The Supreme Court cripples the EPA

July 7, 2022

If the rest of the nation didn’t think highly of West Virginia before, they certainly won’t now.  Because, the Supreme Court sided with Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA now has limited power to, oh, you know, protect the environment. The specific question at hand was whether the EPA, under a specific provision of the Clean Air Act, could issue “significant” rules regarding the “best system for emissions reduction,” in this case by setting carbon dioxide limits in such a way as to encourage energy ...

Guns aren’t the problem? The data disagree

July 6, 2022

On Sunday, July 3, a gunman walked into a mall and opened fire. Armed with one rifle and one pistol, the 22-year-old killed three people and wounded (to varying degrees) 30 more. On Monday, July 4, a gunman climbed onto a rooftop and opened fire on a Fourth of July parade. Armed with a semiautomatic rifle (and another in the car), the 21-year-old unloaded two 30-round magazines and most of a third into the crowd below, firing roughly 83 bullets. He killed seven people and injured a couple dozen more. But that’s mostly where the similarities end. The first incident happened in ...

What will W.Va. decide on abortion?

July 5, 2022

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, several states had trigger laws or old laws that immediately went into effect. Ohio is one of the former: A trigger law banning abortions at six weeks took effect within hours of the court’s ruling. Three days later, a pregnant 10-year-old girl walked into a clinic. She was six weeks and three days pregnant and could not legally obtain an abortion in the state of Ohio. She was referred to a clinic in Indiana. West Virginia is one of the latter: With the fall of Roe, a law from the mid-1800s again takes effect, or so says the attorney ...

Greater Morgantown Area has come so far

July 2, 2022

Sometimes, one must take a step back and simply appreciate what’s going on around them. And today, we’re looking around at Morgantown, Westover, Granville, Star City and the rest of the Greater Morgantown Area and appreciating how far it’s all come. The growth the area has seen recently is phenomenal. In the last couple weeks, we’ve highlighted a bevy of businesses either slated to join our communities or already breaking ground. The John Chambers College of Business and Economics Vantage Ventures building will be welcoming a host of companies, including tech company Rank One ...

Will the crypto crash scare off the ‘data center’?

July 1, 2022

Maybe we needn’t be so concerned about that mysterious “data center” — widely thought to be a cryptocurrency mining facility — slated for the Morgantown Industrial Park after all. Because for the last month and half, cryptocurrency has been in freefall. It started back in May when a type of stablecoin collapsed. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are anchored to real-world assets and/or are supposed to keep a dollar-to-dollar exchange (one crypto unit equals one U.S. dollar). terraUSD was an experimental stablecoin that relied on an algorithm, but the algorithm failed ...

Will courts see Hope Scholarship violates W.Va.’s Constitution?

June 30, 2022

It’s not often a defendant in a lawsuit takes the plaintiff’s side. But such is the case when a statement was released on behalf of the state superintendent and the state board of education that made clear they support the lawsuit against the new Hope Scholarship and take issue with the program itself. Clayton Burch in his capacity as the state superintendent of schools and Miller Hall in his capacity as the president of the state board of education are both named as defendants in the lawsuit Beaver v. Moore. The case — brought by three West Virginia public school ...