Category: Courts and law
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Floyd Judge Ponders Order to Return RGGI Tax
By Steve Haner A circuit court judge in Floyd County may soon order Virginia to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and to reimpose the related carbon tax on Virginia’s electricity consumers. Judge Kenneth “Mike” Fleenor Jr. ruled earlier this month that a suit seeking reinstatement of RGGI could continue and held a hearing on…
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Judge Uses Crude Statistics to Find Racial Profiling by Richmond Police
by Hans Bader A judge recently found that the City of Richmond racially profiles black motorists, dismissing the indictment of a black convicted felon accused of illegally possessing a gun. The judge did not find that defendant Keith Moore had been treated differently than a similarly situated white motorist. Instead, he ruled that Richmond police…
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Four Major Progressive Goals Still Advancing
By Steve Haner The aggressive progressive agenda working its way through the 2024 Virginia General Assembly has lost some steam at the halfway point, but at least four of the major Democratic goals discussed earlier are still advancing. The two bills which will have the greatest impact on the Virginia economy are the proposed minimum…
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Checking up on Steve Descano
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Contributors and many readers of this blog have been highly critical of Steve Descano, the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Fairfax County. They belittle him as being a Soros-backed, “woke” prosecutor, soft on crime. They seem to have missed Descano’s involvement in a recent high-profile case. As described by The Washington Post, the defendant…
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Dems Want to Block a Tough-On-Crime Parole Board Chief
by Kerry Dougherty Virginia Democrats are audacious. You’ve got to give them that. During the lawless McAuliffe-Northam years, Virginia’s Parole Board was headed by bleeding hearts, who specialized in releasing criminals. They were rewarded for their soft-hearted approach with judgeships. Because that’s how Democrats roll. You’d think the party that favors criminals over victims wouldn’t…
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The Aggressive Progressive Democratic Agenda
By Steve Haner The Democrats now running Virginia’s General Assembly are not just more progressive, but far more ambitious than their predecessors. To fully understand how ambitious you must compile the entire list of progressive bills advancing in the 2024 session and consider their total impact on the cost of living and cost of doing…
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Barbie, Liars, and Newspapers Circling the Drain
by Kerry Dougherty Warning: I’m a tad grouchy today. You see, I’m a hyperactive gym rat who hasn’t worked out since last Tuesday and has been slowed down by surgery. That happened Wednesday, by the way, when a skilled orthopedic surgeon sawed off part of my leg. In other words, I’ve had way too much…
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VMI Loses DEI Court Case: a Win-Win Situation
by Jake Spivey In Virginia’s ever-shifting landscape of diversity, equity, or opportunity, and inclusion, a powerful decision has been made. Following the sensational, yet unproven, allegations of exceptionally bad behavior and poor leadership at Virginia Military Institute in late autumn 2019, the administration and Board of Visitors attempted to quickly effect conclusive actions that would…
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A Nice Story Turns Out Not to be Such a Nice Story After All
by Dick Hall-Sizemore A recent podcast produced by VPM, Richmond’s public radio station, is both fascinating and disheartening. Admissible: Shreds of Evidence deals with the early days of the use of DNA as forensic evidence. In particular, it is the story of Mary Jane Burton, a long-time serologist for what is now called the Department…
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Virginia Bill Could Define Student Bullies by Race
by Hans Bader Should students be defined as bullies partly based on race? A confusingly-worded bill just introduced in Virginia’s legislature seemingly classifies students as bullies partly based on racial differences between “the aggressor” and the victim, such as a “real or perceived power imbalance between the aggressor or aggressors and victim, including on the…
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Governor’s Chronic Absenteeism Task Force – Part Three – Vital New State Roles
By James C. Sherlock I have found in 18 years of reporting on education in the Commonwealth that each school, each school division and each region is to some degree its own ecosystem. Taking the example of chronic absenteeism, an individualized assessment of causes could be attempted: if a single school‘s chronic absenteeism can be…
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Slasher Ordered to Reimburse Medical Bills of his Victim
by Kerry Dougherty Several things strike me about this crime and restitution story out of Patrick County. First, after Larry Puckett nearly stabbed Justin Hawkes to death in the fall of 2019, Mr. Hawkes incurred about $120,000 in medical bills. Because the injured man was indigent, Medicaid stepped in and negotiated the price down to…
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Charlottesville, Its Public Schools and UVa – Part Three – CCS Abandons Truancy Filings, Absenteeism Soars
by James C. Sherlock The effects of public policies can be murky. Not this one. The subject in this Part 3 is alarming chronic absenteeism of Charlottesville City Schools (CCS). At issue is the virtual abandonment by that division of the use truancy filings with the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, removing parental consequences. …
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Will the Public Ever Get to See the Mass-Shooting Report?
by James A. Bacon The University of Virginia will delay the release of an external investigation into the Nov. 13, 2022, mass shooting that resulted in three deaths and two woundings until after the trial of Christopher Jones, the UVa student charged with the crime. “After conferring with counselors and Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim…
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The Suppressed Report on the UVa Murders
by James C. Sherlock President James Ryan of the University of Virginia has decided to suppress the results of a written request that he and the Rector made to the Attorney General …to conduct an independent review of the University’s response to the shooting, as well as the efforts the University undertook in the period…