Sunday's Charleston Gazette-Mail "Perspective" section featured articles by West Virginia's two senators. Joe Manchin's "W.Va. needs its public schools" had as its subheading "Secretary of Education nominee DeVos would be a poor choice for education." In the article, Manchin explains why he will not support DeVos. Shelley Moore Capito's piece, "Meeting W.Va.'s health care needs," describes the plan that she is co-sponsoring to replace Obamacare.

I originally decided not to mention the senators' op-ed pieces because I assumed that both would end up in our local "newspapers" but so far neither article has made it. I can see the possibility that the Manchin article might not make it because I assume the locals' support the DeVos nomination but I find it curious, given her "favorite" status, that neither paper has printed Capito's piece about the health care plan she's co-sponsoring.

In a related matter, Senator Shelley is apparently the object of much lobbying by groups opposed to Betsy DeVos' nomination which comes up for a vote tomorrow. It appears, however, that she will vote for DeVos which would deadlock the Senate and allow Vice President Pense to break the tie in DeVos' favor.

I'll leave you with some satire from the New Yorker's Andy Borowitz:

Before his breakfast meeting to mark Black History Month, Trump told DeVos, “Betsy, write down everything you know about black history so I can read it at the meeting. She took out a pen and did it in, like, three minutes. She’s fantastic.”

Impressed by the one-sentence summary that DeVos wrote about Frederick Douglass, Trump said that he was now considering Douglass for a top White House post.

“Based on what Betsy said about him, we could really use Fred’s energy around here,” Trump said.

He lashed out at the press for reporting that Frederick Douglass was dead, calling those reports “very unfair.”

“That’s a nasty thing to say about someone who is alive and doing a great job,” he said. “This is why the press is failing and it’s failing very, very badly.”