Holy Cuccinelli! In case you haven’t noticed, much of the U.S. is experiencing record summer heat and it’s only early June. A new study by Stanford University scientists say that hotter summers are something we’re going to have to get used to unless a lot more is done to limit atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Middle…

Sometimes, I worry about the aimless direction of our nation’s youth.Then along comes someone like Nicole Yoder and I feel reassured. One Saturday morning not long ago, Nicole’s father, long-time reader Keith Yoder, and her mother were discussing a Bacon’s Rebellion blog post at the breakfast table. (Perhaps I should be worrying about the aimless…

The tragic bus crash in Caroline County that left four dead May 31 raises several troubling points for travelers in Virginia and elsewhere. The first point, an obvious one, is that many of the cheap-fare buses that carry passengers from the downtowns of Southern cities to Chinatown in New York City are badly-regulated, fly-by-night operations…

Good news and bad news from the Mercatus Center if you, like me, lean libertarian in your thinking. In Mercatus’ newly published “Freedom in the Fifty States,” which ranks the states on public policy affecting freedoms in the economic, social and personal spheres, Virginia ranks ninth most free in the country. Only ninth? In a…

How to Rebuild the Institution of MarriageHeritage FoundationThe institution of marriage, critical for raising healthy, productive children, is crumbling throughout the Western World. United States governments need to reform tax and welfare-policy penalties on marriage and promote stable homes instead. Natural Disasters Hard on Extended HouseholdsRand CorporationHurricane Katrina didn’t just demolish houses: It demolished families,…

Does anyone remember former Gov. Tim Kaine’s push for universal pre-K childhood education in Virginia? I do. The aim was to level the disparities in educational outcomes by ensuring that “at risk” children enjoyed the same kind of early-childhood enrichment as their more privileged peers. It was a noble goal. As it turned out, budget…

Foreclosure’s Forgotten Victims: The ChildrenUrban InstituteFamilies evicted through foreclosure often wind up in new school districts. Residential instability and school switching among children is associated with lower test scores.

If a proven entrepreneur comes up with a great new dining concept, he has no problem finding the money to create a chain of restaurants. If a real estate developer discovers a profitable model for erecting shopping centers or residential communities, he can raise hundreds of millions of dollars to build more of the same.…

Integrating Community Colleges into Regional Economic DevelopmentBrookings InstitutionRegions should develop an integrated workforce and economic development strategy in which community colleges ensure a stable supply of skilled workers for employers.

There is general agreement that the housing bubble of the 2000s was fueled by a relaxation of mortgage loan standards that allowed many families to purchase homes they could not afford. Less well understood is that the housing bubble was not a “monolithic event,” writes Wendell Cox in a National Center for Policy Analysis report,…

The state of Virginia is spending $3.6 million in public funds and tax credits to lure the production of Steven Spielburg’s production of a movie about Abraham Lincoln to Richmond and Petersburg. State officials justify the subsidies on the grounds that it creates economic activity and jobs. But it may be an argument that fewer…

Teacher-Leaders and Collaborative TeachingAmerican Enterprise InstituteJack D. Dale, superintendent of the Fairfax County Public Schools system, lays out his vision for teacher-leaders and collaborative teaching, and describes a pilot project putting his principles into action. How Health IT Can Save the Healthcare SystemBipartisan Policy CenterThere is a broad bipartisan consensus that health IT can enable…

News that Virginia is spending $700,000 a year to maintain a new but empty prison in Grayson County built at a cost of $105 million should be attracting the attention of budget cutters in the office of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell. The prison is one of 11 that have been shut down in the last…

Are City of Richmond school administrators manipulating the numbers to make it look like they’re doing a better job of running the system than they really are? That’s the conclusion of Del. Joseph D. Morrissey, D-Henrico, who yesterday charged Richmond schools of wrongfully taking credit for the SAT scores of high-performing students at the regional…

“Always follow the Koch money,” opined my esteemed liberal colleague, the Gooze, in a recent post, “Have the Kochs Opened a Back Door for the Cooch?” Well, that’s what Rep. Jim Moran, D-8th, did in a recent rally, when he suggested that the long arm of the conservative Koch brothers extended into the cafeteria of…