Tag: James A. Bacon
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No Vaccination? No Transplant.
by James A. Bacon You would never know it from meeting him over Zoom that Shamgar Connors is living under a veritable death sentence. He requires kidney dialysis 12 hours per day. His doctors tell him that the average life expectancy for his particular kidney disease is about five years…. and he started dialysis a…
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Bacon in the News: Get It Straight, Waffle House!
A 28-year-old man, Martin Jose Alvarez, was arrested Wednesday for causing a disturbance at a Cape Coral, Fla., Waffle House restaurant over the way his bacon was cooked. When police officers arrived, they heard him yelling expletives at the staff. “You better cook the f—– bacon right!” he was accused of yelling, according to the…
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From Fewer Births to Fewer School Kids
The number of births in Virginia has been declining for years, not just in rural counties with shrinking populations, but across the state. Indeed, since 2016 the fall-off in births has been sharpest in Northern Virginia, according to data published StatChat, the University of Virginia’s demographic research group blog. Birth rates are declining in all…
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Makary on Mandates
by James A. Bacon For insight into Governor Glenn Youngkin’s approach to managing the COVID-19 epidemic, read the latest column by Marty Makary, a research professor at the Johns Hopkins University, in The Wall Street Journal. He argues that society is paying a high cost for disparaging the immunological resistance that arises from exposure to…
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Homeschooling Interest in Virginia Exceeds that of Other States
by James A. Bacon Virginians have a higher interest in home schooling than would be predicted by their level of education, political leanings, or incomes — demographic factors explored in a report by eLearningWorld. Interest in home schooling has soared nationally since the beginning of the COVID epidemic, writes self-described e-Learning technology geek Scott Winstead,…
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The Resistance Is Cohering. And the Media is Part of It.
NEW: Virginia’s new attorney general emphatically denies that he fired a @UVA lawyer because that lawyer is also helping investigate on the January 6 select committee. I pressed @JasonMiyaresVA on this after a spox told this to @washingtonpost. Here’s the AG’s response. @8NEWS pic.twitter.com/7Jf1hJ5w8y — Ben Dennis DC News Now (@broadcastben_) January 24, 2022 by…
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Times, Post Mangle the Heaphy Story
by James A. Bacon Here is what happens when The New York Times imposes its national narrative upon a Virginia story: we are afflicted with articles with headlines like this: “Top Jan. 6 Investigator Fired From Post at the University of Virginia.” “Democrats in Virginia,” says the sub-head, denounced the action as “a partisan move…
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Begun, the College Wars Have
by James A. Bacon Attorney General Jason S. Miyares has fired the university counsels of the University of Virginia and George Mason University: Tim Heaphy at UVa and Brian Walther at GMU. I have no inside knowledge about why Miyares took these actions, but they are, I believe, best understood as the opening salvos in…
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The Rioters Among Us
by James A. Bacon I’ve not given much attention to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol because this is a Virginia blog, not a blog about Donald Trump and the 2020 presidential election. But maybe I should. Many of the rioters came from Virginia. We have U.S. Capitol rioters among us. How dangerous…
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Mask Hysteria
by James A. Bacon People, get a grip! Emotions over this mask business are running out of control — on both sides of the debate. On the right: Amelia Ruffner King, a 42-year-old Luray mother, has been charged with a misdemeanor for issuing threats to the Page County School Board. “No mask mandates,” the Page Valley…
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COVID Vs. the Flu
by James A. Bacon I have seen considerable discussion on the internet recently about the relationship between COVID-19 and influenza. One thing that seems to be widely accepted is that influenza receded — indeed it practically disappeared — as COVID-19 surged. Where the disagreement occurs is over why influenza faded and now seems to be…
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W&M Leadership Transformation (Purge?) Nearly Complete
by James A. Bacon Katherine Rowe took the helm of The College of William & Mary July 1, 2018. In three-and-a-half years as president, she has replaced most of the deans and senior administrators carried over from the tenure of her revered predecessor W. Taylor Revely III. The overhaul is summarized in the graphic below,…
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Note to State School Superintendent Jillian Balow…
You might want to update the Virginia Department of Education website. You’ve been Superintendent for Public Instruction for almost a week now, but here’s what the VDOE website shows on its “About” page as of Jan. 21, 10:33 a.m. You’ve got a tough job ahead, and I suspect that you’re busier than a one-armed paper…
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Youngkin Unveils No-Mandates COVID Plan
by James A. Bacon So, what does a COVID-19 containment strategy look like without the activist governor’s usual go-to tools of mask and vaccination mandates? Governor Glenn Youngkin has provided the answer with the COVID Action Plan he unveiled this morning. The key elements are: (1) encourage (but don’t compel) people to get vaccinated, (2)…
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Reframing the Debate: Diversity, Opportunity & Inclusion
by James A. Bacon With his latest cabinet pick of Angela Sailor as director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Governor Glenn Youngkin has reframed the debate about race in Virginia. Sailor runs the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Feulner Institute, which was founded in 2019 to help Americans “understand the uniqueness of this nation’s founding, reinstill in…