Editorials

Speaking of the war in Iraq, the news that Halliburton plans to relocate in Dubai raised a lot of Americans' blood pressures last week.

Halliburton, if you recall, is a huge oil services company that was formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. The firm benefited greatly from government contracts after the U.S. invaded Iraq. Many of those contracts were awarded without bids.

We've wondered before whether our area is really ready for a huge influx of people if a terrorist attack or natural disaster should hit the Washington-Baltimore area. That theme was raised again when 120 officials, emergency personnel and health professionals gathered to discuss disaster readiness at Cacapon State Park on February 28.

Of course, county and state agencies in West Virginia and our neighbors in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania are trying to prepare, but it's hard to know exactly what might happen if six million people – or even just 750,000, as some estimate – descend on our region in an emergency.

We can't think of anyone who deserves the state's History Hero award more than our own Betty Lou Harmison, one of this year's recipients. We felt so strongly about it that we joined the Museum of the Berkeley Springs in nominating her.

For more than 30 years, we've watched Betty Lou in action. After she and husband Bill sold the Park View Inn in the early 1970s, she devoted many hours to historical preservation and beautification efforts in Berkeley Springs.

Well, at least it's safe for Berkeley Springs police cars to go to Hancock. Delegate LeRoy Myers says he's giving up on a bill that he proposed in the Maryland Legislature. He's tired of the flak and being the butt of jokes.

Seems Myers was upset by the fake bull genitals that he saw flopping from the hitches of some pickup trucks. He didn't like the fact that his two-year-old daughter might see them. So, he introduced a bill to ban any display on motor vehicles of uncovered human or animal genitals, human buttocks or female breasts.

We hope everyone interested in open government and state laws on the subject will attend next week's talk by Lew Brewer of the State Ethics Commission. Brewer will explain how public agencies – town, county and school boards — are expected to conduct meetings and do business.

We're proud to cosponsor the session with Morgan County Government. We actually began working with the Morgan County Commissioners to bring Brewer here last summer, but the courthouse fire interrupted things. Prosecutor Debra McLaughlin saw the current arrangements through.

Certainly doesn't look like Eastern Panhandle residents, or most West Virginians for that matter, are going to look back on 2007 as a year when the state legislators helped them very much.

The West Virginia Legislature is in its usual bustle of activity as it heads toward midnight on Saturday, when the session ends and legislators turn into pumpkins again.

The Bath Town Council is onto something with their latest thoughts about how to properly abandon unused town streets.

Last month, St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church asked the council to give up the part of Liberty Street that adjoins the church property and connects with Mercer Street. While that section of the street was mapped out long ago, it has not really been built or used, except for a walkway. Church members have cut the grass and maintained the hillside for years. Now, with the expansion of the church building, they are interested in actually owning the plot.

If you're one of those who misses the courthouse clock each time you go by, consider an old Morgan Messenger clipping that Betty Lou Harmison dropped off at the office last week.

Back around 1967, the Morgan County Commissioners voted unanimously to stop the clock. Seems Harry C. Lawyer, a jeweler who served as the clock's caretaker, just couldn't keep the clock going anymore.

If you've been watching the news across the river in Hancock, you know there was quite a flap this winter over a radio tower that the Hancock Planning Commission approved for a residential neighborhood on Baptist Road.

In a town where a public controversy is rare, many people organized against the tower, showed up at meetings, wrote letters, etc. The issue may even have had an impact on a recent town election where a veteran council member was unseated.

No sooner had last week's paper hit the street than we started hearing that we'd left a couple presidents out of the article about those who'd visited Berkeley Springs.

Don Shelly and Bill Gill emailed to say we'd omitted Gerald R. Ford, the 38th president, who served from 1974 to 1977. When Ford died in December, he was widely eulogized as the man who returned some stability and integrity to the White House after Richard Nixon's disgrace. Seems that as a young congressman from Michigan, Ford delivered the commencement address at Berkeley Springs High School in 1951. No one's quite sure why he was invited, though, in addition to his political career, Ford was a college football star and a Navy veteran of World War II.