Category: Courts and law
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ACLU Wants Masks on Kids
by Kerry Dougherty It’s official. One of the most malignant organizations in Virginia is the ACLU. These far-left lawyers, who are supposed to be concerned with civil liberties (hey, it’s in their name: the American Civil Liberties Union), sucked their thumbs as Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam stomped all over the civil rights of Virginians for…
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The Richmond Times Dispatch, “Hate Groups” and Journalism
by James C. Sherlock The Hanover County School Board (HCSB) is seeking legal assistance in reviewing its transgender policy from the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative legal organization that provides its services pro bono. ADF’s key values that it goes to court to defend are religious freedom, free speech, marriage and family, parental rights,…
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National Security, West Virginia Natural Gas and Hampton Roads – A Proposed Federal Law
by James C. Sherlock This is the fourth in a series of columns recommending bringing West Virginia natural gas to Virginia and from there to our allies. The only way to do get that done with any assurance and speed under the energy emergency in which we find ourselves and the world is for…
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Should It Be OK For The Police To Lie?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore On at least five occasions over a four-year period, Virginia Beach police confronted suspects with fake documents that indicated the suspect had been connected to a crime through DNA evidence. The documents were forged certificates of analysis, complete with the letterhead of the Virginia Department of Forensic Sciences and the Seal of…
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A Dangerous Overreach in Public School Policy
by James C. Sherlock Disturbed by the actions of Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), I have just finished reading Threat Assessment and Management in Virginia Public Schools: Model Policies, Procedures, and Guidelines (Model Policies), a publication of the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). It enjoins schools to investigate everyone, including “persons unaffiliated with the…
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Arlington Judge Rules in Favor of Forced Masking of Kids
by Kerry Dougherty Amidst the cacophony of leftist celebrations Friday — the high fives, the gloating — over an Arlington County Circuit Court judge’s ruling that the forced masking of school children can continue in Virginia, one important wrinkle went unexplored by the mainstream media. Once again, only Luke Rosiak, a reporter for The Daily…
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Infrastructure Bill, Meet Richmond’s United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
by James C. Sherlock The President and members of Congress have celebrated the enactment of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act into law. In Virginia and the other states (Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia) of the federal Fourth Circuit, good luck with that. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit just published two…
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These GMU Minions Refuse to Bend the Knee
by James A. Bacon Megan Darling, a 33-year-old George Mason University business school student, received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine in March and April and came down with a case of COVID-19 in December 2021, from which she acquired natural immunity as well. Like other students, she has been informed that she must get…
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What Does Virginia Law Say About Commonwealth’s Attorney Decisions Not to Prosecute Entire Classes of Laws?
by James C. Sherlock I posed two questions in my last article. Can a Commonwealth’s Attorney (CA) decide to decline prosecution of an entire class of misdemeanors? If so, are there any constraints available in the law? By law and precedent the answer to both questions is yes. A CA has discretion in prosecuting misdemeanors.…
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What Kind of Society Do Virginians Want? The Case of Fairfax County
by James C. Sherlock Yesterday I offered for consideration a lengthy list of misdemeanors that Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano in Fairfax County is declining to prosecute. I did that with a hope that the House of Delegates will amend and pass HB 1198. Today I am going to ask Virginians to consider in what type of society…
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Imprisoned by the Past
by James A. Bacon As a parting gift to Virginia, outgoing Attorney General Mark Herring has overturned 58 opinions issued by attorneys general between 1904 and 1967 that supported racially discriminatory laws from poll taxes to the prohibition of interracial marriage. “While these discriminatory and racist laws are no longer on the books in Virginia,…
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Herring’s ERA Advisory Opinion Is Flawed, Self-Defeating
by Emilio Jaksetic On January 6, 2022, Attorney General Mark Herring issued an advisory legal opinion in which he concluded that the Virginia General Assembly cannot rescind its January 2020 decision to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). What is amazing about Herring’s advisory opinion is its reliance on one passage of the Supreme Court…
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Delegating Emission Standards to California Is Unconstitutional
by Emilio Jaksetic As Steve Haner noted in a December 10 post, “Now California Will Control Virginia’s Auto Sales,” the Virginia Air Pollution Control Board (VAPCB) adopted a regulation that places ultimate control of Virginia’s vehicle emission standards in the hands of the California Air Resources Board. Although the VAPCB acted pursuant to a statute…
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Why Is UVa Hiding Its Campus Climate Survey Results?
by Walter Smith Jim Bacon recently posted an article urging Governor-elect Youngkin to take full advantage of his higher-ed Board of Visitors appointments if he wishes to remain true to the education reform momentum that played a big part in his election. Bacon’s bits (pun intentional!) on the Boards as political plums with a go-along-to-get-along…
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Redistricting: Partisan Fighting Continues
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The diabolical person who came up with the framework for the state constitutional amendment establishing a redistricting commission was not content with designing it so that it would fail due to partisan wrangling. He also injected partisan politics into the phase in which the state Supreme Court must come up with the…