Category: Uncategorized
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Bacon M.I.A.
So much to say, so little time! Unfortunately, I’ll be Missing in Action over the next few days while attending to family matters. I’ll parachute in, if time permits. But I’m counting on the rest of the Bacon’s Rebellion team to cover for me in my absence. — JAB
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Were Virginia Lawmakers Stoned When They Legalized Pot?
by Kerry Dougherty No one ever accused the current members of the Virginia General Assembly of crafting elegant laws. But the new bill that legalized marijuana this week is so confusing that the lawmakers must have been stoned when they wrote it. The measure was supposed to take effect on January 1, 2024, with a…
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Youngkin Gets Romneyfied
by James A. Bacon The Associated Press has just published a story highlighting the plight of newly retired Judy Pavlick in a mobile home park in Sunnyvale, California. When the park was acquired in 2015 by the Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C.-based investment firm, “things began to change.” Pavlick’s rent surged 7%. Additional fees followed.…
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Fairfax Group Forms to Defend Police
by James A. Bacon When Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano ran for office in 2019, he promised to reform the county’s criminal justice system by offering defendants greater transparency about the evidence against them. “Virginia’s rules force defendants to try to craft a defense without most of the information one would need to do…
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Another Distraction from the Hard Work of Teaching
by James A. Bacon A horrifying percentage of Virginia public school children may be functionally illiterate, but never fear, Governor Ralph Northam has a new plan to help them. He has announced the formation of a task force charged with identifying “best practices” for implementing culturally and religiously inclusive school calendars and school meals. “When…
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I Still Miss Dad After 23 Years
by Kerry Dougherty I wrote this column in June of 1998, just weeks after my father’s sudden death of a heart attack. (He died riding his exercise bike at age 74.) In many ways, this post is dated. Yet I hope it still is meaningful. I loved the guy. To make sense of the piece…
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Packing the UVa Law School Faculty
by Ann McLean Earlier this week UVA Today touted the addition of 17 high-profile professors — packed with former U.S. Supreme Court clerks, Rhodes Scholars, and even a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship genius grant recipient — to the University of Virginia Law School. “Our new and incoming faculty are either already academic superstars or superstars in…
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What Dominion Has Learned From Its Experimental Wind Turbines
by James A. Bacon Dominion Energy spent $300 million to erect the two wind turbines now standing about 27 miles off the Virginia coast, a sum that could never be justified by the 12 megawatts of generating capacity they add to the grid— enough to power only 3,000 homes. The real benefit will come later,…
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From Farming Corn to Electrons
By Dick Hall-Sizemore In light of recent denials by local governing bodies, there has been some skepticism expressed on this blog as to whether the Commonwealth could meet its goals on solar energy. Going against recent trends, however, has been the city of Chesapeake. According to the Virginian-Pilot, the city council recently approved an application…
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Don’t Ask Questions. Just Do What We Tell You.
by James A. Bacon Walter Smith, a University of Virginia alumnus, was miffed when UVa leadership mandated that all students must be vaccinated if they are to return to the university in the fall. His daughter, a UVa student, had caught the COVID-19 virus, lived through 10 days of quarantine, acquired natural immunities, and was…
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Debunking the Big Lie in Education Funding
by DJ Rippert The big lie. Various intellectuals, aided and abetted by the mainstream media, have repeatedly put forth the falsehood that funding for public K-12 education in America has been decreasing. In fact, the opposite is true. However, the number of times that false claims about defunding public education have been made, published and…