Unchained melody

Chris Graham

Running my own business, two of them, really, when you count the day job at Augusta Free Press Publishing and the nights and weekends that I spend getting the Waynesboro Generals ready for the summer, I know that times are tight, that money is tighter, so when somebody wants to do business with me, I…

Adam Schaeffer, Chaim Katz | Getting politics out of schools improves children’s learning

AFP

Everyone’s still catching their breath from last year’s election season. However, all the nastiness is sure to fire up again now that Barack Obama has been sworn in. In fact, some of the inaugural season’s heat was generated when Obama announced that evangelical pastor Rick Warren would deliver the invocation at the presidential inauguration. Warren…

Carly at the Movies | What are we doing in this room? (or) Two out of three ain’t bad

Carl Larsen

Sometimes a movie will present you with a blinding moment of truth, a glowing epiphany wherein everything it has to say is suddenly revealed in one character’s line. I experienced such a moment shortly after the beginning of “Duplicity,” currently playing at the Regal Staunton Mall Cinema. Tom Wilkinson, head of a huge conglomerate-type company,…

Multimedia | Be careful what your surrogate says on your behalf

Chris Graham

It wasn’t exactly Macaca. “You have two jobs,” former Republican Party presidential-nomination candidate Mike Huckabee told a gathering of GOP faithful in Tazewell County while campaigning for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell this week. “One, get all those people who are going to vote for Bob out to the polls and vote. If they’re not…

No rest for the pols

Chris Graham

Steve Landes has written to local Commonwealth Transportation Board member James Davis to get him to reconsider closing two Augusta County-area interstate rest stops. Chris Saxman is doing him one better, as he plans to ask members of the local congressional delegation to grant Virginia a waiver that would allow the Commonwealth to allow private…

Tom Perriello | Fifth District Report

AFP

I’m glad to report that the era of appeasement in this financial crisis seems finally to have ended. In the past several weeks, there has been a call for better accountability, both retroactively and moving forward, from both parties. We all seem to agree that the first tranche of TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program, or…

Jim Bishop | Arousing thoughts at 3 a.m. to put you to sleep

Jim Bishop

“I couldn’t sleep at all last night,” goes the opening line to a Bobby Lewis’ hit in 1961. That catchy tune reverberated through my cobwebbed cranium as I lay still, wide awake in bed. I checked the radio alarm: 3:15 a.m. Time to get up … which I did, to, ahem, use the facilities. Typically…