Nan Russell | Growing differences

AFP

More than likely, by the time you read this message, the decision will have been rendered. After months of posturing, positioning and speculating, the question will have an answer. Voters will have voted, nasty ads will have subsided, and nightly news will be filled with something other than the latest political nuance or candidate slipup…

City leaders come together, look to future

Chris Graham

“What are you doing, Bruce? Are you daydreaming?” Waynesboro Vice Mayor Frank Lucente asked City Councilman Bruce Allen during a break in Friday’s City Council planning session as Allen gazed out a window from the council chambers in the Charles T. Yancey Municipal Building toward the corner of Main Street and Wayne Avenue. “Thinking,” Allen…

Steven Sisson | Three men in a tub!

Steven Sisson

Hey! Rub-a-dub-dub! Ho! Rub-a-dub-dub! Three men in a tub, And who do you think were there? The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, And all of them gone to the Democratic fair! The Virginia gubernatorial race is on! It’s probably the best field of Democratic candidates running for governor in the history of the party….

Give Spitzer his due

Chris Graham

Dale Spitzer will no longer be coaching football at Fort Defiance High School, bringing to a conclusion the absolute longest endgame in the history of high-school sports in the Shenandoah Valley. It’s been so long that I have long since lost the year – I think it was 2003, though time has eroded the exact…

EMU team shines at business competition

Jim Bishop

It was a simulation, but the experience felt authentic and “immensely practical” for the three Eastern Mennonite University student participants. So realistic, in fact, that Ashley Hevener, Kaleb Wyse and Joel Kratzer were selected as the top team for their presentation made at the annual convention of Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) held Nov. 6-9,…

Chris Graham | What’s wrong with the GOP?

Chris Graham

It isn’t just that Republicans got torched in the ’08 presidential election and the House and Senate elections to a point where President-elect Barack Obama has the clearest governing mandate since the first President Bush and an outside shot at a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate that would give his administration virtual carte blanche for…

Carl Larsen | Secrets of the hive revealed

Carl Larsen

Hollywood is still abuzz with the news: “The Secret Life of Bees,” currently at The Visulite in Staunton, is a honey of a movie. And while many films based on best-selling books are disappointing, you won’t get stung by this one. (OK, OK. Enough with the Apoidean puns, already. No more, I promise. Stretching for…

Va. not blue yet, governor says

Chris Graham

“It was really about the best night of my life,” Tim Kaine said of Election Night, which not only saw his long-time friend Mark Warner capture a landslide of landslides win over Jim Gilmore in their U.S. Senate race but also saw another friend, Barack Obama, win Virginia on his way to a historic triumph…

Steven Sisson | Prop 8: A taxing situation

Steven Sisson

Three states – Arizona, Florida and California – passed bans for gay marriages. The California ballot initiative that passed faces court challenges base on the California legislature’s lack of approval for a change in the constitution. Historically, the ballot initiative are based on previously referendum, or ballot initiatives to change the tax code – such…