In a January 5, 2010 letter to the Corps of Engineers Huntington office, the EPA declared that it would not object to issuance of a permit for Hobet Mining’s Surface Mine No. 45 in West Virginia, one of the projects had subjected to enhanced review. The review process produced a negotiated agreement in which Hobet agreed to cut the impacts to headwater streams in half (from burying six linear miles to only three).

A news article from 2009 was also seemingly missed by the Telegraph:

On August 10 of that year, the EPA gave the nod for the federal Army Corps of Engineers to issue a Clean Water Act permit for CONSOL Energy Inc.'s Peg Fork Surface Mine near Chattaroy in Mingo County.

So much for the myth the Obama Administration is anti-coal… and these are only two stories, found in about 60 seconds using Google.

Isn't it far better to submit these permits to careful scrutiny, then take action after working diligently with the coal companies to resolve environmental issues, rather than continue to let them indiscriminately befoul our state's drinking water, decimate hundreds of miles of streams, and turn our natural beauty into barren moonscapes?

I emailed this to the paper but doubt it will see publication, for the simple fact that it doesn't fit into the editorial staff's blatantly right-wing agenda. In its zeal to condemn anything and everything Obama, the Telegraph is doing its readers a disservice by missing, whether by accident or intentionally, coal-related news stories that prove the administration is willing to reach compromises with our state's coal operations.

Nearly every editorial published in the online edition shows a marked right-wing bias. From my time there, I know the paper used to run opinion columns that offered a more liberal view, to balance out columns that were of a more conservative bent. I wrote one for about a year, and the paper would run syndicated columns from other writers who, like me, leaned somewhat to the left.

This was fair and balanced delivery of the opinions of the day, from writers who came from all parts of the political spectrum. Sadly, this seems to be a thing of the past at the Bluefield Daily Telegraph.

I first thought this might be an issue with online reprint rights to the syndicated columns. Even taking the financial aspect of this into consideration, it is the job of the paper to provide a forum for political discussion that encompasses everyone. As it stands, when you read the online edition, you get one world view shoved into your face – the conservative one.

The late Tom Colley, a conservative, and executive editor of the paper, believed in providing such fair and balanced coverage. On the basis of my frequent contributions to the Letters to the Editor section, he, along with then-publisher Gary Adkisson,  encouraged me to write a weekly column, even though 95% of the time he disagreed with what I wrote.

Taking the syndication issues out of the equation, there are surely more than a few qualified writers in the area, of the liberal persuasion, who would be able to contribute their thoughts on a regular basis. The conservative writers, obviously, have every right to speak their mind. Is this option being offered to prospective contributors who "lean to the left?"

The Bluefield Daily Telegraph does its readers a huge disservice by not offering the other side of the story when it comes to the political issues of the day. It's their job to do so, and they are failing miserably.

How long did it take George Bush (whom the opinion writer has professed in the past to admire) to make a public statement on shoe bomber Richard Reid? Six days. Did the writer complain back then? For some reason I believe probably not.

He intimates Obama doesn't take terrorism seriously without offering any real evidence of this other than to regurgitate the standard right-wing talking points, including the accusation the president won't even use the words "terrorist" or "terrorist attack". This is an outright lie.

During Obama's radio address on the attempted Christmas Day bombing, he used the word "terrorist" or a variation at least six times. It seems strange to me that Obama's detractors would make such a baseless and actually silly claim, so easily refuted, about such a serious matter. The writer should have at least troubled himself to look at the actual transcript of the speech instead of just recycling what other right-wing pundits have been saying. I guess it's easier to write a column if you don't bother to fact-check while writing it.

He wrote, " He didn’t grasp the seriousness of the situation, and he sped through a weak public statement that left too much unsaid so he could get back out on the golf course." Now, whether the president's statement was weak or strong is a matter of opinion. But the writer's implication that Obama was only interested in resuming his vacation is amusing, since he staunchly supported George W. Bush, who was infamous for taking regular (and lengthy) vacations even very early on in his presidency Oh, the hypocrisy.

He even accuses the president of giving the war on terror "back seat" status so he can focus on his "radical" domestic agenda. Again, we have an accusation being made with absolutely nothing to back it up. This seems to be his writing style – sling lots of mud and hope something sticks – reminiscent of other right-wing pundits like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

I will defend to the death this opinion writer's right to criticize whomever he wants to criticize. Unfortunately, when a writer is blinded by his or her own bias, it's all too easy to put words to paper without doing a thorough check of the actual facts of the topic at hand. This columnist is a somewhat competent writer, and it's a shame he chooses to throw around half-truths and misstatements of fact in his zeal to attack anything and everything Obama has done (or hasn't done).

Taitz has been laughed out of courtroom after courtroom as she doggedly pursues her so-called "case" against Obama. She's prime joke fodder, but a recent post on her blog indicates she might be a tad dangerous, too:

"What is the real intention of this Kenyan, Indonesian communist usurper? Is it to provide security for us or to destroy our security? Judge for yourself.

"Seeing targeted destruction of our economy, our security, dissipation of American jobs, massive corruption in the Government, Congress Department of Justice and Judiciary, it might be time to start rallies and protests using our second amendment right to bare arms and organise in militias."

Sounds like a call to arms to me…. and possibly to many others, in which Taitz's already bad year may just be an inkling of what's to come for her. Here's a rundown of her low points in 2009:

• August 3: MSNBC's David Shuster calls out Taitz on live TV after she lashes out at "Obama's brownshirts" in the media. Said Shuster: "You're making a reference to Nazi Germany, and to a lot of us who lost relatives in the Holocaust, this is deeply, deeply offensive."
• August 6: In a sign of an intra-Birther power struggle, fellow conspiracy theorist Andy Martin publicly declares it's time to "shut down the Orly Taitz circus."
• Sept. 16: Federal Judge Clay Land, who is presiding over a Georgia Birther case, belittles Taitz in a widely circulated order that accuses Taitz of failing to understand legal principles grasped by "any middle school civics student." Land adds: "Unlike in Alice in Wonderland, simply saying something is so does not make it so."
• Sept. 17: A fellow member of the California bar files a complaint in response to Taitz's call — during an interview with TPMmuckraker — for Judge Land to be tried for treason.
• Sept. 21: Army Captain Connie Rhodes, Taitz's own client in the Georgia Birther case, sends a letter to the judge renouncing Taitz as her counsel. Rhodes, who sent the letter while deploying to Iraq, tells the judge that Taitz submitted an emergency filing without Rhodes' permission or blessing.
• October 13: A frustrated Land fines Taitz $20,000 for repeated frivolous filings. "When a lawyer files complaints and motions without a reasonable basis for believing that they are supported by existing law or a modification or extension of existing law, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law," he writes. "When a lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law, that lawyer ceases to advance her cause or the ends of justice."
• October 14: Appearing on Joy Behar's show, Taitz is forced to explain why she described the judge as "delusional":
• November 12: An affidavit from a prospective witness in a California Birther case alleges that Taitz asked witnesses to perjure themselves — and much worse.

Anyone who supports this woman or her cause should be ashamed of themselves.

By my quoting you a flat rate on these type of projects, which are often very complex and can stretch over days or weeks, you will know up front what the final cost to you will be and can plan your budget accordingly. It also frees me from the pressure of trying to conform to a fixed number of hours to complete a project, and allows me to focus on delivering an outstanding product to you.

Computer repair, troubleshooting, and related services will continue to be billed at my usual rate of $30 per hour.

If all you know are Google, Yahoo and Bing you might be surprised to learn there are many, many more search engines on the Web. Check out the list!

Altavista was the first well known search engine for the Web and that's about the only thing it's known for. Today it's mentioned mainly for it's role in history. The search results are from Yahoo so don't expect anything original here, still it can bring a nice dose of nostalgia to those of us who remember the time when Yahoo was just a free directory and Google didn't exist. Altavista

Ask, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, is one of the small but big search engines with a 3.9% market shart as of November 2009. Ask was one of the first search engines to mix it's search results with other sources like encyclopedias, images and maps. A simple query test indicates that Ask has billions of pages, or 1/8th of those in Google, at least for Enlish language results. Ask.com

Bing is Microsoft's latest facelift on the search engine that was first named MSN Search, then Live Search and now Bing. Bing is considered by most to take the third spot after Google and Yahoo in terms of search quality. It's also third in search as far as market share is concerned. Bing

Blekko is a brand new Google killer as they like to call themselves. It's run by Rich Skrenta, previously on Topix and Netscape's Open Directory. It's not live yet but is supposed to launch in the end of 2009, let's see if it does… Blekko

Clusty calls itself a clustering search engine. This basically means that in addition to the traditional list of search results it gives you a list of alternative topics that your search phrase could be related to. I don't like the quality of search results, though, there's a fair bit of low relevancy results returned. Clusty

Cuil is a new search engine that markets itself as the world's biggest search engine with three times the pages indexed as Google. It made a big bang when it launched in 2008 by crashing on launch day (LOL), but gives fairly good results and presents them in a new, somewhat strange, way. Cuil

Dogpile is a meta search engine that combines the search results of Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask to let you search from all the big search engines in one place. Despite a minimal market share Dogpile has still managed to get several J.D. Power & Associates awards for best customer satisfaction, this according to Businessweek. Dogpile

DuckDuckGo, founded by Gabriel Weinberg, is a search engine with it's own bot and index, but it also uses data from other sources, like Yahoo BOSS. Despite it's funny name, DuckDuckGo provides compelling search results that is a combination of facts, disambiguations and links. DuckDuckGo

Entireweb is a search engine founded in 2000 by the Swedish company WorldLight.com AB. Currently they index several hundred million webpages and serve over 100 million searches per month. Entireweb

Excite was founded in 1994 by Graham Spencer, Joe Kraus, Mark Van Haren, Ryan McIntyre, Ben Lutch and Martin Reinfried, all students at Stanford. Over the years it has been through the dot-com bubble, mergers, aquisitions and bankruptcy. Today it's a meta search engine and portal with search results from Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask through an arrangement with InfoSpace. Excite

Gigablast was founded in 2000 by Matt Wells. It has a large, frequently updated index and gets to play with the big boys though it doesn't have much of a market share in search. The search results in a quick test is not up to the same standard as Google and Yahoo. Gigablast

Google is the world's most popular search engine. Cuil said they have a bigger index but it's going to take years before anyone can knock big G down from the position as market leader. Google

Hakia is a semantic search engine that organizes the results into categories looking at the search term from different angles. It uses a database of sites recommended by librarians to provide credible results, it then adds web results where the credible sources do not have enough info. It blends all this with news, photos and social media feeds to make it a different search experience. Hakia

ImHalal is a search engine mainly for Muslims and includes web, image and Quran search. It returns highly relevant results quickly and looks nice so I included it here with the others. ImHalal

Leapfish combines the results from Google, Wikipedia, Digg, wikiHow, Answers, Amazon and Twitter to make an information page about your search term combining the media from many services. It looks neat enough to include on the search engine list even if they don't have their own index. Leapfish

Lycos, which began as a research project by Dr. Michael Loren Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon University in 1994, grew to become the most visited online destination in the world in 1999. After several years of decline the search market share of Lycos was at 0.01% by the end of 2008, but if you visit them you'll see that they still deliver relevant results with thumbnails attached. Lycos

Omgili is a forum search engine that only returns forum threads in the results. I tried a couple of searches and it's really useful. I get to see what people are talking about, which sometimes is just what I want. Omgili

Secret Search Engine Labs was started in 2007 as a hobby project by Simon Byholm and is aiming at providing highly relevant search results with a really small index size.  Secret Search Engine Labs

Spezify is a totally cool new search engine that, instead of the normal search result listings, provides a flash based view that looks like you had pinned newspaper clips and photos to a board. You can see and read a whole paragraph of text from the website which makes it a lot more easy, at least for me, to decide which page I want to visit to learn more. Spezify

WayBackMachine lets you search old versions of webpages, sometimes all the way back to 1996. It's fun to look up old versions of popular websites to see how they've changed through the years. WayBackMachine

Yahoo! Search is the eternal runner up, always trailing big G with good search results and a significantly smaller share of the search market. Yahoo has a lot of portal features in addition to search, which sets it apart from Google in many ways. Yahoo Search

Some Search Engines that traditionally appear in many search engine lists have been left out as I feel they provide little value. Usually this is because they use the data from another engine, the're not Enlish language or they simply return low quality results.

These search engines use the Entireweb datafeed: ExactSeek, WebFerret, ixquick, mamma, slingpage, searchmirror, findtarget, Zoeken, Search66, Findelio, AtomicSeek, aesop, Kart00, eTools, ZUULA, Citosearch, Atnio, unabet, iZito, zapmeta, InfoGrid, VINDEN.NL and FlexFinder

These are the others: All The Web, AOL, Baidu, Comcast, HotBot, Mamma, MetaCrawler, mywebsearch, WebCrawler, WebFetch, Yandex

Blog Search Engines

Blog search engines finds blog posts and usually favor recent posts as blogs are often about news and you want to get the latest news. Blog search engines are also often real-time as the pinging system and RSS feed of a blog makes it a lot easier for the search engine to fetch content as it is created.

Bloglines is a blog search engine and news aggregator that was founded in 2003 by Mark Fletcher, former CEO of ONElist. In addition to searching through millions of blog posts you can also combine news (RSS) feeds to have all your online information collected in one place. Bloglines

Google Blog Search is the blog search engine by Google. It finds a lot of relevant answers to a query and feels comfortable to use. Google Blog Search

Social Search Engines and Other Weird Stuff

Hunch is a decision enging that asks you fun questions to learn what type of person you are. With some questions answered it will use it's knowledge of your interests and social associations to give you answers tailored to your personality. I think it's quite fun, but I'm not sure if it's useful.. Hunch

Mahalo is a questions and answers type portal much like Yahoo Answers, you can type in any question and other users can answer them. You can earn Mahalo dollars if you provide the best answer to a question. Mahalo

Powerset is a natural language search engine that tries to understand the question asked instead of just looking for keywords. Powerset was founded by Barney Pell, a graduate of Stanford with a Ph.D in computer science from Cambridge, aquired by Microsoft in 2008, and it currently searches and organizes articles from the Wikipedia. Powerset

Aardvark is a social engine where users can ask their friends and contacts for advice. The software automatically directs the question to the persons best eqipped to answer based on the personal profile they have entered into the system. Sounds like a good idea and they have an offer from Google to buy them for $30 million. Aardvark

Installing "watchdog" type software on individual workstations is time-consuming and expensive. How about an approach that would encompass every machine on your office LAN and also be extremely easy to administer? I can show you how.

My web content filtering solution will protect your LAN from phishing attacks, and also block access to adult-related sites, sites offering or condoning illegal activity, social networking sites, video sharing sites, and general time-wasters. All this is done without installing any software on your local machines.

If one of your users attempts to access a blocked site they receive a brief onscreen message telling them that access to that site has been disabled (and the message can be customized with your company logo and your own text, too).

Contact me for more information on web content filtering for your office (or home!) My usual hourly rate applies to install this service… actual setup time is only a few minutes but I do have a one-hour minimum charge. So, for only $30 you can enjoy greater peace of mind when it comes to Internet security, and also have the assurance your network's resources are not being misused.!

01) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

02) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

03) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

04) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all like many of the principles on which this great country was founded; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

05) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of marriages like Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

06) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

07) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

08) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

09) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

Let me just say that any shop that pushes a full reinstall of the operating system as a fix to ordinary problems should not be in business. Sure, it’s an ideal means to restore a computer to pristine running condition, but unless the shop is also going to back up your existing data, and then reinstall it along with all your needed extra applications, don’t fall for this scheme.

Any decent computer technician should be able to clean viruses and spyware off your machine, or replace any essential Windows system files that are damaged or missing, without having to wipe your disc drive clean and start from scratch.

Shame on any computer shop that advertises a full operating system reinstall as an easy fix to what ails your PC.

Male residents of the local area will be participating in a “Mixed Up Male Beauty Pageant” in order to raise funds to help pay for the medical care of Bryson Fanning, age 2. Bryson is being treated for Histiocytosis at UVA Medical.

Documents and/or Photos available for this release:

Bryson Fanning, age 3

To view supporting documents and/or photos, go to www.enr-corp.com/pressroom and enter Release ID: 220529