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The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources contracted with a company in 2017 to develop a system, known as WV PATH, to help the agency better manage programs including Medicaid, food assistance and its child welfare system. With less than four years left on the contract, the project still isn’t complete. Senate Finance Committee Chair Eric Tarr, who has questioned DHHR about the missing database, said the project has cost $173 million as of July 2022 based on information from DHHR. “The first risk is harm to kids,” Tarr, R-Putnam, said. “The larger risk is that the feds...

Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday visited the Tomb of Jethro in honor of the Druze festival of Ziyarat al-Nabi Shu'ayb. At the start of the event, President Herzog was welcomed by Shaykh Mowafaq Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel. Also attending were Justice Minister Gideon Sa'ar (New Hope), Defense Minister Benny Gantz (Blue and White), opposition leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud), Internal Security Minister Omer Barlev (Labor), Welfare Minister Meir Cohen (Yesh Atid), Regional Cooperation Minister Esawi Frej (Meretz), Minister in the Finance Ministry Hamad Amar (Yisrael Beytenu), Deputy Minister in the PMO Abir Kara...

They want us to be less white. Response from rural Tennessee. I thought this was hilarious.... https://youtu.be/hdG0AQbOKoU

HAZARD, Ky. (WKYT) - An eastern Kentucky man has filed a lawsuit against Hampton Inn and his boss after he says he was punished for not undergoing an exorcism. The lawsuit was filed in Perry Circuit Court in March, and the plaintiff is Jason Fields of Leslie County. The defendants are Hampton Inn, Employee Resource Group and Sharon Lindon. Fields states in the lawsuit he started working at Hampton Inn as a front desk employee beginning in 2016. Sharon Lindon, his manager, learned Fields was going through a divorce and believed his marital problems were because he had demons. Lindon...

The newly disclosed texts between Strzok and Page were exchanged on November 4, 2015, the day after Jill McCabe, wife of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, lost a hotly contested Virginia state senate election. Strzok calls Virginians who ostensibly voted against Jill McCabe, "ignorant hillbillys." (sic) He calls the election outcome "disappointing." Sen. Ron Johnson, along with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is releasing the texts, along with a report entitled, "The Clinton Email Scandal and the FBI's Investigation of It." In another text exchange, Page writes to Strzok on September 2, 2016 about preparing talking points...

Editor's Note: This blog originally appeared at Academe Blog, the blog of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). A decade or more ago, at a faculty party in New York City, I listened in as a diverse group of faculty spoke casually and disparagingly of "hillbillies," "rednecks" and "white trash." I reminded them that they were speaking of my own people (my ancestry is completely Appalachian), though they shouldn't really be demeaning any group, no matter who might be around. I was met by fish-eyed responses, including the comment, "Well, you left there." My experience is not unusual. Author...

FAIRFIELD, Illinois — Drive 275 miles due south from Cook County to Wayne County. You’ll notice differences right away. It is warmer here, literally — last Wednesday, when it was 42 degrees in Chicago, it was 67 degrees in Fairfield, the county seat, and with a population of 5,000, the largest town in Wayne County, population 15,000. Figuratively warmer too. Ask directions at a bakery and the owner will walk out into the street to point the way. Strangers volunteer to put you up for the night. Pop in on the bank president, unannounced, and he’ll visit with you a...

Sometime during the past few years, the country started talking differently about white Americans of modest means. Early in the Obama era, the ennobling language of campaign pundits prevailed. There was much discussion of “white working-class voters,” with whom the Democrats, and especially Barack Obama, were having such trouble connecting. Never mind that this overbroad category of Americans — the exit pollsters’ definition was anyone without a four-year college degree, or more than a third of the electorate — obliterated major differences in geography, ethnicity, and culture. The label served to conjure a vast swath of salt-of-the-earth citizens living and...

Donald Trump has a new nickname for Hillary Clinton. The Republican White House hopeful tried out “Crooked Hillary” at a campaign rally in Watertown, New York, on Saturday. He had previously referred to Clinton as “incompetent Hillary,” according to the New York Times. Trump has not shied away from nicknaming his rivals. On the campaign trail, he often refers to rival Ted Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted.” Marco Rubio was called “Little Marco.”

Duck Dynasty's Phil and Miss Kay Robertson met when they were 14 years old  and have been inseparable ever since. As Phil says, "The last thing you want to do is wait until a woman is 20 years old to marry her." After 40 years of marriage, four sons, a slew of grandkids and a mega hit show, the couple is now promoting a new book. In Exploring The Joy Of Christmas, Phil and Miss Kay share Christmas memories, Miss Kay's famous recipes, their favorite carols and more.One of my favorite parts of Phil and Kay's Christmas-themed book is their description of the Robertsons'...

A Glennville man was cited for disorderly conduct June 11 after allegedly brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle at a Hinesville basketball court during a dispute over a foul call. Hinesville police were dispatched to the Liberty County Recreation Department basketball courts after receiving a report that a man had pulled an AK-47 out of the trunk of his car and threatened another man with it. When police arrived, they found the area “very crowded,” according to the report. They were told that the man who had produced the gun was sitting on the bleachers. Police made contact with the man,...

HBO “Real Time” host Bill Maher discussed the Internal Revenue Service scandal on Friday, making fun of the conservative groups who were unfairly targeted for years by the IRS. “I try to play it fair and I said before, I think there is an actual scandal with the IRS,” Maher began. “We got a hold of some of the forms [that] the IRS was making the applicants fill out, and it really does look like they were trying to search out and expose Tea Party people…” Maher then proceeded to list a number of fake questions his team concocted, beginning:...

The new Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Ark., will hold a dedication ceremony May 3 featuring the former President and his wife and ex- Secretary of State — but there’s just one problem for the snazzy new airport. “Locals are calling it the Hillbilly Airport,” one insider tells Confidenti@l. “And project managers certainly don’t want an airport named after our President called Hillbilly. In the South. How does that look to the world?” Our insider explains that when you depart the airport, you are met with huge signs that invite the public to “come meet” Bill...

DEAD possums litter the roads of the southern United States and whenever Bernie Smith encounters another fallen marsupial he pulls over and hurls the corpse into the back of his truck. One man's detritus is another man's feast: cooked slowly with potato, carrot and celery, the meat becomes tender in a rich and spicy stew known as burgoo. Mr Smith, 67, was showing off this traditional technique at the annual Road Kill Cook-Off festival in Marlinton, West Virginia, an isolated town nestled in the Appalachian mountains. Thousands were on hand this weekend to compare his casserole with barbecue squirrel, bear...

A teenage airplane passenger using a Jewish prayer object caused a misunderstanding that led the captain to divert a Kentucky-bound plane to Philadelphia and prompted a visit from a bomb squad. A 17-year-old boy on US Airways Express Flight 3079 from New York to Louisville was using tefillin, a set of small black boxes containing biblical passages that are attached to leather straps, said Philadelphia police Lt. Frank Vanore. When used in prayer, one box is strapped to the arm while the other box is placed on the head. "It's something that the average person is not going to see...

Yesterday on Daily RFT we had a couple bones to pick with a misleading headline in the local daily and the bible-thumping defenders of Burrell E. Mohler Sr. Along with his brother and four sons, the 74-year-old Independence, Missouri, native is accused of repeatedly raping his elementary school-aged granddaughters. Turns out the article in the Post was cribbed from a much longer and much more compelling piece that led Sunday's Kansas City Star. The latter feature lays out the Mohler family tree, details all of the disgusting deeds in question and sets it all against the backdrop of the family's...

Yet again, a Saturday Wall Street Journal "Remembrances" column is filled with another interesting American personality, who isn't well known, but his story is entertaining. Apparently and sadly, Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton recently committed suicide rather than serve his second sentence in the federal pen for moonshining. I don't know about you, but this Appalachian legend producing moonshine without a license wasn't harming me, and it smacks more of big brother at work and big government over-regulating Americans literally to death than it does a crime that harmed society. There is no justice when this harmless 62-year-old hillbilly was about to...

<p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- West Virginia remains the envy of most of the rest of the country when it comes to state budget revenues. It ended the first half of its budget year last month with a potential surplus of nearly $75 million.</p>

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign veered into damage control mode today following the reporting of the candidate's comments at a San Francisco fundraiser. Trying to explain rural white culture to the California billionaires, the Democratic candidate said, "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them... it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain...

Scotland is the least successful country in western Europe, according to a new survey. The nation has come bottom in the Federation of Small Businesses' (FSB) annual Index of Success, which compares living, health and education standards, and employment rates, with 10 other small countries, including the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand and Switzerland. Scotland's poor health performance is the main drag on improving quality of life, the survey said. It has the worst life expectancy amongst the 24 'developed' nations of the OECD, as well as among UK regions. The FSB said the in-coming SNP Administration faced a "major...