Category: Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement
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Rethinking Ethics in Virginia
By Peter Galuszka Kenneth Cuccinelli’s call for a special session of the General Assembly to consider plugging “severe holes” in the state’s ethics is outrageously self serving but it does show what may be a turning point in Virginia’s attitudes about disclosure and gift rules. It’s about time. Virginia has perhaps the most lax ethics…
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Tawana Brawley Surfaces… in Hopewell, of All Places
An oddity in the news: Tawana Brawley, the 15-year-old black girl who rocketed to momentary fame in 1987 for making racially charged accusations of rape, has surfaced in the public eye. And she’s living the Richmond area! Brawley had been laying low, living in Hopewell and working as a nurse at The Laurels of Bon…
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Time to Get Serious About Ethics Reform
By Peter Galuszka After months of embarrassing controversy, Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell announced today that he will return gifts that he and his family received from Jonnie R. Williams Sr., the head of a Henrico County dietary-supplement maker. McDonnell had earlier said that he had repaid $120,000 in loans provided to him and his…
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The State Trooper at Jonnie Williams’ House
By Peter Galuszka For three years, residents in a secluded, leafy road in Goochland County near a famous golf course were mystified by the sudden appearance of State Police cars running up and down Hunting Ridge Road day and night. Some knew that at the end of the road is the long winding driveway to…
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Web Courses: UNVA’s Cautionary Tale
By Peter Galuszka On these blog pages, you’ve read plenty about the supposed benefits of for-profit colleges being the wave of the future, especially if they are conduits for online instruction. Traditional schools, we are told, are out of control with their arrogance, free-spending ways and Luddite attitudes about making their courses available on the…
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Here Comes Jonnie!
By Peter Galuszka Just who in hell is Jonnie R. Williams Sr., really? How did this pitchman with a two-year business degree and a dodgy career get so many smart, accomplished people to back him loyally? He’s at the heart of Giftgate that could possibly include the resignation or criminal indictment of an otherwise successful…
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Border Crossing: a 4th of July Memory
By Peter Galuszka Sorry, dear blog readers, but on this Independence Day, I got so depressed reading the mindless blathering on the “Freedom of Americans” on the editorial pages of the Richmond Times-Dispatch this morning that I just had to quote from the excellent book, “The Warmth of Other Suns, The Epic Story of America’s…
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Violent Crimes Down in Virginia… If You Can Believe the Numbers
by James A. Bacon The incidence of violent crime increased 1.2% nationally in 2012 over the previous year, according to the latest Department of Justice Uniform Crime Report, but declined somewhat in Virginia’s most populous cities, as seen in the chart above. That appears to be good news, at least for Virginia. Sadly, questions are…
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Overzealous Agents… or Symptomatic of Something Deeper?
The NSA collects meta-data on everyone… The IRS cracks down on Tea Party 501(c)4 applications… The DOJ subpoenas Associated Press phone records and spies on Fox News reporter James Rosen… The abuse-of-power scandals in Washington, D.C., grows so long that we become almost inured. That sort of thing could never happen in Virginia, could it?…
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Cuccinelli, Penguins and Natural Gas
By Peter Galuszka Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli’s strange episode involving a natural gas lawsuit involving one of his largest political contributors for his gubernatorial campaign raises yet another issue about his ethics. First, whatever was a Cuccinelli staffer doing advising a subsidiary of coal and gas giant CONSOL Energy, which has given Cuccinelli more than…
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A Call for Clemency
by Carrington Brown My life would have been a lot simpler had I not met Dustin Turner almost five years ago. Dustin has been in prison for 18 years for a crime he did not commit — a crime to which his SEAL swim partner has admitted. Unless Governor Bob McDonnell accepts a recently filed clemency…
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“You Want Maggots With That, Hon?”
By Peter Galuszka Free trade capitalists may cheer the proposed $4.7 billion takeover of Virginia icon Smithfield Foods by a Chinese firm, but there is plenty to give pause and the blowback is creating some strange bedfellows. The major issues are whether one should want Chinese-style management in charge of American corporations given their record…
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McGlothlin’s GiftGate Connection
By Peter Galuszka The McDonnell GiftGate scandal and issues about the disclosure of money and gifts to Virginia politicians has only become more intense. The Washington Post reported today that Maureen McDonnell, wife of the governor, accepted $36,000 as a paid consultant last year while her husband listed her work as that of a trustee…
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Bob Dole’s Memorial Day Remembrance
By Peter Galuszka Memorial Day is typically a time for remembrance of the sacrifice of military veterans, cook-outs and the unofficial beginning of the summer season. As always, the media is filled with photos, video and stories of crippled vets, salutes and the like, but one opinion piece stands out: that of Republican stalwart Bob…
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The Cooch’s Freak Show Dream Team
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka Ken Cuccinelli just can’t keep away from the bizarre, but perhaps that’s what makes him what he is. He stages a convention instead of a primary to neuter Bill Bolling. And since a convention is smaller, it draws more GOP hard-righters than June bugs on a humid night and they succeed in…