Tag: Kerry Dougherty
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COVID Panic Porn and the American Left
by Kerry Dougherty Last month I gave blood at a local church. As I was leaving, I struggled with my raincoat and a very nice woman standing nearby said she’d like to help, “…but with Covid…” I said “thanks” and felt sorry for her. She honestly believed that grabbing the sleeve of my twisted jacket…
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Vaccine Passports: Let’s Pass
by Kerry Dougherty Want a peek at what some of the more authoritarian types in the U.S. have planned for you? Look no farther than St. Vincent, a lovely little archipelago in the Windward Islands. At least it used to be a lovely little island. On April 9 the most dangerous volcano in the Caribbean…
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Johnson & Johnson Danger: Same As Getting Struck By Lightning
by Kerry Dougherty Here’s a prediction: We’re going to see a drop-off in the number of people being vaccinated against COVID-19. Thanks to bungling and fear-mongering by government officials. Currently 3.1 million Americans are getting the vaccines daily. Analysts will try to blame and drop on the Johnson & Johnson blood-clot scare — more about…
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AP StyleBook Beclowns Itself. Again.
by Kerry Dougherty The AP Stylebook has long been the “bible” of American journalism. This guide attempts to standardize language and grammar in newspapers. It deals with everything from when to use “concrete” and when to use “cement” to the use of hyphens when describing Asian or African Americans. New rule: No hyphens. In recent…
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Two Police Officers Made Windsor Famous
by Kerry Dougherty Looks like Windsor, Virginia, is finally on the map. For all the wrong reasons. The tiny incorporated town in Isle of Wight County, just west of Suffolk, is home to about 2,758 people. It’s not a place that makes much news and the folks there probably like it that way. But a…
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Cronyism Is Back in Virginia Beach
by Kerry Dougherty You know what they say, it’s easier to say you’re sorry than ask permission. That’s especially true in Virginia Beach. If you’re a well-connected developer, that is. Some of us had such high hopes that city officials would stop acting like poodles for the developers now that elections had given us a…
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Virginia’s Lt. Gov. and Emmett Till
by Kerry Dougherty Justin Fairfax is a deeply unserious man with an inflated sense of his own importance. On Tuesday night, as he shared a Virginia State University stage with four other Democrats who are competing for the nomination for governor, Fairfax demonstrated that he has no sense of proportion and little understanding of history,…
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Charlottesville Deserves a Mayor Who Likes the City
by Kerry Dougherty There are few requirements in most places to run for mayor. Affection for your own city ought to be a minimal requirement. Pity Charlottesville’s mayor doesn’t even meet that. Let me back up. After last Friday’s “Kerry and Mike” radio show a couple of listeners emailed to say I’d been a little…
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Child Endangerment at Home and on the Border
by Kerry Dougherty Baby Boomers are fond of social media posts that glorify their raised-by-wolves childhoods. They usually go something like this: We drank out of garden hoses, rode in the back of pick-ups, didn’t have seat belts let alone car seats, came home when the street lights went on, thought Howard Johnson’s was fine…
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Priorities: Pupils or Pot?
by Kerry Dougherty You can tell a lot about a politician by his or her priorities. Take Gov. Ralph Northam, for instance. On February 25th the General Assembly passed a bill requiring Virginia public schools to offer in-person instruction to all students. The original bill, proposed by Sen. Shiobhan Dunnavant, was quite simple and to…
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Broken Windows
by Kerry Dougherty Maybe it’s time to admit that bicycle cops high-fiving gangbangers isn’t the best way to protect the public at the Virginia Beach oceanfront. I mean no offense to the police officers who patrol that wild 10-block area. They have a tough job. It’s time we let them do it. For years, the…
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Richmond “Bleeding Heart” Released Killers From Supervised Parole
by Kerry Dougherty Meet one of Virginia’s most notorious murderers: Joseph Giarratano. If his name isn’t familiar, it may be because you weren’t in Virginia — or Norfolk — in the late 70s and early 1980s. On February 4, 1979 Giarratano strangled and raped a 15-year-old Norfolk girl, Michelle Kline, and stabbed her mother, Toni…
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A Chaotic Night in Virginia Beach
by Kerry Dougherty “Don’t drive near the oceanfront,” warned the caller on my cellphone Friday night. “Something’s going on.” I was on my way home from a dinner near the courthouse and usually travel north on Pacific Avenue. The other person, who’d left before me, was stuck in traffic. There were sirens and flashing lights. He…
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“Drunk with Power”
by Kerry Dougherty Drunk with power. That might as well be the Northam administration motto. Those three words reportedly appear in a chain of internal emails among parole board members and staff that was obtained by WTVR CBS-6 Richmond. CBS claims it obtained internal Virginia Parole Board emails detailing their deliberations. “Dated April 2020, one…
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Not All Shootings Are Racially Motivated
by Kerry Dougherty As a long-time opinion writer I have one rule that I try to follow. I usually wait anywhere from 24 to 48 hours after a crime has been committed to weigh in. All too often what seems clear moments after the criminal act becomes a little more complicated once the inconvenient facts dribble out.…