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In the late 1990s the state teachers’ organization distributed a hopeful poster. With scenes from Monticello and colonial Virginia printed in the background, the text proclaimed that “Virginians led the Eighteenth Century, Virginians can lead the Twenty-first Century.” There is a plentiful supply of documentation of Virginians providing leadership in the Revolutionary period through the…
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July 16 marks the 66th anniversary of the first nuclear weapons test explosion. The United States’ test, code-named “Trinity,” was exploded in the desert of New Mexico and ignited the nuclear age. The bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9 were followed by some 2,050 nuclear tests worldwide, with over half…
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Bridgewater College President George Cornelius and director of athletics Curt Kendall have announced the hiring of Gerard “Jerry” Schurink as the college’s director of riding. Schurink becomes the program’s second director of riding, succeeding Sarah Irvine, who announced her retirement in February. Irvine led the Bridgewater riding program since its inception in 2000. “We are…
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Dr. James McClintock, a renowned University of Alabama-Birmingham marine biologist who has conducted research in Antarctica for more than 25 years, told me the following story. “You work in a scientific lab in the quietest place on Earth — Antarctica. “There’s a Crack! Boom! “You rush to the window of your remote lab with a…
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Some of our nation’s biggest corporations are planning a tax holiday and they want you to pick up the tab. Actually, you already pay for their routine tax avoidance through the use of tax havens in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and elsewhere. These accounting acrobatics cost the U.S. Treasury $100 billion a year. Now they…
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I’m an accountant. My college degrees and CPA license are the intellectual properties that enable me to earn a living. Now suppose that I formed a corporation to deliver my services, then took my diplomas and license off my wall and placed them in a safe deposit box in a Luxembourg bank. When clients came…
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President Obama’s announcement of a limited troop withdrawal from Afghanistan — America’s longest war — is bound to disappoint members of Congress and an electorate tired of the conflict. As has been reported, senior White House officials confirmed that the President plans to remove 10,000 troops by the end of this year and another 23,000…
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U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) today introduced legislation that increases federal fiscal transparency and accountability by establishing a single web-based platform to allow taxpayers and policymakers to more easily track all federal spending. The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA) is a Senate version of legislation introduced earlier this week by Rep. Darrell Issa…
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President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Obamacare, into law on March 23, 2010. On the same day Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed the first lawsuit in the nation to challenge the provision in ACA that most individuals be mandated to have health insurance. Eastern District Federal Judge Henry Hudson ruled in…
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A bipartisan group of 27 U.S. senators sent a letter today to President Obama asking for a “sizable and sustained reduction of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, beginning in July 2011.” Paul Kawika Martin, the political and policy director of Peace Action — a group founded in 1957 and the largest grassroots peace organization in…
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