Category: Civil Rights, Individual Liberties
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Everyone Loves Free Speech… In Theory
by James A. Bacon Governor Glenn Youngkin outlined yesterday his vision for colleges and universities in Virginia as bastions of free speech and intellectual diversity where people come together to devise solutions to society’s most pressing problems. “How do we ask serious questions and foster informed debate so we can get to answers?” he asked…
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Charlottesville, Its Public Schools and UVa – Part One – Bad things Happen
by James C. Sherlock In the relationship between Charlottesville and the University of Virginia, very bad things have happened to Charlottesville and continue to do so. I have developed a working thesis on that relationship. The city is at the mercy of the University by virtue of the latter’s wealth, influence, and power in Charlottesville…
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Democrats Introduce Gun-Grabbing Bill
from The Republican Standard Along with the attempt to codify abortion, there is another radical bill being proposed by Democrats in Virginia. An assault-weapons ban has been filed by Fairfax-area Delegate Dan Helmer in the House and Charlotteville-area Senator Craig Deeds. HB 2 seeks to “make it a Class 1 misdemeanor for anyone to import,…
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Virginia Dems Have a Razor-Thin Majority, Not a Mandate
by Kerry Dougherty Gosh, it seems like it was just last month that Virginia Democrats accused Republicans of being too extreme on abortion and used that wedge issue to gain a slight edge in the General Assembly. (The GOP favors a reasonable 15-week limit, preventing the grisly practice of late-term abortions, except in cases of…
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Virginia Might Legalize Abortion in All 9 Months of Pregnancy
by Hans Bader Virginia may permanently legalize abortion in all nine months of pregnancy by banning any regulation of abortion unless necessary to meet a compelling interest, and — more importantly — defining “compelling interest” to exclude the life of the fetus even after viability. That is what is mandated by a state constitutional amendment…
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Bari Weiss: “You are the Last Line of Defense”
by James C. Sherlock Video courtesy of the Free Press. See that link for a full transcript. I recommend it to everyone. Bari Weiss recently delivered a speech that will be long remembered. She offered eloquence in the service of experience, sorrow and determination. And defined the internal, and existential, threat to America. I will…
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Three Ideas for Protecting Civil Dialogue at UVa
by James A. Bacon On Oct. 11, 2023, journalist Abigail Shrier engaged in a Q&A session at the University of Virginia discussing the transgender movement in the United States. Offended by her views, transgender militants and their allies sabotaged attendance of the event, abrogated an agreement with university authorities restricting where to hold their protest,…
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Some Virginia State Colleges and Universities Host Chinese Government Student Control Organizations
by James C. Sherlock Virginia Tech’s Chinese Students and Scholars Association is the largest international student society at Virginia Tech, with more than 1,000 Chinese students and scholars and their families. It is also one of the largest Chinese student and scholars organizations in the United States. [Go to link and click “translate” in URL…
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Sam Rasoul and Jewish Democrats in the General Assembly – An Uneasy Alliance
James C. Sherlock Salam “Sam” Rasoul is a Democrat delegate from Roanoke. He still publicly blames Israel for an explosion at a Gaza hospital that the western world’s intelligence services have blamed on an errant Hamas rocket. Even The New York Times changed its story after jumping the gun on that report. At the rally…
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Song Sung Blue
by James A. Bacon Not every General Assembly race has been decided, according to the data displayed by the Virginia Public Access Project, but enough votes are in to conclude that the Democrats won the election. They retained their control of the state Senate and won a narrow majority in the House. Some preliminary observations:…
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Never Again
by James C. Sherlock At 78, I have been all over the world often and for long periods of time. I felt myself reasonably immune to cultural surprises. But I had never seen anything like this. It was the Maghrib prayer time about 5 p.m. on Saturday. On the southeast corner of 12th and Pennsylvania…
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Freedom, Consistency, and Tuesday’s Election
by Shaun Kenney One of the great things about being a conservative is that we are inherently an anti-ideology. As the late William F. Buckley Jr. once put it, the great task of the modern conservative movement is to stand athwart history yelling STOP! Yet in a wider sense, it is far easier for conservatives…
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Casino’s Last Stand: A Nauseating Display of Hate
by Jon Baliles The second casino referendum will be decided on Tuesday and it will be a vote (again) on whether or not Richmond wants to do the get-rich-quick schemes to help people or do the hard work of methodically mapping out a strategy and building a future. The get-rich-quick schemes like the casino and…
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Harvard History Professor to Lead Monticello
by James C. Sherlock She is certainly qualified. On Oct. 17 the Thomas Jefferson Foundation announced that Jane Kamensky, Harvard history professor and director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, will be the next president of Monticello. From an interview with Harvard Crimson. “The combination of celebration, commemoration, and reckoning…
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Conservative Boycotts Work
by Kerry Dougherty In the first month after Dylan Mulvaney began promoting the Anheuser-Busch beer, sales of America’s most popular beer dropped 26.5% while Modelo’s were up 13.5%. The Mexican beer quickly toppled Bud Light as America’s best-selling beer. Likewise, the June “Pride Month” boycott of Target resulted in a 5.4% drop in that company’s…