Free Republic

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia did not appreciate what Harry Reid had to say after Trump’s election victory upset. To quote the conservative Democrat correctly, he told Reid he was, “an absolute embarrassment to the Senate as an institution, our Democratic party, and the nation." Ouch. Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Reid is not loved by Republicans, but to have a member of your party (and caucus) call you out so harshly should give you pause. After Trump won the Electoral College, Reid referred to Trump as a sexual predator. It may not be so surprising Manchin is taking this...

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is blasting his party’s outgoing Senate leader Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) after Reid released a statement that Manchin says verbally attacked President-Elect Donald Trump. In Reid’s statement, he called Trump a “sexual predator” and suggested Trump to “roll back the tide of hate he unleashed.” On Friday, Manchin responded to Reid’s statement: “Senator Harry Reid’s statement today attacking President-elect Trump is wrong! It is an absolute embarrassment to the Senate as an institution, our Democratic party, and the nation. I want to be very clear, he does not speak for me,” Manchin said in a...

An MSNBC reporter said Tuesday night that Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., told her that he could decide to switch to the Republican Party if Trump wins and the Senate is close. "There was a conversation I just got off the phone with Sen. Joe Manchin, because I've been picking up a lot of intense speculation that in the event there was a 50-50 Senate, he might be somebody who would switch parties, potentially become an independent," reporter Kasie Hunt said. "I have to tell you, I couldn't get a firm commitment from him that he was definitely going to be...

A new report has government officials considering setting 10 million acres of across six states in the American west off limits to mining and development to protect the chicken-like Greater Sage Grouse, which is not an endangered species. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) report found that much of the Sage Grouse’s habitat sits on top of extremely valuable deposits of minerals including gold, copper, lithium, silver, uranium and many others. The USGS report means that the government’s most restrictive grouse protection plan could kill even more than 31,000 jobs and lead to more than $5.6 billion in reduced annual economic...

Link only, we are not allowed to post The New Yorker stuff here... Very interesting article about Logan County West Virginia voters

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The West Virginia University rifle team will begin its quest for a fifth straight NCAA championship this weekend. West Virginia will open the 2016-17 season Sunday against Ohio State in Morgantown. Coach Jon Hammond hopes it will be one fans will turn out to see. The match will start at 8 a.m. on Sunday inside the rifle range with small bore competition. The air rifle portion will be moved to the indoor track at 1 p.m. and will feature accommodations for spectators to watch the event. It’s the second year WVU has hosted a match in an...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The highly anticipated trip to Capitol Hill for Mylan CEO Heather Bresch, a Marion County native and daughter of U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) who has been under fire for rapid hikes in EpiPen prices, comes this week. Bresch, who lead Mylan’s lobbying efforts to expand the usage of EpiPens which can reverse potentially fatal allergic reactions, was scheduled to testify in front of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Wednesday. Prices of EpiPens have climbed by more than 400 percent since 2007 to upwards of $600 for a two-pack. On Tuesday, the...

Just when Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment set a new low for insensitivity, we saw another real zinger this week from former Clinton White House staffer William Galston. In a smug Wall Street Journal op-ed, Galston deemed the “war on coal” a claim perpetuated by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to reinforce the coal community’s perceived “victimhood.” Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, a few things have happened: + In 2008, President Obama promised, “If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.” + The president’s subsequent MATS rule shut down at least 33 GW...

We’ve tracked countless cases here where cops were able to keep their jobs after killing unarmed people, killing people after responding to the wrong house, killing people and then lying about it . . . the list goes on. Give the Weirton, W.Va., police chief some credit. He’s come up with a new spin on the the same problem. He just fired a cop for not killing someone.

West Virginia has been near the bottom of the list of resettlement states for the last 9 years that I’ve followed the UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program, but all that could change. Resettlement contractors are running out of housing and frankly ‘welcome’ where they have overloaded cities like Lancaster, PA (do you want WV schools to have to cope with this!) and Buffalo, NY so they are casting about looking for fresh territory (populated with lots of naive do-gooders!). A couple of years ago the folks in Wyoming were able to hold off a program there. Montana couldn’t quite...

This Labor Day, America has 83,000 fewer coal jobs and 400 coal mines than it did when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, showing that the president has followed through on his pledge to “bankrupt” the coal industry. A 2015 study found the coal industry lost 50,000 jobs from 2008 to 2012 during Obama’s first term. During Obama’s second term, the industry employment in coal mining has fallen by another 33,300 jobs, 10,900 of which occurred in the last year alone, according to federal data. Currently, coal mining employs 69,460 Americans, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Much of...

West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin’s daughter, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch, who has come under fire for her company’s widely-slammed decision to raise the cost of the EpiPen by 461 Percent since 2007, raised her salary by a whopping 671 percent during her tenure at the pharmaceutical giant. Bresch’s annual income jumped from $2,453,456 in 2007 to $18,931,068 in 2015, coinciding with the astounding price increase on the life-saving emergency allergy shot, The Chicago Tribune reports. In addition to her astoundingly high salary, Bresch reportedly took advantage of a number of unprecedented perks, including personal use of the company’s aircraft....

Today our country has lost a true American original, my friend and mentor Robert C. Byrd.Senator Byrd was a man of surpassing eloquence and nobility. And I will remember him for many things, but most of all for a heartfelt comment he made to me in the dark days following the attack on our country on 9/11. My state of New York was reeling and we were scrambling to provide support and relief. “Think of me as the third senator from New York,” he said. And he meant it. Thanks to the leadership of Senator Byrd, who chaired the Appropriations...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Have you heard about the controversy over the cost of the EpiPen? I bet there's something you don't know about this. Hillary Clinton is out raising hell over the price, the skyrocketing cost of EpiPens. These are things, you shoot epinephrine into somebody that needs to a jolt, peanut allergy or some such thing, this causes an immediate fix for it. The price for these devices has skyrocketed 400% recently, and yet ABC and CBS, in talking about this, have failed to identify the pharmaceutical company involved. And there's a reason why. And NBC as well. ABC,...

Communities in nine U.S. states that have been hard-hit by coal layoffs are being promised more than 3,000 jobs in several industries through a multimillion-dollar federal grant. Officials for the Appalachian Regional Commission and other agencies announced the 29 projects totaling nearly $39 million Wednesday at a news conference in Huntington, West Virginia. The investments are expected to create or retain more than 3,400 jobs in agriculture, health care, manufacturing, technology and other industries. The projects are intended to help communities in Texas and in eight Appalachian states: Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. …

As a pharmaceutical company run by U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin's daughter faces scrutiny for hiking prices on life-saving allergy injection pens, Manchin is remaining mum. The Democratic West Virginia senator's daughter, Heather Bresch, is CEO of Mylan, which manufactures EpiPens.

Washington (CNN)The incredible increase in the cost of EpiPens, auto-injectors that can stop life-threatening emergencies caused by allergic reactions, has hit home on Capitol Hill, where one Democratic senator whose daughter has allergies has called for action and another Democratic senator's daughter is CEO of the company responsible for the price hike. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a Democrat whose daughter relies on EpiPen, urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the price increase of the medication, calling it "unjustified." Meanwhile, the daughter of Sen. Joe Manchin, the Democrat of West Virginia, has a very different personal connection. His daughter...

West Virginia University (WVU) has told its 29,000 students that they are breaking federal law if don’t agree to use the pronouns — including ‘he’ or ‘she,’ ‘zir’ or ‘hir’ etc. — preferred by each person who claims to be transgender. That policy means if a biological man — for example, famous transgender athlete Bruce Jenner — says he “identifies” his gender as female, then all other students must refer to the man as a “she,” or else be treated as a law-breaker.

Referring to someone by the “wrong” gender pronoun is a violation of federal anti-discrimination law, according to West Virginia University’s Title IX office. Title IX, which was signed into law by Richard Nixon in 1972, prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity. Among other things, Title IX forced college athletics programs to treat men’s and women’s programs the same, leading to a vast expansion in female NCAA athletics.

MORGANTOWN — Jeb Bush hit the campaign trail Tuesday for West Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Cole, a Donald Trump supporter in heavily pro-Trump coal country. Bush, who has said he won’t vote for Trump or Hillary Clinton for president, addressed a West Virginia business group Tuesday about fighting substance abuse, reforming the tax code, cutting regulations and overhauling the education system. But the former Florida governor’s speech largely avoided commentary on Trump, a bitter rival whose attacks became personal during a crowded Republican presidential primary. Bush also headlined a Cole fundraiser Tuesday evening. “I’d say that everybody has their...