Free Republic

About a month ago, Senator Jim Justice hosted the owners of the Omni Hotels & Resorts chain for a meeting at The Greenbrier Hotel to explore possibilities for working together. The meeting, by all accounts, had moments of strain, and lawyers for the Omni owners now allege the senator threatened his leverage over West Virginia’s courtrooms. Justice, a two-term Republican governor now serving in the U.S. Senate, and the Texas billionaires who own Omni are in conflict over control of The Greenbrier, its 710 guest rooms, four golf courses and casino. [snip] “At that meeting, the Senator and his counsel...

The developers of Mountain Valley Pipeline have asked the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency intervention to allow the project’s construction to progress. The pipeline developers made their application late Friday to vacate the stays of the Fourth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Such applications represent a request for emergency action addressed to a specific justice, in this case Chief Justice John Roberts. Each justice is assigned to circuits to handle such applications, and Roberts has the Fourth Circuit, which includes the region where the pipeline is being developed. The 35-page filing is in...

A brief article from an 1877 West Virginia newspaper headlined “Feminine Follies” described the criminal prosecution of a woman who had ended her pregnancy through a desperate operation with crude supplies. Arrested along with her was a female companion accused of trying to help. “Last evening, Samuel Motto went before Squire Phillips and swore on his oath that Ida Meredith had unlawfully and feloniously destroyed her unborn child by means of an instrument made of wire and a pencil,” the Wheeling Intelligencer reported. “Mrs. Samuel Motto was arrested as an accomplice in producing the abortion. Both women were held in...