Tag: Jim McCarthy
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Virginia Secedes from National Elections Organization
by Jim McCarthy A February 25 article in Bacon’s Rebellion, “Forget Waldo, Where’s ERIC?” by James Wyatt Whitehouse raised questions about the volunteer national election clearing house organization entitled Electronic Information Registration Center, or ERIC. The BR piece highlighted the experience of the Alabama Secretary of State: On February 15, 2023, Alabama Secretary of State…
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A Sharper Image
by Jim McCarthy Bacon’s Rebellion has crested to the fully emancipated age of 21 (birthed in 2002). It seems appropriate now that the platform assume some contemporary dress to revitalize its imprint and impact upon state, regional, and local public policy as a “non-aligned portal” in Virginia’s (indeed the world’s) eyes. For some years, conservatives…
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Free at Last
by Jim McCarthy Compulsory K-12 education under state law is a fact often taken for granted since its enactment in 1908 in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In 1984, the state authorized homeschooling initiated by an earlier Supreme Court decision in 1972 (Wisconsin v Yoder), providing for a religious exemption from compulsory attendance in public schools.…
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Trust, but Verify
by Jim McCarthy Thirty-five years ago this past December, President Ronald Reagan asserted U.S. policy with respect to international nuclear arms controls was to be guided by “Trust, but Verify” (TBV). Mikhail Gorbachev who led Russia from 1985-1991 through dissolution of the Soviet Union had led the promotion of glasnost, a policy of openness and…
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Cause, Effect, and Regret
by Jim McCarthy Bacon’s Rebellion recently hosted a series of articles exhaustively parsing the procedures and policies at the University of Virginia regarding threat assessments in preventing violence related to the killing of three students and wounding of two by a colleague. The examination included the possible human failures that contributed to the event. Under…
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Trump Denial Simplex
by Jim McCarthy Wokeness appears to have infiltrated or infected Republicans and conservatives following disappointment when the ballyhooed Red Wave failed to materialize in the midterms. Denial is the first stage of the grieving process toward acceptance of the passing of a loved one. Trump Denial Simplex (TDS) is not a replacement for Trump Derangement…
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From Children-as-Chattel to Pick-Your-Pronoun
by Jim McCarthy Pronouns have now entered the cross hairs of the culture wars, particularly in the discourse about parents’ rights in schooling. Sometimes one longs for the good old days of yesteryear, nostalgic for their simplicity, generally free from microanalytic contention over the spoken and written word. While media is often faulted for contributing…
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Who’s “Legislating from the Bench” Now?
by Jim McCarthy “It’s not the court’s place to legislate,” the judge stated in local media after dismissing a case seeking to have two books declared obscene upon her ruling that such ban violated Virginia and federal law. “Look, the General Assembly is a citizen legislature. We’re not lawmakers. Things like this happen and a…
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Pixilated Public Policy
by Jim McCarthy The citizenry relies upon its government agencies to deliver cogent services and determinations consistent with the welfare of the commonwealth. It’s not always an easy task and, sometimes, the outcomes of those representative institutions are, well, confusing, or pixilated. On August 3, 2022, the State Corporation Commission (SCC) issued a Final Order…
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Zombie Legislation
by Jim McCarthy Zombies, having become popular in filmdom and TV, are finding resonance in the nation’s legislative sausage making. Generally, the term zombie legislation applies to statutes negated or consigned to death, often by federal or state court decisions, that remain on the books due to legislative lethargy. Currently, the phenomenon has become more…
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Blue Crabs Smiling
by Jim McCarthy The image of Nero fiddling while Rome was ablaze may be apocryphal, but the moral is clear: pay attention to your surroundings. It’s been nearly four weeks since the announcement that the sperm capacity of Chesapeake blue crabs has been found to be in decline, threatening the viability (motility?) of the crustacean’s…
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Zombie Senates
by Jim McCarthy Zombies have been depicted in ancient cultures such as that of Norse mythology (draugar) very similar to those in contemporary culture. The Roman senate with the iconic SPQR dates to 753 B.C. as an advisory body to the king composed of elders (senes, Latin root for senescent or deteriorating in age) of…
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Twofers, Threefers
by Jim McCarthy As time passes, it seems a safe bet to conclude that the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v Jackson will be deemed an upheaval to American culture and politics greater than that of Brown v Board of Education. Dobbs may have unleashed a kraken-worthy pandemic of civic monsters to rival that…
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Disin-Cline-Nation
by Jim McCarthy Representative Ben Cline secured more than 80% of the votes cast in the primary in the Virginia’s 6th Congressional District. Fewer than 5% of registered voters participated, and the margin was less than 10% of the votes that elected him in 2020. Since then, the January 6 Committee has commenced its hearings.…
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They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
by Jim McCarthy A month ago, a Bacon’s Rebellion column (“Commonwealth Attorney Nullification“) took issue with a national newspaper op-ed in which a Commonwealth’s Attorney pledged he would never prosecute a woman for having an abortion, no matter what Virginia law might say. The BR author suggested that such thinking would lead to anarchy. The…