BBQ & Bluegrass: Sending SDHS drama students to Scotland

AFP

The Stuarts Draft High School Drama Team is headed for Scotland. The team has been selected as one of only 50 high schools across the entire United States and Canada to receive an invitation to perform at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, the world’s largest performing arts festival. Students will spend two days exploring London…

Jim Bishop: Indiana wants me? Lord, I can go back there

Jim Bishop

I’m starting to write this column while moving 70 miles an hour on the Ohio Turnpike. I hope it will be a moving experience for you as well, dear readers. This is something I’ve not done in years – heading to a professional conference. For any number of fairly valid reasons, I simply haven’t gotten…

Retired minister walks to raise issues with death penalty

AFP

Right foot, left foot. Right foot, left foot. One step at a time, Hunter Mabry of Waynesboro is raising awareness of the inequities in the application of the death penalty in the American criminal-justice system. “The attitude of most of us, and I’ve had it much of my life, too, is that criminals get what…

Holly Sklar: Wall Street has already voted

AFP

Before Wall Street drove our economy off a cliff, bullish Citigroup strategists dubbed the United States a “plutonomy.” They said, “There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the ‘non-rich,’ the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites…

Sarah van Gelder: Families can’t afford to stay home on Election Day

AFP

If you’re like me, this election doesn’t feel anything like 2008. The excitement and hope of that historic election have been replaced by worry and disappointment. The 2008 campaigns at least occasionally addressed our country’s serious problems. This year it’s all noise, attacks, and accusations. Little actual policy makes it through. Meanwhile, billionaires, big oil,…

Sanford D. Horn: Juan gone From NPR

Chris Graham

The vigorous and immediate support of former NPR commentator Juan Williams, in the wake of his unceremonious dismissal via cell phone, from both sides of the aisle both politically and in the media speaks volumes – especially when Williams has been silenced, albeit only by NPR. For a simple expression of his true feelings, that…

David Brodwin: The business case for fair elections

AFP

This year, the United States Supreme Court reversed years of precedent limiting how corporations may spend money to influence elections. This decision will substantially increase the importance of corporate influence in politics—both in determining who gets elected and how they decide once they are in office. As executives, owners, investors, and business professionals involved in…

Court hears arguments in AG challenge to health-care reform

Chris Graham

A federal judge heard arguments for the state and for the federal government in a case brought by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli challenging the constitutionality of the federal health-care reform bill passed and signed into law earlier this year. Judge Henry E. Hudson said in Monday’s hearing in Richmond that he will hand down…