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Column by Bob Goodlatte Perhaps one of the most important responsibilities of the United States Senate is to give the president’s pending federal nominations a prompt vote in order to ensure that federal courts and agencies have the personnel they need to best serve the American people. Currently, there are more than 180 nominees awaiting…
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Winners and Losers column by Chris Graham [email protected] Give ’em credit – it’s due, finally. Democrats have not fielded a candidate for the Sixth District seat in the United States Congress since 1998 – yes, a decade ago. But now they have two in Sam Rasoul and Drew Richardson, and though neither is exactly a…
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Story by Chris Graham [email protected] He knew he could make a difference. He didn’t know how. “When I first moved to West Africa, it was about 11 years into a brutal civil war that most people here don’t know about because of the blood diamond issue. Tens of thousands of 7- and 8-year-old boys were…
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Story by Chris Graham [email protected] He barely has to shave, and he wants to be your congressman. “In all honesty, it’s a shock at first,” said Sam Rasoul, 26, of Blue Ridge, who has been running hard for the past year for the Democratic Party nomination to challenge incumbent Republican Bob Goodlatte for the Sixth…
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Column by Jim Bishop “Spontaneity is the quality of being able to do something just because you feel like it at the moment, of trusting your instincts, of taking yourself by surprise and snatching from the clutches of your well-organized routine, a bit of unscheduled plea.” – Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain The other…
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Column by Sam Rasoul In a free society, inequality of income in inevitable. But inequality of income, if not moderated, becomes a force which both destabilizes and disables a society. Not only is excessive inequality morally offensive; it is dangerous. We have concrete data from 2005 delineating the severity of the income gap in the…
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Story by Chris Graham [email protected] A big deal was made about Hillary Clinton crying the day before the New Hampshire primary that she had appeared at the time destined to lose to Barack Obama. Former vice-presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro thinks it was way, way too much a big deal. “I have to tell you how…
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Column by Bob Goodlatte The nation continues to face serious budgetary challenges, and it is time we take control of spending instead of letting it control the Congress. Government programs have continued to expand while the amount of money available to spend has not kept pace. It is common sense to American families that they…
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Story by Chris Graham [email protected] It was a “difficult decision,” but in the end, Tom Reynolds knew what he had to do. “It’s an easy decision to make, but at the same time it’s a difficult decision to make,” said Reynolds, the mayor of Waynesboro for the last four years and a member of Waynesboro…
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Story by Chris Graham [email protected] Let’s say you’re a law-enforcement investigator raiding a cockfight in Virginia. “You could have 100 people there, and 50 of them have entered roosters in the derby,” said John Goodwin, the manager of animal-fighting issues for the Humane Society of the United States, setting the scene for us. “When the…
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