By Amy Purpura | West Virginia Watchdog
Ever since Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland passed laws legalizing slot machines and table gaming, racetrack-casinos in WV worried that this increased competition would attract fewer customers to the state. While this worry has proven accurate, especially for the two racetrack-casinos in the northern panhandle, state regulations from Charleston have [...]

By Dr. Terry Wallace | West Virginia Watchdog
Would you knowingly allow anyone to inject your child with a dose of a known poison? Would you knowingly poison your own child?
Don’t answer too fast, because that is exactly what’s happening every day across America.
Cigarette smoking kills, wounds and damages children just as certainly as any unbalanced [...]

By Amy Purpura | West Virginia Watchdog
On January 16, a little over a month after the tragic Sandy Hook shootings, President Obama and the White House unveiled their proposal for gun control after a month of debates with other policymakers. One of the most controversial measures included in this proposal is a ban on the [...]

By Dr. Terry Wallace | West Virginia Watchdog
America’s last surviving World War I veteran, West Virginian Frank Woodruff Buckles, died in February 2011. Though we never met, I grew up with many of his Doughboy contemporaries. My grandfather, a World War I cavalryman, was one of them. He was born in 1897 and his hand-colored [...]

By Amy Purpura | West Virginia Watchdog
In the previous article of this series on firearms, one of the biggest myths about gun violence was debunked. Namely, that statistics show more guns do not result in more gun murders. However, the last article did not discuss any of the gun policy in place in the US [...]

By Amy Purpura | West Virginia Watchdog
With much fervor currently erupting in the US over the terrible tragedy committed last month in Connecticut, it’s imperative that citizens and policymakers allow their rationality and reason to guide their thinking on solutions instead of being overtaken by emotion. In this spirit, the WV Watchdog will be publishing [...]

By Amy Purpura | West Virginia Watchdog
On January 2, President Obama  signed off on the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 (NDAA) in addition to the fiscal cliff legislation. While the latter has received much more widespread coverage in the mainstream media, the NDAA bill of 2013 contains provisions that equally affect all Americans regardless [...]

By Terry Wallace | West Virginia Watchdog
Several states finally got the memo and have just announced plans to add 300 hours, the equivalent of about 50 days, to the school year as part of a State/Federal pilot program.
As a youngster, I lived in fear of this notion.  Summer was a time of escape to a [...]

By Terry Wallace | West Virginia Watchdog
When Bob Feller died two years ago, a piece of me went with him and the nation lost much more than a baseball hero.
He was a role model, a philosophical mentor and his value system guided me as I grappled with the sometimes complex task of parenting my own [...]

By Amy Purpura | West Virginia Watchdog
With elections a week away, much of the news has recently been covering the presidential race between President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney, along with some other highly contested federal and state elections. However, little coverage has been given to a small observation mission being conducted [...]