Goodlatte and the Close the Enron Loophole story

Chris Graham

Column by Chris Graham [email protected] “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” reported this week on the John McCain campaign’s ties to lobbyists who were leading players in the fight to preserve the so-called “Enron loophole” that some analysts are blaming for the artificial jump in crude-oil prices that are killing us all at the gas pump. In…

Foreclosure crisis – is Virginia doing enough?

Contributors

Op-Ed by Joe Russo According to the Pew Research Center, the State of Virginia is expected to suffer a rather hard blow of foreclosure activity. One in 33 houses in Virginia will suffer foreclosure activity by 2010. Although only 23 percent of all the loans made were “sub-prime”, the foreclosure problem is expected to affect…

Seminary facilitating new ways of learning

Story by Laura Lehman Amstutz Eastern Mennonite Seminary is experimenting with different ways of expanding the learning process. The spring semester, six students and one professor tested the limits of online and in-person education with a “hybrid” course called “The Jesus Movement in the Early Context.” The students were all service workers living in various…

EMU grad named Lilly Fellow

Jim Bishop

Item by Jim Bishop A 2008 Eastern Mennonite University honors graduate has received a major fellowship award for graduate study. Donovan E. Tann, an English major with minor in church music from East Petersburg, Pa., was one of 15 students nationwide accepted into the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program operated by Valparaiso (Ind.) University. He was…

The rest of the envirohorror story

Contributors

The Local Beat column by Chris Graham [email protected] Interesting editorial in today’s News Virginian about the supposed dangers of CFL bulbs. It would have been more interesting had the paper done even cursory research into the case of the Maine woman whose horror story illustrated the supposed dangers associated with the small amount of mercury contained…

Getting to the bottom of the train accident that almost blew up Verona

Chris Graham

The Top Story by Chris Graham [email protected] Ed Keenan once came within a few inches of blowing up half of Augusta County. He’s spent the past couple of years trying to figure out why. “When the train started out that day, the licensed engineer didn’t know he was supposed to be supervising me, I didn’t…

Economic immunity: Are the Valley and Central Virginia recession-proof?

Chris Graham

Story by Chris Graham [email protected] The Shenandoah Valley is recession-proof. Charlottesville is recession-proof. I’ve heard people say this for years. As the argument goes, the local economies have two big things going for them – major universities and agriculture. Kids still go to school in recessions. And kids and everybody else still eat in recessions….