Category: Civil Rights, Individual Liberties
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Will Virginia Legalize Recreational Marijuana Use?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68cbjlLFl4U&w=500&h=288] High times today. The marijuana legalization wave is beginning to wash over North America. Nine states (WA, OR, CA, NV, CO, MA, VT, ME and AK) along with the District of Columbia have legalized the recreational use of marijuana. Well over 20% of Americans now live in states which have legalized recreational marijuana…
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Crack, Guns and Murder Rates
The 1980s crack epidemic created a vicious spike in homicides in major cities across the United States. As the epidemic faded, so did the street killings. While the murder rate went down for all races, however, it stayed persistently high for one demographic group: young black males. Seventeen years after the arrival of crack in…
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Goodbye and Good Riddance to Goodlatte
Carpetbagger. Bob Goodlatte is the 13-term congressman from Virginia’s 6th Congressional District who has blessedly chosen to retire this year. In my opinion he represents just about everything that is wrong with the GOP. Born in Holyoke, Massachusetts and educated at Bates College in Maine, Goodlatte somehow avoids the “carpetbagger” moniker so quickly put on Terry…
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Sport of Kings Needs Peasants Playing Slots
The Sport of Kings apparently cannot survive today unless between races the peasants are pumping their copper into slots. “The new law acknowledges what several other horse racing states already have concluded: that the new economic realities to sustain a viable horse racing industry require an alternative form of gaming to offset the high cost…
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Can’t Get Enough of Them Bacon Bits…
Wages of the teaching scandal. Every 5th-grade student at Richmond’s George W. Carver Elementary School passed the Standards of Learning (SOL) reading test in 2016. Next year, when they took the reading proficiency test at Albert Hill Elementary School, only 37% passed. Math scored plunged nearly as badly. A state investigation has found that a…
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The Tax on the Mathematically Challenged
Untold thousands of Virginians just poured their money into the recent multi-state Mega Millions drawing won by someone in California. Governor Jerry Brown sends his thanks for his cut. But based on a recent news release our own governor is also very pleased with the performance of the Virginia Lottery as it approaches its 30th…
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What If They Held a Rally and Nobody Came?
Jason Kessler, organizer of Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville last year that turned deadly and helped polarize the nation, wants to hold a one-year anniversary rally. It’s not clear from this article in the Daily Progress what he hopes to accomplish, other than to maintain his high profile as Alt-Right provocateur and most hated…
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SCC Examiner Recommends Shorter Transmission Line Towers for Augusta
Dominion Energy wants to rebuild 17.7 miles of a 500 kV power line through Augusta County to meet the electricity load of its western Virginia customers, and as long as it’s rebuilding the line, increase the height to accommodate an additional 230 kV line should the need for it ever arise. Building a double-circuit structure…
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Herring Makes the Right Call
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring supports abortion rights. He’s sympathetic to the intent behind a federal lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood challenging states restrictions on abortion. But he has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. “Many of the challenged laws are decades old, some of the challenged regulations are under active review, and plaintiffs…
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Watch Your Tongue. The PC Vigilantes Could Come for You
The digital mob now rules. Watch what you say on social media. Anything you write, or like, or re-tweet, can and will be used against you. If you work in any capacity for public schools there is a good chance that you will be reported, investigated, and perhaps even fired for privately expressed views —…
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Does Anyone Care about U.S. Children?
Over the weekend, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine visited the Youth for Tomorrow facility in Prince William County that has been housing undocumented-immigrant children for the past six years. The visit highlighted his call the previous day for the Trump administration “to assure us that every single one of the children they separated from their parents…
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Dillon’s Rule, the RPV and the Marylandization of Virginia
by Don Rippert Doppler shift from red to blue. As recently as 1977 both of Maryland’s US Senators were Republican. From 1993 through 2003 Maryland’s eight US House seats were evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Today, Maryland’s 10 person Congressional delegation consists of 9 Democrats and a lone Republican. This shift caused Maryland to…
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The Scalia School: a Bastion of Conservative Thought
The Scalia School of Law at George Mason University has significant disadvantages in the scrabbling for prestige among American law schools. Founded in 1979, it’s a relatively young institution, which means graduates have had less time to accumulate wealth, donate, and leave bequests than their counterparts at older institutions have done. As a result, the…
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Free Speech Zones in the Land of Fruits and Nuts
Regular reader and roving California correspondence Larry Gross shared the photo above of a sign post at Yosemite National Park. “We’re seeing these signs at other places including the Walmart,” he reports. What an interesting concept — special zones where people can exercise their right to free speech. I wonder what rights people have outside…
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The Veiled Racism in the School Shooting Debate
An axiom of Bacon’s Rebellion is that while progressives (progs) and social justice warriors (SJWs) oppose racism in their rhetoric, they support policies that have the unintended result of being racist in effect. Nowhere is this clearer than in their approach to the criminal justice system, in which they decry the criminals as victims while…