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Column by Steve Landes Although there are just a few days remaining until the scheduled end of this year’s session of the Virginia General Assembly, events aren’t slowing down. This is the part of the session where delegates and senators meet to work out the final details on a wide range of legislation, and when…
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Column by Steve Landes This last week in Richmond was one of the busiest and most eventful of the session, as the General Assembly has now reached the home stretch in completing its work for 2008. In a week that began with a federal holiday and ended with my attendance at the celebration of the…
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Story by Laura Lehman Amstutz Many people prefer to avoid hospitals and nursing homes, but many Eastern Mennonite Seminary graduates have chosen these places to do ministry. About a dozen recent EMS graduates are pursuing chaplaincy roles as their ministry field, partially due to the Clinical Pastoral Education program at EMS. CPE gives students opportunity…
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General Assembly Report column by Del. Ben Cline With just over two weeks to go, we are beginning to see which bills are going to succeed this session, and which are going to fall just short. Out of more than 3,000 bills that are introduced, only about 30 percent of them are enacted into law….
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General Assembly Report by Rob Bell With the worsening budget numbers, the House of Delegates released its biennial budget. Unlike the governor’s budget, the House budget does not cut $220 million in school construction and lottery money that was going to local schools. These cuts would have cost my four local school divisions over $3…
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General Assembly Report column by Del. Ben Cline This past Sunday was “Budget Sunday,” the day that the House and Senate appropriations committees released their amendments to the two-year budget that the governor introduced last December. Legislators, lobbyists and other groups with a stake in the budget waited in line for hours to get copies…
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Column by Steve Landes We have now passed the midway point of the 2008 General Assembly session, commonly referred to as “crossover.” The House passed 616 of the 1,576 bills filed by delegates and the Senate approved 433 of the 795 bills filed by senators. Now, the House will spend the bulk of its time…
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Carly at the Movies column by Carl Larsen Am I the last movie fan in the universe to discover “The History Boys?” No matter – it’s one of those movies you just stumble across by accident, and suddenly remember why you love cinema. And if you are enamored of character development, crazy about the clever…
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General Assembly Report column by Del. Ben Cline Crossover week is the midpoint of this year’s 60-day General Assembly session when all House bills must “crossover” to the Senate, and vice versa. The week culminated in crossover day on Monday, which was the longest floor day of the session. While we have grown more efficient…
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Column by Bob Goodlatte Five years ago, the House and Senate came together in a bipartisan fashion to pass the Do Not Call Implementation Act. This important legislation created the Do Not Call Registry and made it illegal for commercial telemarketers to call an individual listed on the registry.
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