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As Virginians prepare for a 2011 campaign in which every state legislator is up for election, many are probably wondering what the real differences are between the two parties competing for their votes. Fortunately, state government provides a clear contrast between the divergent priorities of Democrats and Republicans in the commonwealth. Democrats believe that making…
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Virginia spends less on per-pupil funding K-12 than does the state of Mississippi, according to an editorial in the Roanoke Times last week. Not much less; but less along with twelve other states that spend less than Mississippi, the state that has always been thought to be the bottom rung on the ladder for school…
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Four state tournaments in five years. And that’s just the Waynesboro High School boys’ basketball team. The girls have had their runs in recent years, too, including an appearance in the 2008 Group AA state-title game led by the sublime Devon Brown. I’ve had the fortune to be able to coach in the rec league…
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How shall we pay for roads? It’s a simple question but Virginia likes to make it difficult. Every year governors and the General Assembly wrestle with the question, yet fail to come up with a satisfactory answer. 2011 is no exception. Those running this state live in another state — the state of denial. As…
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With adult supervision being restored in the governor’s mansions in Madison, Wisc.I, Columbus, Ohio, Richmond, Va. and Trenton, N.J., the GOP is keeping its promises of cutting budgets – and not with a scalpel, but with the necessary hacksaw. In abject cowardice, Wisconsin’s 14 Democratic state senators fled the Dairy State to shun their jobs,…
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Most recently it was Tim Kaine being criticized by Virginia Republicans for considering a spot on the Democratic presidential ticket in 2008. Now Democrats are throwing up their arms at a suggestion by Gov. Bob McDonnell that it would be hard to turn down the second spot on the GOP national ticket in 2012 if…
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This column is not for wine lovers. Rather, it is directed to my conservative friends who have no love for government, who think that all governments are nothing more than intrusions into our private lives, who never met a tax they liked and who believe that all public budgets should be filed under fiction. Sorry,…
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to review a ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that allows restrictions on alcohol-related advertising in college publications in Virginia. However, arguments against the restrictions will continue in the lower courts. “We are disappointed that the Supreme Court decided not to hear this important First Amendment…
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The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library Foundation on Tuesday announced that six members have joined its Board of Trustees: Mary Lynn Bayliss of Manakin-Sabot, Virginia; Katherine Grayson Wilkins of Washington, D.C.; R. Steven Nichols of Staunton; Hampden H. Smith III of Lexington; Rita M. Smith of Richmond; and William T. Walker Jr. of Staunton. All began…
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Smart Beginnings Shenandoah Valley, a local collaborative coalition working to improve the quality of early education and care in the cities of Harrisonburg, Staunton and Waynesboro, as well as in Augusta, Page, Rockingham and Shenandoah counties, has received a significant grant of $125,000 from the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation, a public-private partnership headquartered in Richmond….
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