Free Republic

The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), which represents West Virginia coal miners as well, said that the bill contained important measures that would benefit coal miners — like an extension of funding to aid victims of black lung disease, tax incentives to urge manufacturers to build new factories and employ ex-miners and protect union workers. Cecil Roberts, the union’s president said in a statement: “We are disappointed that the bill will not pass. We urge Senator Manchin to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working,...

“Mary Poppins Returns,” which picked up four Oscar nominations last week, is an enjoyably derivative film that seeks to inspire our nostalgia for the innocent fantasies of childhood, as well as the jolly holidays that the first “Mary Poppins” film conjured for many adult viewers. Part of the new film’s nostalgia, however, is bound up in a blackface performance tradition that persists throughout the Mary Poppins canon, from P. L. Travers’s books to Disney’s 1964 adaptation, with disturbing echoes in the studio’s newest take on the material, “Mary Poppins Returns.” One of the more indelible images from the 1964 film...