Editorials

U.S. Senator Robert Byrd continues to take strong stands on behalf of West Virginia's residents, even given his age and precarious health.

Last week, Byrd blasted Massey Energy for refusing to help replace and relocate Marsh Fork Elementary School in Raleigh County. Massey built a coal silo near the school and plans to build a second one. In addition, a nearby company pond holds back millions of gallons of toxic coal waste.

We were watching the news recently when we started musing about the silly gestures that many politicians make as they speak. What got us going was U.S. Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, who balances his glasses on the end of his nose like Benjamin Franklin. But we doubt wise old Ben did a hatchet chop every time he tried to make a point.

In the course of talking for three minutes, Levin made enough hatchet-chop motions to cut his wood supply for the winter. By golly, the man must have points to make galore! Hatchet chop. And he wants you to know that each and every one — hatchet chop — is important. Hatchet chop.

Almost two years ago, a group of local contractors approached the Morgan County Commissioners about coming up with some kind of building code as part of the county's planning efforts.

The idea went nowhere, but it's been in our mind after we read a real estate article in The Washington Post some time back. The piece explained the impact of falling home values on some of the older developments in the Washington suburbs.

It's hard to believe that a Jefferson County case, which looks like it ought to be open and shut, will have to be decided by the West Virginia Supreme Court.

The Observer, a monthly newspaper in Shepherdstown, has asked the court to declare that petitions given to local officials are public documents. The newspaper took the step because the Jefferson County clerk refused to release the petitions and Circuit Court Judge David Sanders refused to make her.

You've probably noticed that even though Morgan County is no longer part of the route for the PATH electric transmission line, the debate over the massive power project continues throughout the region.

Currently a series of public hearings are being held in affected areas across the Mountain State. And, every business-oriented publication seems to be promoting the power line, often through Allegheny Power spokesmen.

At the same time that PATH was a hot local topic in the summer of 2008, so was an ill-conceived notion to build the new U.S. 522, or at least parts of it, as a toll road.

The way it was planned, all north-south traffic would pay a toll near the U.S. Silica plant. The only way to avoid it would have been to drive Fairview Drive to River Road and go to the Hancock Bridge that way. Part of existing U.S. 522 would have been closed from North Berkeley through the sand mine, so a lot of traffic would have to double back through Berkeley Springs to find a way onto the new highway before heading north. Even if this was done, the projected toll income wasn't really enough to build the new road, anyway.

1923-2009

Walter Joseph Dugan, age 86, of Berkeley Springs, W.Va., died on Monday, September 28, 2009 at Autumn Acres Personal Care Center.

During the ongoing debate about health care reform in the U.S., the British national health system is often held up as an example of a government-run system gone wrong.

Last month, U.S. Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, even claimed Ted Kennedy would have been refused treatment for his brain tumor in England because of his age.

Most of us will wake up tomorrow, get dressed and head off to work or school without hesitation. Many of us will go about our daily routines with a few aches and pains that go along with the aging process, or a cold that will disappear in a day or two. And then there is that percentage of the population that faces each new day with a special physical challenge. For some, it is a limb that works differently; for others, it is a medical condition that requires daily monitoring, tests and injections. Some disabilities are temporary and others are life-changing. Some of our neighbors are born with their disability, yet others develop them by illness or accident. Regardless, disabilities and the challenges they bring don't discriminate — they strike newborns, the aged and everyone in between.

For the last few weeks The Morgan Messenger has featured stories about people from the area living with their disabilities. For every story that was told, there are hundreds that weren't.

Time-and-time again we continue to hear the debate on the size of the new Morgan County Courthouse.

In just a short time we have watched the vacant lot go from a gravel parking lot to layers of steel to columns of stone and rows of yellow bricks. Just last week we watched, along with a crowd of others, as history was being made when the new clock tower was lifted in place.