Another Dem-less year in the Sixth

Chris Graham

It had been 10 years since the last Democratic Party nominee challenge to Republican Bob Goodlatte when Sam Rasoul made a run at the Sixth District seat in 2008. Goodlatte’s 61 percent showing in 2008 was convincing enough to convince Democrats not to field a candidate against the incumbent in 2010. The question today –…

Ken Plum: Schools feeling impact of cutbacks

Ken Plum

I learned recently that the Page County School Board has decided to close GroveHillElementary School that I attended for my first seven years of schooling. The locality has lost too much in state education funding and local tax revenues to be able to keep the 100-year-old community school open. The longer bus rides to other…

Busy building at EMU

Jim Bishop

A quiet campus at Eastern Mennonite University? Not at all, especially this summer, with outside groups and auxiliary programs stretching the facilities non-stop from early May through mid-August and several major capital improvement projects happening simultaneously. The biggest project: what is being called “Phase II” of the University Commons, a $2.4 million funded project that…

Hurt pledges to defund health-care reform: Good politics, but is it good policy?

Chris Graham

Robert Hurt’s move to sign the DeFundIt.org pledge to pull funding from the health-care reform measure passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in March is good politics. It’s probably also bad policy, but you could say that policy is the province of those who are good at politics first. “By signing…

What does early Perriello money lead mean for November?

Chris Graham

You look at the money race in the Fifth District, and it’s no race at all, really. Democrat Tom Perriello has $1.7 million in cash on hand while his Republican opponent, Robert Hurt, has $212,000, according to reports filed by the respective campaigns with the Federal Election Commission. Those numbers are bound to change between…

DREAM to reality

Chris Graham

Isabel wanted to create an impression on her visit to Washington, so she had members of the group there to lobby Sen. Mark Warner for support for the DREAM Act to wear their graduation caps. “We weren’t sure if we would actually be able to meet with him one-on-one,” she said. But the senator was…

Still losing farmland, but not as quickly

Chris Graham

Edited by Chris Graham [email protected]   Good news for farming, sorta, kinda: The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services reported today that loss of farmland to development appears to be slowing in the Commonwealth. According to the recent numbers from the Farmland Information Center, between 1997 and 2002, Virginia lost 81,500 acres of agricultural…

UVa. third in Directors’ Cup

Chris Graham

Edited by Chris Graham [email protected]   Virginia finished third in the final 2009-10 Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup competition for Division I schools. The final results were announced Thursday by the National Association of Directors of Athletics (NACDA). The finish is the best for the Cavaliers in the 17-year history of the Directors’ Cup program. Virginia’s…

Break in Harrington murder?

Chris Graham

State Police investigate link to ’05 Fairfax case Edited by Chris Graham [email protected]   Investigators are pursuing a forensic connection between the disappearance and death of Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington and an unsolved 2005 abduction and sexual assault in Fairfax. Forensic evidence recovered during the course of the Harrington investigation has confirmed the link…