C-SPAN to feature Staunton author

Story by Chris Graham

Nicholas Patler is nothing if not persistent.

He hatched an idea for a fresh look at the politics of race in the administration of former president Woodrow Wilson over a period of a dozen years – the last three of which he spent researching and crafting his examination of the protest movement that challenged the segregationist policies enacted during the first two years of Wilson’s first term in the White House. Read more

The ins and outs of homeowner tax relief

The Top Story by Chris Graham

It sounds like magic. The state comes in and guarantees that homeowners aren’t forced to bear the brunt of the tax burden for local governments, and, voila, it is done, and everybody is happy.

Except for local-government officials, who have to figure out how to balance their books without access to a key source of revenues. Read more

Calling all Valley Democrats: Party having trouble finding candidates to challenge well-heeled GOP incumbents

Story by Chris Graham

There has been a lot of talk about the Democratic Party running a slate of candidates in the Republican-friendly Central Shenandoah Valley in the fall House of Delegates elections.

But when it comes to action …

“I haven’t ruled it out. My brother Danny and I have both been approached about running by different people,” said Mike Breeden, an Elkton resident and member of the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors. Read more

The cost of homeowner tax relief: Will the burden be borne by business, industry?

The Top Story by Chris Graham

What’s good for residential property owners is not so good for business and industrial property owners. Not to mention local-government officials charged with the responsibilities of providing public services and balancing the books at the end of the day. Read more

Why didn’t the feds let Chap talk? CIS, Petersen camp both claim politics at heart of dispute

The Top Story by Chris Graham

Democratic Party lieutenant-governor candidate Chap Petersen was supposed to deliver a brief talk to a group of new United States citizens on behalf of a nonpartisan lawyers’ group in Fairfax on Thursday.

That was before a couple of phone calls from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services led to Petersen being yanked from the schedule of events at the naturalization ceremony held at the George Mason University School of Law. Read more

What a sick and tired writer does

Column by Max P. Friedman

If you are a part-time writer, like myself, and find yourself suffering from any of the following conditions, this is what you can do about it. I’m just getting over a three-week-long bout with severe bronchitis (close to bronchial pneumonia) with a nagging cough that can take your lungs out. This leaves you very tired from a lack of continual, solid sleep (with too many dreams in color and sound) plus having had to move my office (plus a small case-records room) from one side of a building to another, and getting angrier by the moment from all the garbage that I had been reading from various media sources while recovering. Read more

Pinehurst revisited

Golf Things Considered column by John Rogers
JSpencerRogers@msn.com  

The Pinehurst Trip is over, and after a week down there, it seems to me that there is something almost enchanted, at least in a golf sense, about Pinehurst.

It’s a place of convergence, like the traffic circle just outside of the Village itself, and all roads in golf seem to lead to, or at least pass through, this place. It calls to golfers. Read more

Eyes on the November prize

Story by Chris Graham

Every time that Weyers Cave Republican Del. Steve Landes ran into Democratic Gov. Mark Warner or House Minority Leader Frank Hall the past couple of months, he would hear a familiar refrain.

“Do we have anybody to run against you yet?” was the refrain. Read more

The Weicker connection: Warner, Potts refute Connecticut newspaper report

The Top Story by Chris Graham

The conspiracy theorists have been having a field day with the report in the Feb. 25 edition of The Hartford Courant that offered up details into how Virginia Democratic Gov. Mark Warner apparently helped to introduce independent gubernatorial candidate Russ Potts to former independent Connecticut governor Lowell Weicker and indirectly to senior campaign consultant Thomas D’Amore. Read more