I’m suffering from post-Thanksgiving burn-out. The Bacon clan gathered in Richmond from all corners of Virginia — three generations, plus in-laws — for a non-top orgy of Southern hospitality engineered by my wife and my sister, which means huge breakfasts, huge lunches, huge dinners and endless hors d’oeuvres filling in the gaps in between. Most…

Several days ago, I noted a traffic experiment in Drachten, a Dutch city of 50,000, where authorities had removed most of the traffic lights, installed a number of roundabouts and counted on citizens to treat each other with courtesy. The experiment seems to be working there. The question I asked is whether a system based…

Dominion has cleared an important environmental hurdle in its request for regulatory approval to build a new nuclear power plant, the Associated Press reports. Federal regulators will make a decision whether to grant a permit in late 2007. Dominion hasn’t decided whether it wants to build the plant, but it wants to keep its options…

It’s no accident that Virginia ranked No. 1 in Forbes Magazine’s 2006 ranking of the business climates of the 50 states. We are blessed by geography — a central location on the Mid-Atlantic seaboard, and proximity to the federal feeding trough in Washington, D.C. — but the Commonwealth also has consistently pursued business-friendly policies over…

Wonk alert! The Senate Finance Committee has posted online detailed its analysis of the state budget, higher education, western state hospital, consolidating the schools for the blind and deaf, and public safety. You can find the PDF files here. I will use this material as fodder for columns, as I have time to read, learn…

I’ve praised the movie “New World” in this blog for its attention to historical authenticity, and readers of this blog have debated the merits of revisionist history. Now comes an article from the William & Mary website about the behind-the-scenes interaction between Virginian Indians and “New World” director Terence Malick over the portrayal of Indian…

Bill Gates may have dropped out of college, but he doesn’t want poor kids to drop out of high school. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is investing $9.9 million to underwrite the expansion of the Georgia-based Communities in Schools program to Virginia and three other states. CIS, which targets students who have dropped out…

When Ed Risse and I write about dysfunctional human settlement patterns, the context is usually transportation gridlock and affordable/accessible housing. That’s because the dysfunction in transportation and housing are so painfully evident to all. But dysfunctional human settlement patterns manifest themselves in other ways, and one of those is the cost of electric power. We…

I stumbled across this story while researching my lead column for this week’s Rebellion. It was so cool and so under-reported that I just had to write about it. Virginia’s greatest natural energy endowment is not the coal seams of southwest Virginia but the windy expanse of the continental shelf. The potential for generating electricity…

One new blog and one overlooked… The Thicket at State Legislatures is a bipartisan blog for “legislative junkies” maintained by the National Council of State Legislatures. This is the only exception I’ve made so far to my “Virginia-centric blogs only” policy. One of the things most lacking in Virginia’s debates over public policy issues is…

The Nov. 20, 2006, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion is now online. You can view the full Web page in all its glory here. Better yet, click here for a free subscription — never miss an issue! Here are today’s columns: Big GridMonster power plants and transmission lines provide Virginians with relatively cheap, reliable electricity, but…

That’s the slogan of a group of Fairfax County die-hards who refuse to give up on the idea of running the Rail-to-Dulles extension of the Washington Metro in a tunnel underneath Tysons Corner. Alec MacGillis reports in the Washington Post that TysonsTunnel.org, an offshoot of the Greater McLean Chamber of Commerce, is trying to raise…

The Virginia Department of Transportation is maintaining an encouraging record of delivering road-building projects on budget and on time. Reports the Virginian-Pilot: The department reported that 93 percent of its construction projects were within budget in the first quarter of the 2007 fiscal year, which is under way, and that 91 percent of those projects…

Fairfax City Council is moving closer to restricting the construction of over-sized buildings in established neighborhoods that would visually overwhelm existing houses. According to The Fairfax County Times, options include: Restraining the size of a house’s footprint compared to the overall lot size. Limiting large sections of flat wall surfaces on house exteriors Providing pattern…

For once I agree with John Chichester. (Scary, huh?) During a legislative retreat in Staunton yesterday, the Senate Finance chair warned that the state’s budget “will be hit hard’’ when there is a drop in national defense spending, which he anticipates in the next few years. Reports Bob Stuart with the News Virginian: “Virginia is…