Author: Bob Rayner
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Political Correctness More Important than Accuracy in News Reports of Slaying
by Kerry Dougherty Is it too much to ask the news media to put accuracy ahead of their political agendas? We asked this in March when activists were more obsessed with pronouns than the fact that the trans Nashville school shooter, who killed three little kids and three adults, was occasionally referred to as a…
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Thanks, Loudoun County! We Needed That.
by Kerry Dougherty Dear Loudoun County, Thanks so much for hiring Aaron Spence as your new superintendent of schools. Love, Virginia Beach Good news for those who care about returning sanity and common sense to Virginia Beach Public Schools: superintendent Aaron Spence is leaving to head up the troubled Loudoun County Public schools. Spence is…
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Every Day is Memorial Day in Normandy
by Kerry Dougherty My most memorable Memorial Day did not take place on Memorial Day at all, but a few weeks earlier. In May of 1982. But then again, every day is Memorial Day when you stand on those beaches at Normandy. It was a glorious spring morning on the coast of France. The sky…
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Retail Politics and the Social Compact
by Richard Tangard While I waited in the grocery store checkout line, a scowling, angry-looking man walked in through the automatic door. As I placed my items on the conveyor, his purposeful stride took him into a nearby aisle. Moments later he emerged carrying two cases of beer, snarled at several employees, and stomped out…
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Martin Brown Is Absolutely Correct: To Achieve Real Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, “DEI” Must Die
by J. Kennerly Davis Martin Brown, a senior aide to Governor Glenn Youngkin, created quite a stir when he told an audience at the Virginia Military Institute that “DEI is dead.” Democrats in politics and the media jumped on the remark, and the Governor’s support of Brown, to assert that the Youngkin administration is hostile…
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The Folly of Electrification
by Bill O’Keefe Although Dominion Energy seems to be hedging on its 2040 goal, Virginia is still stuck with the Virginia Clean Economy Act net zero mandate and its participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which seeks to achieve an 80 percent reduction in emissions by 2050. However, neither the General Assembly nor Dominion…
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Oh Look! It’s Mock Jesus Night at the Ballpark.
by Kerry Dougherty During a freak heat wave in April of 2022 I went to a Tides game. To our surprise, it was also “bark in the park” or bring-your-dog-to-the ballpark day. The experience was Gothic. It was so hot and blindingly bright that all of the dogs and their owners huddled in the shade…
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Hey Norfolk: Do Kids Really Need Classes In Masturbation?
by Kerry Dougherty You might think that a mediocre school system where barely half of all schools are fully accredited would put all of its energy and money into academics. Oh, Bambi, you have no idea how public schools work, do you? Norfolk School Board – which oversees a division where just 57.1% of the…
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Mother’s Day: Meandering Through Virginia
Regular readers of this space know that I am still seething over the actions America’s fascists embraced during Covid. The fact that they haven’t apologized and admitted that stomping on Constitutional rights over a virus was a colossal mistake is infuriating. That said, Covid brought two very good things. First: my daughter met the love of…
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The Naming Commission’s Declaration of Intent
by Donald Smith I’ve written a lot about the Congressional Naming Commission (CNC). In my opinion, the CNC has expressed contempt, and even disgust, for the legacy of people who served for the Confederacy. I base that assessment largely on the opinions and judgments the CNC declared in the Preamble to its Final Report. That Preamble is…
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Europe’s Complex Rebuttal to American Wokesters
by Donald Smith On the periphery of Rome, not far from the Vatican, stands a towering obelisk named for Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator and ally of Adolf Hitler. On a recent visit to the city, my taxi driver knew exactly where it was and found nothing remarkable about a request to go there. The…
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VHHA to Sunset COVID-19 Hospitalization Data Dashboard
by Shaun Kenney The Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association (VHHA) is getting ready to turn the lights off on its COVID-19 Dashboard this week, as the federal emergency for the pandemic officially ends in May 2023. VHHA noted the unprecedented scale of co-operation between Virginia’s hospitals and health care apparatus in creating the dashboard, one…
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Why They Fought — and Deserve to be Remembered
by Donald Smith Soldiers go to war for many reasons — home, country, duty, glory, personal adventure. But, in the midst of battle, soldiers fight for their comrades — “the man to the left of me, the man to the right of me,” as the saying goes. Good soldiers are driven by an intense desire…
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Snow Day in April: Something in the Water
by Kerry Dougherty When the first Something in the Water Festival came to Virginia Beach in 2019, some lemon-sucking locals balked at allowing school buses to be used to transport revelers from satellite parking to the resort area. How will bus drivers be able to drive festival goers until 11 p.m. on Sunday and be…
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It’s a Cemetery, for Crying Out Loud!
by Donald Smith Apparently, it is the will of the United States Congress that, in the interests of sensitivity and inclusiveness, we go into our cemeteries, and then search for and remove items that might offend someone who’s not related by blood or heritage to anyone buried there. The Congressional Naming Commission (CNC) has recommended…