manager Donovan Blackburn said. "If you look at the amount of land that is developable right now, there...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans have been migrating south and west for decades, but it appears they've been leaving some high-paying jobs behind. While there are many pockets of wealth in the South and West, the states with the highest wage earners line the East Coast, according to Census data released Tuesday. Connecticut, with a median household income of $56,409, supplanted New Jersey as the country's highest wage state in 2003, the most recent year available. New Jersey slid to second, at $56,356, followed by Maryland, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Mississippi had the lowest median income, at $32,397. West Virginia, Arkansas,...

The Appalachian mountains are buzzing with the sounds of oil drilling. Most of the 900 or so wells drilled in Kentucky this year won't produce more than a barrel or two of oil a day. But with prices around 60 dollars a barrel, those little wells are pulling in big profits, especially when they also pump natural gas. With oil prices now double what they were two years ago, the US Congress has called hearings to address charges of "price-gouging." The pinch at the pump is causing some economists to warn that consumers will have to reduce discretionary spending while...

There's no doubt about it. The president misled us about the war. He misled us about how long it would take. He misled us about how much it would cost. The president's unfairly maligned critics have been completely vindicated as the war has degenerated into a complete disaster, a chaotic mess that destroys lives, threatens to empty the treasury and - as an added bonus - makes the problem it was originally intended to fix far worse than it was before. It's time for the president's supporters to drop their partisan defense of the indefensible, admit they've made a mess...

FRANKFORT, Ky. - (KRT) - When S.J. Arthur started tracing her lineage more than 20 years ago, a fellow researcher stammered as she noticed recurring family names. Was she connected to a unique group of people known as Melungeons, the researcher timidly asked, afraid Arthur might slap her. The reference was once considered a racial slur. "I could be," Arthur replied. "I just don't know yet." This weekend Arthur was one of dozens of Melungeon descendants who gathered in Frankfort, Ky., to shed the stigma that plagued their ancestors and try to grasp their mysterious heritage. The Melungeons have been...

STANTON, Ky. - With a silvery Airstream trailer as a dental office, Dr. Jeff Bailey goes about his work, brightening the often gapped smiles of people in a part of the country with the highest rate of toothlessness in America. Bailey, one of many volunteers who are bringing free mobile dental care to poor people in the hills and hollows of Appalachia, sees case after case of severe tooth decay and gum disease — the consequences of sugary foods, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, a lack of fluoridated water, and simple neglect.

In the Appalachian Mountains, writes James Webb in Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, “American flags are frequent, on the trucks and in the yards and on the porches. America got bombed and mountain people don’t forget, even if it happened in New York and Washington, because when it comes to fighting wars, mountain people have always been among the first to go.” In chronicling the Scots-Irish, Webb writes of the people who made him and, he argues persuasively, America what both are today. It is a close call on which benefited the most from that lineage. Webb is...

The National Earthquake Center reports an earth tremor this morning measuring 3.9 near Clinton, Kentucky in Hickman County. The earthquake at around 7:21 am was felt in four states and was the second in under 12 hours in the area. It was centered nearly on top of the Mississippi River. Dispatcher Marie Hart at Kentucky State Police post in Mayfield says it felt as if the floor was moving. She said it was like the floor turned to water for a few seconds. An earlier earthquake about 15 miles away registered 3.0 on the Richter scale. Quakes of 4.0 occur...

PIKEVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A new class that seeks to teach youngsters how to lose their Appalachian accents has set off an age-old phonetic debate: Should mountain natives drop the drawl or hold tightly to their twang? The class, put on by an eastern Kentucky theater group, is designed for children in middle and high schools who want to reduce their accent to "broaden their performance opportunities and improve overall marketability." "We don't want people to be held back just because they have an accent," said Martin Childers, managing director of Jenny Wiley Theatre in Prestonsburg. "If you want to...

CHARLESTON-- A picture of a Mail Pouch sign on a barn has been a fixture at the West Virginia State Museum since it opened in 1976 but anti-smoking advocates say something is missing from the exhibit -- a sign warning of smokeless tobacco's health risks. Officials with two anti-smoking groups want the Division of Culture and History to post the warning when the museum, which is closed for renovation, reopens later this year. But that is not likely to happen. ''It's being treated as a cultural icon as far as we're concerned,'' said Nancy Herholdt, former commissioner of Culture and...

With a boost from President Bush, central Appalachia's mountaintop coal miners are finally embracing the future again, flagging more of this state's ancient summits for blasting and more of its hollows for burying than in many years. The industry hasn't yet reversed more than a decade of trouble with output, jobs and environmental lawsuits. But its backers are at least feeling resurgent confidence — which could mean a raft of votes for the president this fall across the region. Others are more disheartened than ever. Some conservationists and hill dwellers say the energy-hungry Bush administration is encouraging miners to pulverize...

As drug busts rise, locals build foster homes and donate toys to help children left behind after arrests Meat Camp, N.C. - It is a disturbing scene that plays out all too often across the hog hollows of Appalachia. Authorities raid illicit meth labs set up in rickety trailers and mountain shacks: Using hoses, scrubs, and soap, they decontaminate children on the spot and throw away tainted blankets and teddy bears. The loss of personal items may seem like a small price for the crimes of their parents, but for many experts, it symbolizes the plight of the region's growing...

There was nothing for the older folk of Appalachia to smile about on Thursday in the government's latest study of toothlessness among the elderly, which found the poverty-stricken region leading the nation in tooth loss. Kentucky and West Virginia have the highest percentage of older adults missing all their natural teeth according to data collected in 2002 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Slightly more than 42 percent of residents 65 and older in Kentucky could make that dubious claim last year. West Virginians were a close second with 41.9 percent of seniors admitting they had shed their...

<p>Eric Rudolph made national headlines when he was captured May 31 in the western North Carolina town of Murphy. But the story took a new twist when reporters heard some Murphy residents say they felt sorry for him.</p> <p>Soon after his capture, a syndicated editorial cartoon by Stuart Carlson showed a potbellied male with one tooth, pointing to a bomb-laden Rudolph and saying, "Behold -- an American hero!!" Another cartoon showed two mountain men in a one-room shack offering refuge to Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Rudolph.</p>

A pen and ink sealed the end of Appalachia's most infamous bloody feud instead of a shotgun and bullets. Descendants of the Hatfield and McCoy families gathered Saturday in Pikeville to sign the truce, making a largely symbolic and official end to a feud that had claimed at least a dozen lives from the two mountain families. "We ask by God's grace and love that we be forever remembered as those that bound together the hearts of two families to form a family of freedom in America," says the truce, signed by more than 60 descendants. Reo Hatfield of Waynesboro,...

PIKEVILLE, Ky. - A pen and ink sealed the end of Appalachia's most infamous bloody feud instead of a shotgun and bullets. Descendants of the Hatfield and McCoy families gathered Saturday morning in Pikeville to sign the truce, making a largely symbolic and official end to the feud that claimed at least a dozen lives. Signed by more than 60 descendants during the fourth Hatfield-McCoy Festival, the truce was touted as a proclamation of peace, saying "We ask by God's grace and love that we be forever remembered as those that bound together the hearts of two families to form...

<p>"Ease up Robert.</p> <p>"He was, and is, after all, just a rookie cop doing what cops do at night; prowl the streets looking for mischief. And this time he found some.</p> <p>"It was not his insight or his intelligence or anything else that led him to a garbage Dumpster behind a hillybilly market. He was just in the right place at the right time.</p>

Why We Fed the Bomber By ALLAN GURGANUS HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. Straight down the back of ornery American life, there runs this mythic skunk stripe: the cantankerous outlaw protester. "Are you talking to me? . . . " And Eric Rudolph, 36, my fellow North Carolinian, belongs right there, curled along our nation's bristling Mohawk cusp. Though, God knows, I never met the fellow socially, I can call forth both his blessed landscape and harsh bloodline. His tale seems a green boomerang hurled forward from the 19th century. James Fenimore Cooper might help place him in the forest, Twain could take...

Through lens of TV, movie producers, South looks dumb and dumber Hillbillies of Hazard, Ky., meet the rednecks of Pigeon Creek, Ala. Y'all are practically neighbors in pop culture's piney backwoods.The very real residents of Hazard are not terribly pleased to be among the possibles in the casting process to choose a family for "The Real Beverly Hillbillies," an upcoming CBS reality show that will take a family from the rural South or Appalachia, plunk them down in a la-dee-dah Left Coast mansion and see what happens. Itto spend up to a year in Beverly Hills. (Guess our Georgia rednecks...