Take off your hat

Chris Graham

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham I wisecracked recently to a friend about how I was watching the start of a NASCAR race on TV recently when I was struck by something that I heard the public-address announcer at the race track du jour say about how the fans in attendance needed to take…

Spirited compromise

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham Legislation opening up the Virginia cable-television market to competition among service providers isn’t exactly being welcomed with open arms by, well, pretty much anybody who was involved in the discussions that led to the compromise measure that was signed into law by Gov. Tim Kaine last week. “From our perspective, any…

A cartoon controversy – or something like it

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham It has been described as a cartoon controversy. But the issue involving the drawings depicting the Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper last fall is a lot more than that. “I liken this to a stovetop, and the pots are at a rolling boil right now in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan,…

Painful cuts could impact public broadcasting

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham Supporters of public broadcasting had thought that the war on PBS and NPR was over. “Basically, what we’re seeing here is that the administration is laying the foundation for the elimination of all federal funding for public broadcasting indefinitely,” said Kristin Wilson, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.,-based Association of Public…

Bridging the race divide?

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham   Daryl Davis has plenty of detractors – people who question his motives for wanting to meet with white supremacists, who wonder why an African-American man would of his own volition attend rallies of the Ku Klux Klan, who outright doubt his stories of conversions of racial separatists as…

Being Russ Potts

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham Russ Potts is running for governor as an independent – to the consternation of Republican Party officials in Richmond and elsewhere in the Old Dominion. The state party asked Potts to resign his Virginia Senate seat – and declared that Potts is no longer a member of the GOP. Potts, for…

Getting to know Tim Kaine

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham Tim Kaine knew when he made his mind up that he was going to run for lieutenant governor in 2001 that he was committing himself to another political campaign four years later. “Honestly, when I ran for lieutenant governor, I thought, you know, if I am lieutenant governor, then I will…