A little good news

I don't know about you, Gentle Reader, but I could use some of that. Here are two items.

First, it looks like 12,000 new and previously uninsured West Virginians signed up for health care on the exchange under the Affordable Care Act. That means there's about 37,000 getting care through the exchange with over 170,000 more getting care under expanded Medicaid.

Second, a judge actually acted with justice (!), siding with the Teamsters union which filed a rat-smelling lawsuit about how WVU may have played footsie with labor- hating  WV Republican legislators on a bogus "right to work for less study." With any luck, the public will get to read redacted emails that went back and forth between legislative leaders and...those people.

And here's a bonus item for cicada fans. Here they come!

Finally

The regular session of the WV legislature ended Saturday at midnight. Thank God. There's still a bunch of wrangling to come over the state budget and maybe a special session, but the main one is over. I agree with Phil Kabler at the Gazette-Mail that this was the worst session ever.

Still, there were plenty of moments of decency, some bad things fought off, other bad ones made a little less bad and an occasional out and out win.

On that note, conservative columnist and broadcaster Hoppy Kercheval gave a nice shout out to a Friend and a friend of mine in this piece on the legislature.