Category: Civil Rights, Individual Liberties
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“Toxic” Parents in Harrisonburg
by James C. Sherlock Harrisonburg City Public Schools (HCPS) have a tough row to hoe. April Howard, HCPS chief officer for student support, noted in a presentation to the school board on October 19 of 2021: Fall 2021 Student Trends ➔ Observations of increased anxiety ➔ Increased school refusal ➔ Increased reports of suicidal ideation—utilization…
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Instant Background Checks for Gun Purchases – What is Checked and Who Populates the Databases?
by James C. Sherlock The FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is much discussed and little understood by the general public. In an effort to help, this article will inform readers about the NICS Indices, what information is kept there and how it gets there. The information here about the NICS is quoted or…
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Ideas Suffer the Casualty of Casualness
by Jim McCarthy Skilled polemicists and rhetoricians (perhaps even unskilled) can present material in a seemingly unbiased way even while intentionally distorting it. A recent Bacon’s Rebellion article bemoaned the assertion of Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano in a New York Times op-ed piece that he would “never prosecute a woman for having an…
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Gun Control Debate Survives Invasion and War
by James C. Sherlock The gun control debate survives invasion. Ukraine. A user survey survey last week in Ukrainian government e-portal Diia (1,726,452 participants in a pre-war population of 40 million) showed most Ukrainians express a desire to freely own weapons for personal use. 59% are in favor of the free carrying of weapons; 22%…
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A Culture of Cowardice
by Kerry Dougherty Where are the American men? Real men, not the soft-handed cellphone addicts with product in their hair and vagina hats on their heads. Guys like my father, who once chased a pervert out of a crowded Manhattan movie theater for several blocks after a stranger took the seat next to mine and…
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Commonwealth Attorney Nullification
Steve Descano has written an op-ed piece in The New York Times. Should the U.S. Supreme Court roll back Roe vs. Wade, says the Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney, he will never prosecute a woman for having an abortion — “no matter what the law in Virginia says.” The CA provides several reasons for opposing blanket…
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A Gun Owner’s Suggestion for Virginia Gun Laws
By James C. Sherlock I was a career military man. I am a conservative and a gun owner. As a younger man, I won competitive awards for marksmanship with both rifle and pistol. I own a semi-automatic Glock for home protection. I train regularly and at almost 77 can still hit what I aim at.…
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Progressive Dogma Untethered to Results – Voter Laws Edition
by James C. Sherlock The armies of the progressive left are what the great political scientist George Edwards called “Prisoners of Their Premises.” Many persons and institutions are captives, to a greater or lesser degree. Lesser is better in this case. Mistakes flow from the best of intentions. You can learn from them or repeat…
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Silence of the Trumpets
by Jim McCarthy Criminal justice at the local level in Virginia is the province of the 120 Commonwealth’s attorney offices funded primarily by the state, with some also receiving local supplement. Indigent defendants may avail themselves of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel through 28 public defender offices. Many other indigent defendants will be represented…
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Charter School Lessons for the Youngkin Administration from the New York Times
by James C. Sherlock Probably surprising to many of my readers, one of the newspapers to which I subscribe is The New York Times. Another is The Washington Post. Of the two, the Times demonstrates far more balance in its reporting. Not opinion – reporting. Times education writers, direct witnesses to the astonishing achievements of…
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School Daze
by Jim McCarthy Governor Glenn Youngkin had an opportunity to withdraw his big-footed amendment to a bill that would have moved the election date of the Loudoun County School Board from 2022 to 2023 and vacate the nine board seats for a new election. The original bill sought only to stagger the terms of five…
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George Orwell Call Home
by James C. Sherlock This blog, while proudly based in individual research, often offers controversial ideas. Uniform agreement is not expected. Debate is encouraged. We learn from one another and even occasionally change a few minds on both sides. Yesterday the Biden administration announced the establishment of a federal “Disinformation Governance Board” in the Department…
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JMU: Where Not Only Are You Wrong, But How Dare You Ask?
by James A. Bacon Western Civilization went more than 2,000 years with people dividing the world between male and female. About 10 years ago, the idea gained traction in the United States that gender wasn’t based on biology — XX and XY chromosomes — but was a social construct. Within an extraordinarily short time, transgender…
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Youngkin Signs Donor-Privacy Bill
In recent years, “cancel culture” has targeted many individuals, businesses, and organizations with the intention of silencing them into submission. In one tactic, political activists target or hack donor lists of groups they disagree with and publicly shame or intimidate donors and/or their businesses who expected that their gifts would be kept private. For example,…
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Virginia Is Not for Weed Lovers… But Maybe Soon
by James A. Bacon LawnStarter has listed 2022’s Best Cities to Get Stoned, ranking nearly 100 of the biggest U.S. cities where recreational marijuana use is legal. Alexandria is the only one in Virginia that ranks in the top half. Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News, and Chesapeake all rank in the bottom eight. The ranking…