Bacon's Rebellion

  • Gerrymander Day: the Closing Arguments

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Virginia Democrats have a massive spending advantage and a terrible argument.

    A political map of Virginia showing regions in blue and red, indicating different political affiliations. Major cities labeled include Roanoke, Richmond, Norfolk, and Alexandria.

    by Shaun Kenney

    Most of the yelling and spending is over. The good news is that the “no” campaign will be the bipartisan conscience of Virginia against a hyper partisan progressive monolith who according to the Washington Post has polarized Richmond in a way no other modern party has ever done.

    Will Virginians reward partisanship with a 10-1 advantage with candidates representing Fairfax, Richmond, and Norfolk? Or will our non-partisan redistricting effort — the solution to this asbestos filled miasma — prevail against the spirit of the times?

    For Virginia Republicans, it all centers on how many of our friends and family we motivate tomorrow. Social media is a good start, but phone calls and conversations are far superior.

    The alternative isn’t democracy but the victory of demagoguery and a return to the political wilderness in seats so unfair and polarizing they could only be dreamt up in places like Chicago or New England.

    Unfairness as policy: the lobster districtIf there is a closing argument to the entire thing, let it be the congressional maps of New England, where 40% of New Englanders vote Republican and not a single Republican is represented in the cradle of the American Revolution.

    (more…)

  • Accountability Is the Broccoli of Education Reform. States Must Eat More of It.

    Posted on

    by

    Todd Truitt

    by Jeb Bush, The 74

    Publisher’s note by Todd Truitt

    Virginia’s recent overhaul of its school accountability system and upcoming overhaul of its assessment system offers a timely case study for the argument advanced in Jeb Bush’s OpEd below. His arguments on the importance of accountability and assessment largely mirror those made by the leading educational civil rights group, The Education Trust, demonstrating the bipartisan nature of state policies ensuring school districts are educating students to their fullest potential.

    Over the past few years, the Commonwealth has moved decisively in that direction—adopting a new School Performance and Support Framework (SFSF) while also voting to raise Standards of Learning (SOL) cut scores over the next 3 school years to align with the rigorous national benchmark of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), aka the nation’s report card.

    Governor Abigail Spanberger’s administration will be focusing on the massive project of updating our assessment system, the work for which is bipartisan and began in the administration of Governor Glenn Youngkin. Spanberger recently signed the follow up legislation into law, which was sponsored by Senator Schuyler VanValkenburg (D-Henrico County) and Delegate Dan Helmer (D-Fairfax County). Gov. Youngkin’s outgoing budget allotted over $90 million to these efforts over the next two years, and the budget passed by the legislature appears to keep much of that funding.

    As for accountability, Gov. Spanberger has signaled that her administration will largely stay the course. Then-gubernatorial candidate Spanberger’s K-12 plan promised to “uphold academic excellence and academic rigor.” And Gov. Spanberger, in her first day executive order committing to educational excellence, directed her administration to consider and incorporate recommendations from JLARC’s report on the SPSF. In that report, JLARC largely endorsed the new system while recommending some helpful tweaks.

    Virginia is embracing the core premise of the article below: that stronger, more transparent accountability and assessment systems—however politically uncomfortable—are essential to furthering children’s future opportunities and maintaining public trust in our public school system.

    (more…)

  • A Rise and Fall — and Then a Tragedy

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A collage depicting a newspaper article about a controversial incident involving a man in a Ku Klux Klan hood, a photo of a man marked with an 'X', and various notes and documents related to accusations against Justin Fairfax.
    AI-generated image: Grok

    by Chap Petersen

    Two things can be true at once.

    Last week, my former Senate colleague Justin Fairfax shot his wife Cerina, an accomplished dentist and loving mother, and then killed himself. It was a malicious and cowardly act, which goes against every principle of his professed identity as a husband, father and Christian. Nothing will ever excuse it.

    Seven years ago, Justin was also the subject of one of the most brutal cancellations in Virginia political history, which left him without a public office or even viable employment. That occurred without any “fairness” or “due process.” It was difficult to watch, and I had a front row seat.

    Both things are true.

    In 2013, Justin was a young attorney (barely thirty-four years old), who wanted to run for Attorney General. He and Cerina lived in the “Camelot” subdivision in the 34th Senate District, and we connected quickly. One the one hand, he was all enthusiasm and no experience; on the other hand, he was a fresh alternative to the “old boy” network that had dominated Virginia Democratic politics for years.

    A few years later, Justin wanted to run again – this time for LG. I still remember the phone call:  Sharon and I were catching a plane to London. He wanted my endorsement before we left. I gladly gave it. Justin went on to win the nomination, then easily won the 2017 race. He was the heir apparent to the Governor’s mansion – the next big thing.

    Then came the 2019 session …

    (more…)

  • Virginia’s SOL Assessment Challenges – Lack of Transparency

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A group of four people peering through a frosted glass window, showing expressions of curiosity as they observe a classroom setting.
    AI-generated image credit: Chat GPT

    by Matt Hurt

    Virginia’s Board of Education has significantly raised the stakes for student performance. A new accountability system has set a higher bar for school success, bolstered by rigorous “cut scores” approved last year. Data from 2025 suggests these scores could nearly halve the number of students deemed proficient in reading and math. However, as expectations rise, transparency has lagged. To meet these challenges, the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) must provide educators with clear, concrete examples of the standards they are expected to teach.

    The Problem with “Teaching in the Dark”

    Interpreting Virginia’s standards is not a simple task; teachers often disagree on what “mastery” looks like in practice. Historically, the VDOE released retired Standards of Learning (SOL) test forms, allowing teachers to “backwards design” their lessons to match the rigor of the actual exams.

    That practice stopped in 2015. Since then, Virginia has implemented new Reading Standards in 2017 and 2024. For a decade, educators have been held accountable for results without seeing a single live exam item. While the VDOE provides practice items, these lack the scrutiny of live tests, and many educators find them poorly aligned with the actual SOL experience.

    (more…)

  • Vote NO

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Vintage style graphic with the text 'VOTE NO' in bold letters on a red, white, and blue background featuring stars.

    by Kerry Dougherty

    I didn’t vote early on the redistricting referendum. But I’m definitely voting in person on Tuesday.

    And I’m voting NO.

    My unopened mail-in ballot is on my desk. I’ll turn it in to poll workers on Tuesday so I can vote without casting a provisional ballot. That’s what I did in the last two elections.

    I understand the importance of banking early votes. Especially for people who might forget. Me? I never forget and nothing short of death would keep me away on Election Day. With help from the Supreme Court or the passage of the SAVE Act, we may actually go back to a real Election Day.

    Nothing could keep me from voting in this disgraceful power grab of a special election.

    I have another reason for wanting to vote in person this year. I want to see which of my friends and neighbors are passing out literature for the “yes” campaign. I want to look into the eyes of people who don’t want voters like me to have any representation in Congress.

    Sun Tzu in his classic “The Art of War” said “know your enemy.”

    I want to do just that.

    For a long time, I assumed those on the left simply saw the world differently from the rest of us. But after seeing the private texts sent by Jay Jones in which he fantasized about putting two bullets in Republican Todd Gilbert’s head and how he thought it would be nice for Gilbert’s children to die in their mothers’ arms, I realized there is something malignant happening with the left in Virginia. Continue reading.

  • We All Failed Justin Fairfax

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The murder of Cerina Fairfax is inexcusable, but the calculated political destruction of Justin Fairfax deserves both scrutiny and culpability.

    A man in a suit sitting on a bench, looking contemplative, in an indoor setting with ornate decor.

    by Shaun Kenney

    The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.”

    — Greg Iles, “The Quiet Game” (1999)

    One never truly knows the weight each of us might be carrying. What we can say is that no one has the unmitigated right to load that weight on others.

    Justin Fairfax — a former lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth — was carrying a great weight indeed. Having been nearly a breath away from becoming governor himself after the Northam scandal involving blackface and a Ku Klux Klan hood, Fairfax found himself the target of a vicious and personal character assassination at the hands of McAuliffe’s public relations goons only for then-Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring to have been caught in his own blackface scandal. Northam was rehabilitated and even had the testicular fortitude to endorse Democratic candidates and have his endorsement welcomed in turn.

    Fairfax managed to survive his term as lieutenant governor only to find that he was unemployable — the dark cloud of allegations being disproven one by one to an audience that didn’t give a damn. Fairfax’s political career was destroyed, his personal career was destroyed, his reputation was destroyed, and his self-worth was destroyed before consuming his marriage as well.

    (more…)

  • Spanberger’s Rewrite of Energy Bill Challenges Assembly, Dominion

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    The Impossible Dream, a sign seen on a Whitehall doorway in London.

    Governor Abigail Spanberger (D) has proposed that the General Assembly return to the misguided practice of dictating by law a utility profit margin, overturning a bipartisan reform approved just three years ago. It is no different than her effort to end the bipartisan reforms against political gerrymandering and again put politicians in charge of that.  

     A profit cap on Dominion Energy Virginia is one of several aggressive proposed amendments she has offered to the complex bill dealing with a host of energy regulations. She, and the Assembly’s leading Democrats and Dominion Energy face a three-way collision at the Reconvened Session this Wednesday. 

    In focus is the most written about energy proposal of the session, which started as an innocuous proposal on utility spending for energy efficiency upgrades. By the end of the session it had taken on additional baggage, supposedly destined to “lower power bills” by shifting additional costs onto Virginia’s new favorite scapegoat, the data center industry.  

    It was one of the nine bills Jefferson Forum identified last month as likely to increase future ratepayer electric costs. Looking at the fate of the other eight, seven of them Spanberger signed and one is the subject of a technical amendment. The likely higher costs are still coming. Nothing that passed this year is going to add major new power generation within Virginia (balcony solar panels are window dressing).  

    (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A beagle named Frank lounging on a couch with a humorous text overlay urging voters not to support a measure in Fairfax Frederick County on April 21.

    View more memes at The Bull Elephant.

  • A Checkbook Proposal That Needs to Be Bounced

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A woman in a suit gestures with her hands while standing next to a blindfolded man wearing a collared shirt, both participating in a group activity in a meeting room.
    Mayor Danny Avula (right). Image credit: Graham Moomaw, The Richmonder

    by Jon Baliles

    At a media event last Friday to talk about transparency, Richmond Mayor Danny Avula admitted that fixing the city’s check register — the one that is supposed to publish all city payments monthly but was turned off by the Stoney administration in 2019 and never restarted despite being required by city code — had not been a top priority.

    “I will be perfectly honest to say this fell into the category of important, but not urgent,” Avula told reporters at the media briefing. He also said the “recent press” stories and efforts led by 3rd District Councilwoman Kenya Gibson to at least publish the register from last year had “ratcheted this up.”

    Forget for a moment Avula ran for office promising to be transparent, change City Hall for the better and be a different leader and mayor. Yet, his efforts to pretend to be transparent are no different and little better than his predecessor.

    “Clearly, this is pretty important to you all,” Avula told reporters last Friday at City Hall, and added he felt there was a “huge chasm” between “what’s getting reported on and how we’re actually thinking about this.”

    Actually, there isn’t.

    (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A platter of food items wrapped in bacon, presented on a white serving dish, with toothpicks for easy serving. The image includes a humorous caption comparing bacon to food wrapped in bacon.

  • New State Law offers Landowners the “Freedom” to Build Exactly What the Government Wants Built

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    New State Law offers Landowners the “Freedom” to Build Exactly What the Government Wants Built

    by James C. Sherlock

    Democrats have given Virginians the “freedom” to build:

    • what Democrats want them to build,
    • where Democrats want it built.  

    They want single-family homeowners to be able to build an additional dwelling on their property in residential areas without having to comply with local residential zoning ordinances. So Governor Spanberger signed Senate Bill 531 Zoning; development and use of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) into law on April 13 to take effect in 2027.

    The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) praised the law as: 

    cutting red tape that had prevented property owners from making full use of their land. The new law, championed by the Commonwealth Housing Coalition and Pacific Legal Foundation, requires localities to permit ADUs in single-family zoning districts and caps permit fees at $500.

    Let’s deconstruct that:

    • The “property owners” affected are only single-family homeowners.  
    • By “red tape,” PLF and its partner mean local government zoning restrictions.  
    • The term “full use” is entirely misused. PLFs’ very own model state law, the “By-Right Housing Development Act,” includes the right to build single-family homes and multi-family housing units on an owner’s property, not just accessory dwelling units.  

    It does nothing to ease rebuilding rules for homeowners who, using the L.A. example, lost their homes in fires or floods. So, let’s call it the “Two Houses, One For Rent, On Single-Family Lots” Act for accuracy. The law clearly intends for the ADUs to be rentals:

    (more…)

  • Virginia Lawmakers Exempt Themselves from Their Own Gun Law

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Two Virginians. Two handguns. One law.

    Image credit: Virginia Christian Alliance

    by Jeff Bayard

    Imagine this scenario: The Walmart parking lot on Midlothian Turnpike is half-empty at 9:47 p.m. A man named David walks out with two bags of groceries, his boots scuffing across wet asphalt. He’s a deacon at his church, a grandfather. His Glock 19 is in the glove compartment — unlocked, the way he’s kept it for twelve years. The car doors are locked. The handgun is out of sight. But the glove box opens with one motion, no fumbling for a second key. That’s the point.

    Halfway across the lot, he sees it. A dark sedan idling near his truck, windows down, two figures watching him. The vehicle wasn’t there when he went inside. As he gets closer, the sedan pulls forward and cuts across his path. Both doors open. Two men step out. One shouts something. They’re moving toward him fast.

    David taps his key fob. The locks chirp open. He slides in, pulls the door shut, hits the lock, and opens the glove compartment. One fluid motion and the Glock is in his hand. He holds it where they can see it. The two men stop. They look at each other. They get back in the sedan and peel out of the lot.

    David calls 911. He’s shaking but unharmed. The police arrive, take his statement, confirm no shots were fired. The officers tell him he did the right thing. Then one of them notices the open glove box. He points. “Was that locked or unlocked?”

    “Unlocked,” David says.

    The officer pauses. He writes David a citation — Class 4 misdemeanor, violation of § 18.2-308.7:1. The handgun wasn’t in a locked hard-sided container. His locked car doors don’t count under the new law.

    Had that glove box been locked — the way HB 110 requires — David would have been fumbling for a second key while two men closed the distance. He’d have been robbed, or worse.

    Instead, David drives home with his groceries, his Glock, and a criminal charge for being prepared to defend his life.

    (more…)

  • Justin Fairfax Never Had a Chance to Clear His Name

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    John Reid’s post from The Reid Revolution on X:

    Of course this headline is just horrible… and there’s no excusing murder and the devastation I’m sure these children will feel for the rest of their lives- but this blaring fleeting headline is NOT the whole story.

    When I heard about this crime and tragedy this morning I couldn’t help but wonder if any of Virginia’s smug and abusive political leaders even consider that political hit jobs (with fake allegations?) can have tragic consequences that often reveal themselves many years later.

    I don’t just feel bad for this family and these poor children today… I feel bad about the last several years of horrors these people must have all been living.

    Justin called me several times last year after what was done to me to encourage me not to give up.

    (more…)

  • A Consequential Fight

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    A cartoon character looking anxious while carrying a large bag labeled 'TAXES'.

    Michael Martz of the Richmond Times-Dispatch published an excellent report April 15 detailing the three-way fight among Governor Abigail Spanberger and various Democrats in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates over the budget.

    The Governor proposed “hundreds of changes” to the competing budget bills proposed by each chamber.

    Long story short, she supports the spending proposals but opposes the tax increases proposed to fund them. Democrats in the General Assembly accuse her of holding newly discovered, previously unshared positions on just about everything and blaming them for a budget impasse.

    Former Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s policies have produced a $700 million surplus in tax collections during the first three quarters of the current fiscal year. (Remember rebate checks?) Even with that annualized billion-dollar running start, Democratic members of the General Assembly plan to far outspend current revenues and have no intention of reducing Medicaid outlays to offset cuts to the federal share of the program.

    In fact, the Senate and the House each plan to very expensively expand Medicaid coverage, but not with budget proposals compatible with one another or with the Governor’s newly announced positions.

    (more…)

  • Hey, Virginia Beach, Bedtime Is Now 9:30 P.M.!

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Billboard welcoming visitors to Virginia Beach with a humorous message about nightlife, featuring a police car with flashing lights and a curfew sign.
    Image credit: Kerry: Unemployed and Unedited

    by Kerry Dougherty

    They’re waving the white flag in Virginia Beach. After an almost 3-hour public hearing at which speaker after speaker begged their representatives not to impose an adult curfew at the Oceanfront for the next two weekends, city council members surrendered to the thugs and closed the place.

    It was an embarrassing admission that these elected officials are incapable of doing their jobs.

    The vote was 10-1 with only Jennifer Rouse voting no. Her reason was terrible: She prefers declaring the Oceanfront a “gun-free zone” because as we all know, a few “no guns” signs would cause all the gangbangers to leave their guns at home.

    Frankly, I can’t think of a part of town where I’d want a gun MORE than at the Oceanfront on a Saturday night.

    This is not a city run by Mensa members.

    In response to two separate mass shooting incidents over the past two months, the resort area is effectively closed for business from 9:30 p.m. to 5 a.m. for the next two weekends. The parameters of the curfew are from Rudee Loop to 31st Street.

    Yep, they’re punishing law-abiding tourists and locals who like to stay out past 9:30 to prevent thugs from shooting each other. Continue reading.

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

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