Month: November 2020
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Belly Flops Make a Splash – Virginia Attacks on School Quality Gain National Attention
by James C. Sherlock The Wall Street Journal featured an op-ed today, the first four words of which were “Attorney General Mark Herring.” No picture of the AG, so I offer one here, but they spelled his name right. so perhaps it will be Senator Herring or President Herring one day soon. Unfortunately, the next…
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A Clear Victory for Civil Liberties
by James C. Sherlock In a speech to the Federalist Society earlier this month, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the pandemic “has resulted in previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty. This is especially evident with respect to religious liberty. It pains me to say this, but in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a…
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Let’s “Reimagine” Public Safety Built around Involved Fathers
by James A. Bacon When you ask a group of politicians, activists and intellectuals to put together a plan to “reimagine” public safety, you get a report like the one just issued by a City of Richmond task force. It calls for measures such as routing many 9-1-1 calls to mental health and conflict-resolution professionals…
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VDH’s Data Update Problem
by Carol J. Bova Governor Ralph Northam and Virginia’s public health officials say they want to “follow the science” and “follow the data” when managing the COVID-19 lockdown. Unfortunately, the data keeps changing. Last week the Virginia Department of Health made 1,021 changes to the dataset of regional COVID-19 cases by onset date between March…
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GOP Group Seeks Repeal of 2020 Energy Omnibus
By Steve Haner A Virginia GOP activist group aimed at suburban voters will be advocating repeal of the Virginia Clean Economy Act by the 2021 General Assembly, seeking to return a herd of cows that is well out of the barn and busting down the pasture fence. The Suburban Virginia Republican Coalition has produced a…
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Virginia AG: Selective Admissions Are Racist
by Hans Bader The Virginia attorney general’s office has ruled that the Loudoun County school system committed illegal racial discrimination by admitting relatively few black and Hispanic students to its selective schools, the Academies of Loudoun. For reasons that have nothing to do with racism, the Academies of Loudoun are much more heavily Asian than…
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Virginia Legislators Hear Lies, Smears and Key Omissions in Critical Race Theory-Based Attacks on Schools
by James C. Sherlock I just spent a great deal of time reviewing two Zoom seminars for Virginia legislators on the education committees of the General Assembly planning 2021 legislation. The briefings they got in preparation for the upcoming session were filled with lies, smears, critical omissions and self-referential “data” relative to equity and…
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Edupocalypse
by James A. Bacon Fairfax County’s decision to cope with COVID-19 by keeping kids at home to learn online is turning into a disaster for students who were struggling before the epidemic hit, especially English learners and students from economically disadvantaged families. An internal analysis by the Fairfax County Public Schools found that the percentage…
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Chesapeake: Putting Kids First
by Kerry Dougherty Here’s something to be grateful for during Thanksgiving week 2020: If you believe education is important, give thanks for Jared Cotton, superintendent of Chesapeake Public Schools. Despite enormous pressure to close classrooms and send 40,000 kids home to turn into overweight, mouth-breathing computer-screen addicts, he’s keeping the Chesapeake schools open, despite rising…
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The Futility of No-Shutdown Resolutions
by Emilio Jaksetic According to The Virginia Star, some Virginia counties are considering drafting resolutions to oppose enforcement of Governor Ralph Northam’s executive orders on COVID-19. While I believe Northam abused his emergency powers, this is not the solution. If passed, these resolutions are likely to be found to be legally unenforceable by Virginia courts…
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What Must Jim Ryan Do to Earn a $100,000 Bonus?
by James A. Bacon When the University of Virginia hired Jim Ryan as president in 2018, the terms of his employment were spelled out in a contract. Anyone can obtain a copy of the document under the Freedom of Information Act, as Bacon’s Rebellion has done. You can view it here. Among other things, the…
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The Virginia Green Car Buyer’s Blues
by Bill Tracy Let me tell you a sad yarn about buying green cars in Virginia. Due to a dead hybrid battery after 14 years and 192,000 miles, we recently traded in our classic 2006 Toyota Prius for a new Toyota RAV4 Hybrid LE, the cheapest green RAV4. Had we lived in a different Blue…
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A Curious Concern for Criminals
by Kerry Dougherty For more than 20 years Virginians didn’t have to worry about their parole board springing dangerous criminals. The revolving prison doors had been shut tight by Gov. George Allen’s Truth-in-Sentencing legislation in 1995. In essence, that law meant that a 20-year sentence guaranteed that the criminal would actually serve 20 years, with…
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Darkness Descends upon Mr. Jefferson’s University
by James A. Bacon In the previous post I gave a chronological account of how a classroom joke delivered by Associate Professor Jeffrey Leopold in University of Virginia business class exploded into a full-fledged racial controversy. The post was a straightforward, just-the-facts-ma’am narrative of what happened. I made every effort to give all sides of…
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Anatomy of a Racial Incident at UVa
by James A. Bacon Jeffrey Leopold, a University of Virginia assistant professor, was assigned this fall to teach “COMM 1800 — Foundations of Commerce,” a prerequisite for students entering the McIntire School of Commerce. On October 22 he lectured the class on the topic of globalism. His purpose was to explain the necessity of adopting…