The Mingo County Commission is expected to name a new county prosecutor and county commissioner this week.
Former prosecutor Michael Sparks and former Commissioner David Baisden resigned in October after they were charged in separate cases stemming from a corruption probe.
WSAZ-TV reports that the commission interviewed candidates to replace Sparks and Baisden on Monday. Commissioners plan to name a new prosecutor and magistrate at their meeting on Wednesday.
Sparks is accused in a scheme to protect Sheriff Eugene Crum from revelations he’d bought drugs. Drum died in April in an unrelated shooting.
Baisden pleaded guilty in October to a federal extortion charge.
The author of a study published last year on state veterans is trying to do more to help them.Joseph Scotti has started a new organization called WHOLE…
The author of a study published last year on state veterans is trying to do more to help them.
Joseph Scotti has started a new organization called WHOLE Veterans. It stands for Welcome Home: Overcoming, Living, Engaging.
Scotti says it takes a lot of different people within a community to encourage veterans to reach out for help when they need assistance. He says there simply aren’t enough people at the moment to deal with absolutely every veteran who needs care.
The American Psychiatric Association’s guide on how to treat post-traumatic stress disorder has been updated. Scotti says veterans shouldn’t be worried about stricter qualification standards for treatment.
Scotti’s next study is geared specifically to hear from Gulf War veterans.
West Virginia University’s College of Law hosted three visiting professors from the University of Guanajuato last week. “Mexico Week” at the law school featured lectures and panel discussions giving students an opportunity to better understand life south of the border.
Perhaps the longest standing relationship WVU has with a sister school abroad is with the University of Guanajuato. In continuing with that tradition, professors from the school in the small university town of Guanajuato came to share their world with students.
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Patricia Bengné is a professor of law at the University of Guanajuato who has made several trips to Morgantown over the years. She came to Morgantown to dispel cultural misconceptions, to impart a sense of the history of Mexico, and also to give students a sense of that country’s legal system.
“Mexico and the US, we do not follow the same legal system,” Bengné explained. “Mexico is under the civilian tradition, and the US has a common law system. The main difference in my opinion is that the legal system here in the US is based on the judge-made law. I mean the judges can make the law. And in Mexico it is very different; we have to follow very rigid statutes—the legal rules, I mean, we call codigo. It’s a very rigid system where we have to find the solution to the problem in these books.”
Bengné explains that the origins of Mexico’s legal system are both ancient and classical, based on the Roman and French legal systems. She says the Mexican system shares more in common with other legal systems throughout the world than with the Common Law system in the U.S.—especially those law systems practiced in Latin America and most of continental Europe.
Bengné says efforts are underway in Mexico to change the legal system into one more flexible and efficient.
“I have been in Chile recently and in Chile it took ten years to transition from one system to another. So in Mexico I think it will take much more time than that. It’s not easy to do that—to change the mind and way of thinking of lawyers, police officers, magistrates, every person involved in the judicial branch? It’s not easy, believe me.”
But Bengné has seen some relatively rapid changes in Mexico. She was among four women in a class of fifty who graduated from the law school in Guanajuato in 1978.
“Being a female lawyer in those years? Oh it was impossible in Mexico. When I went to practice law—because you need to practice in order to know what you’re doing—I was like an invisible woman. It was very, very difficult.”
But today, Bengné says 56 percent of the students graduating from the law school in Guanajuato are women, and today more than ever, women are taking up judicial roles.
“Let me tell you, in my home town in the state of Guanajuato we have a woman as the president of the court—tribunal local estatal, we say. She was the president of the state court in Guanajuato and she was my student. We are very proud of having that,” Bengné said.
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“We have been a democracy roughly for more than 20 years or so, so we’re still a baby democracy,” says Fernando Patrón, the Director of the Public Management Department of the Law, Politics, and Government Division at the university.
Patrón also spoke with students about changes and challenges Mexico faces. He talked about the return to power of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which was the dominant political party in Mexico for most of the 20th century, during which time Mexico was run under an authoritative rule.
“My perspective is that there is no peril of regression to authoritarianism in Mexico whatsoever, considering, of course, what this party’s return to power means,” Patrón said. “I think that the political system is mature enough to hold democracy. Our main concern in Mexico is not with the political system, but with the rule of law, for instance, corruption, transparency, accountability, poverty, which are not minor problems. No they’re very serious, big problems. So in order to consolidate democracy, we really need to improve those aspects of our country, otherwise our democracy could be in peril.”
The culminating event of Mexico Week at the law school was a panel discussion which included topics such as engineering in Mexico, the role of indigenous people politically, as well as organized crime.
This week, it was the Democratic Party’s turn to raise money, but also pay tribute to a man who has served the state for 50 years.
“Your overwhelming proof, Jay, that it’s not about the circumstances you come from, it’s about soul. And Jay Rockefeller, you’ve got soul.”
Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Charleston to honor Senator Jay Rockefeller at the annual Jefferson-Jackson fundraising dinner.
Focused more on the long-time politician’s accomplishments than politics, Biden spoke of the years of service Rockefeller has given to the state, likening him to the ranks of former Senators Robert C. Byrd and Jennings Randolph, both men the Vice President knew personally during his seven terms in the U.S. Senate.
“As different as their backgrounds and personalities, these three great men had a common thread that runs through all of them and I got to witness it up close and personal,” he said Saturday night in a ballroom at the Charleston Civic Center. “They’re all extremely bright, patriotic men who have an incredible sense of decency and a concern most of all for the struggles of ordinary people. That was the driving force of their devotion to their job.”
BidenFull.mp3
Vice President Joe Biden's full keynote address.
Throughout the evening, the Vice President, Senator Joe Manchin, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin and other state Democratic leaders recounted the battles Rockefeller took on for the people of West Virginia.
An outsider from one of the richest families in the nation, Rockefeller moved to the state in the early 1960s as a VISTA volunteer, spending time in the small southern West Virginia town of Emmons located in Boone County.
“I learned that public service is what I wanted to do because if you love people who are constantly trying to push a rock uphill with life sort of stack against them, but they don’t quaver,” Rockefeller said. “They just go ahead.”
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Senator Jay Rockefeller and his wife Sharon Lee Percy share their thoughts on West Virginia, moderated by their daughter Valerie.
“In effect, I was reborn, in a secular sense, in Emmons because of the people. They told me without telling me what I needed to do and who I was and that I was okay.”
Biden said from his years of friendship with the Senator, he could tell Rockefeller took that time to heart, eventually using the experience to motivate him as he served the state in the House of Delegates and during his eight years as governor.
“I’d already been in the Senate a long time when Governor Rockefeller ran for the United States Senate, but I can remember when he ran for governor because I remember what they said about him,” Biden recounted.
“This is this sycon of a wealthy family. He’s just form shopping. He’s just down here trying to find a safe Democratic seat and this is all he’s doing. He doesn’t give a darn. He’s an opportunist. Remember the phrase he has nothing in common with us? He has nothing in common with us. They didn’t know you, Jay.”
“You came to give, but you found out the people of West Virginia they stole. They stole your heart,” the Vice President said.
Rockefeller was praised for his work on the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known commonly as CHIP, the 1992 Coal Act which established a health benefits fund for coal miners, and his work as Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee during the war in Iraq.
“There’s no doubt in my mind, and I’m sure none of you know any of this because Jay can’t come home and talk about this stuff and I can only talk about it in generic terms, but I promise you. I promise you, you and America are a much safer nation because of Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia,” Biden said.
But the evening was still about politics, after all the fundraising dinner is one of the largest events for the party of the year.
Attendees paid $75 a plate, and with more than 1,500 in the room, state Democratic Party Chair Larry Puccio called it one of the most successful dinners in the party’s history.
Even Rockefeller took time during his question and answer session with his daughter and wife to endorse Natalie Tennant, West Virginia’s Secretary of State and the Democratic candidate running to fill his seat.
Rockefeller, who will retire in early 2015 after 30 years in the U.S. Senate, said he has been lucky to serve West Virginia and the entire country on a broad scale, fighting for jobs, health care, working people, seniors and veterans.
A bridge replacing a 70-year-old span linking Nitro and St. Albans is open for traffic.The old bridge was demolished earlier this year to make way for the…
A bridge replacing a 70-year-old span linking Nitro and St. Albans is open for traffic.
The old bridge was demolished earlier this year to make way for the new Dick Henderson Memorial Bridge. It cost nearly $24 million to construct.
Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and Sen. Joe Manchin were among the dignitaries on hand Friday to mark the opening of the span to traffic. It opened to foot traffic Thursday night.
Instead of a ribbon cutting, a construction worker used a blowtorch to cut through a chain.
Hundreds looked on as the new span made its debut.
A new trophy for the annual football rivalry game between St. Albans and Nitro is made from steel from the old span.
Governor Tomblin’s education reform bill passed by the legislature earlier this year requires all children to read proficiently by the third grade. A…
Governor Tomblin’s education reform bill passed by the legislature earlier this year requires all children to read proficiently by the third grade. A strategy to make sure that happens will be discussed at an education summit Tuesday, November 5.
From grades kindergarten to third grade, children learn to read. By fourth grade, they must read to learn.
Dr. Amelia Courts, the President and CEO of The Education Alliance in Charleston says it takes more than a law on the books to do that. It takes support from the school community.
“Obviously Governor Tomblin has made it very clear that he views the improvement process for education to be a long term commitment and that’s where our organization stands as well. There were some legislative changes this past session,” said Courts.
“We would envision that some additional changes will occur this coming session and we want to continue to engage the community as we move through that process. Also as we work with individual schools and school districts we hope to take some of these lessons learned from the summit and work with them as they are implemented in programs at different schools.”
The summit includes speeches, panel discussions and a town hall meeting hosted by former governor Gaston Caperton. It convenes Tuesday morning at the Charleston Civic Center.