Ken Plum: Reforming and restructuring Virginia government

Ken Plum

Column by Ken Plum www.kenplum.com   Gov. Bob McDonnell is to be commended for appointing a Commission on Government Reform and Restructuring to “make government simpler and easier to use, more efficient and more effective.” The 30-person commission made up of businesspersons and legislators has an ambitious schedule of completing its initial report in two…

ACLU, AAUP, Dems criticize Cuccinelli on academic freedom

Chris Graham

Edited by Chris Graham [email protected]   Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s curious move to subpoena the University of Virginia regarding research done by climate scientist Michael Mann has drawn the ire of groups including the ACLU, the American Association of University Professors and the Virginia Democratic Party.

The Road to 2012

Chris Graham

Special Report by Chris Graham [email protected]   Waynesboro didn’t go poof! into the night. There aren’t tumbleweeds running through downtown. (Not yet.) The sun did in fact come up this morning. That’s in spite of another electoral defeat for progressives at the polls in the City Council elections on May 4. Lorie Smith fell short…

Laurie Mazur: Population growth

Contributors

Column by Laurie Mazur Submit guest columns: [email protected]   Forty years ago, 20 million Americans took to the streets to celebrate the first Earth Day. Their agenda was wide-ranging: pollution, smog, endangered species. But one issue—population growth—was seen as the mother of all environmental problems. As Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, famously remarked:…

Jim Bishop: All the world remains a stage for Ted Swartz

Jim Bishop

Column by Jim Bishop Submit guest columns: [email protected]   It’s a telling sketch. Local actor-playwright Ted Swartz plays a college student who comes home and tells his father that he decided to change his major from theater to pre-med. “I want to become a brain surgeon,” the young man tells his dad. The father, an…