Fairfax County School Board Member Abrar Omeish put liberal intolerance on full display during a school board meeting Thursday night.
The Yale-educated Democrat broke into a minutes-long diatribe following a moment of silence held by her colleagues for the victims of Hamas terrorism and the innocent Israeli and Palestinian lives lost:
Thursday wasn’t the first time Omeish disrupted school board proceedings. On the eve of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, she opposed a moment of silence for the victims, implying it was racist and neglected to acknowledge “state-sponsored traumas” inflicted by the U.S. government. (more…)
The current spate of labor actions – involving more than 420,000 employees – is a response to higher inflation. However, it will also drive prices even higher, both through lost productivity and higher costs to pay for higher wages.(more…)
Virginia Republicans seem increasingly depressed by November electoral prospects. Many Republicans can’t figure out if the Democrats are more driven by incompetence or fecklessness, but they ask, anyway.
But the more concrete question is: can Democrats, despite everything, nevertheless do well at the polls next month?And if they’re so bad, how determined are Republicans to slam the ball in the net?Maybe not so: on the macro level, the newspapers report population movement from states like New York and California to states like Florida and Texas, attracted by the prospect of not having to self-censor casual conversations. On the “micro level,” they complain that many important campaign jobs—door-to-door canvasser, poll-site greeter, election official, and poll-watcher — are unfilled.
The stakes are high, not just at home. Virginia’s rare election a year before the presidential gives it outsize influence on the country. Virginia is home to many who depend — or do quite well — on a government paycheck. Appeals to liberty or the market, the competitors of government rule, don’t find natural soil. Virginia’s 8.6 million population is driven by the size of Fairfax County (1.1 million), plus Arlington, Alexandria et al among the main D.C. bedroom communities.
The situation is tough. As Damon Runyon, the great chronicler of mid-20th-century Manhattan low-lifes (see Guys and Dolls), put it, surely “The race is not always to the swift, or the battle to the strong — but that’s generally the way to bet.”
But if it were easy to outrun the swift and outfight the strong, who would need campaign volunteers? I’m looking at you, dear reader.(more…)
Virginia’s new electricity bill subsidy program for customers of Dominion Energy Virginia has cleared its final hurdle at the State Corporation Commission and will begin enrolling participants in time for this coming winter. It is largely following the schedule previously outlined.
In a final order issued October 13, the Commission set the rate adjustment clause amount that will be added to Dominion customer bills at 73 cents per 1,000 kilowatt hours. For most residential customers it will add between 50 cents and a dollar per month to their bills. (more…)
Girls with Pearls is a turn-key, school-based program that fosters leadership to change the outcome for girls by empowering them to plan for a bright future through education, personal responsibility and social awareness.
With those dedicated women and men behind it, Girls with Pearls will help young people become better adults.
With the opening of the new General Assembly Building this month came other reminders of how the world has changed.
It was not that long ago that staff and tourists could walk unimpeded into the Capitol building. One could drive into the circle beyond the gate fronting on Grace Street to pick someone up or drop off a passenger. One could drive on the street between Capitol Square and Old City Hall and even park there on weekends (so long as one did not park in Senate Clerk Susan Schar’s space).
First, it was the Capitol. Visitors without a State ID now have to trek down the hill and enter through an underground entrance and then walk back up several flights of stairs to get to the interior of the Capitol.
Now, the area has the look of a fortress. There is a large gatehouse at the Grace Street entrance along with a large iron gate. The street entrances off Broad St. have gates manned by Capitol Police.
This is not meant to be a criticism. It is a lamentation over the realities of the present era.
Capitol Square, main entrance fronting Grace St.Capitol Square, street entrance off Broad St., next to General Assembly BuildingCapitol Square, street exit onto Broad St.
They say the past is prologue and that if you don’t learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it, among other famous quotes that have stood the test of time. And they have a factor of truth and lesson in them. And so is the case with next month’s casino referendum, the second one we have had the chance to vote for because the first one was ignored by city leaders in 2021.
This Deep Dive is a look back at the last time Richmond faced two referendums on one topic in short succession — the people were asked to vote to register their voice and they said no to the city leaders, planners, and business leaders. Both times, the people’s voice was ignored, and both times the city leaders overruled their vote and their voice and pursued their plans irrespective of the results — with disastrous and long-lasting consequences.
A week ago the Students for Justice in Palestine at UVA created a furor by publishing a statement defending Hamas’ attack on Israel. “Yesterday’s rebellion was not ‘unprovoked,’ as many have claimed, but is the consequence of years of mass killings, ethnic cleansing, and oppression from Israel,” the group wrote. “The events that took place yesterday [October 7] are a step towards a free Palestine…. We stand in solidarity with Palestinian resistance fighters and all oppressed people around the world seeking freedom and a better world.”
The same group organized a demonstration yesterday at the steps of the Rotunda in the shadow of the statue of Thomas Jefferson. I made a point of attending to hear what the protesters had to say and observe what transpired. I had one major question: who were these people? What kind of person living in a free society could defend the atrocities perpetrated upon Israeli civilians of all ages? What could they possibly be thinking?
As executive director of The Jefferson Council, which is dedicated among other things to free speech and free inquiry at UVa, I supported the right of the pro-Palestinians to hold their rally and make their case. But the Council also stands for viewpoint diversity, which is under threat from the steady leftward drift of the faculty and staff and the slow extinction of professors openly professing conservative, libertarian and independent views. While the far left is a distinct minority at UVa, it is a highly vocal and influential one. How representative, I wanted to know, were the Students for Justice in Palestine at UVA? (more…)
Roanoke College swimmer Susanna Price (screenshot/WSLS on YouTube)
by Scott Dreyer
At Hotel Roanoke on October 5, members of the Roanoke College women’s swim team calmly and clearly delivered blistering indictments of what they described as failed, unresponsive leadership at their school, the NCAA, and USA Swimming. Some of their gut-wrenching stories about being forced to train, compete, and share facilities with a biological male are recorded in Parts One, Two, and Three.
Roanoke College team captain and swimmer Kate Pearson (screenshot/WSLS on YouTube)
At times choking back tears, team captain Kate Pearson painfully described the sense of emotional abandonment the girls felt, as they realized the school they had loved for years [and sent lots of tuition money to] was led by people who were turning both a blind eye and deaf ear to their concerns.
Pearson: “We tried numerous times to ask the school for support, but each and every time we were told to deal with it ourselves, or told nothing at all. The school refused to send out any information to our parents, and we were informed that even if our entire women’s team decided to stand together and not swim, and emphasized the unfairness that was happening, our coach would be allowed to have a ‘one-athlete’ swim team.(more…)
For those readers of this blog who contend that Democrats and “progressive” prosecutors are fixated on not prosecuting violent criminals and ignoring the needs of witnesses and victims, I have some good news for you.
Witness Protection
Since 1994 Virginia has had a statute authorizing the Virginia State Police to establish a witness protection program. However, because it has never been specifically funded, it has been seldom, if ever, used. (Never mind that the Department of State Police had GF balances at the end of FY 2022 of $32 million and $10 million in FY 2021.)
In March 2021, Steve Descano, the Commonwealth’s attorney for Fairfax County and Ramin Fatehi, then the deputy Commonwealth’s attorney for Norfolk, published an op-ed in The Virginian-Pilot calling on the General Assembly to fully fund the Witness Protection Program. They pointed out the problems that police and prosecutors have in getting witnesses to come forward due to their being threatened or otherwise intimidated. “Witness protection programs — which provide for the security or relocation of witnesses away from those who might wish them harm — are among the most effective means of counteracting witness intimidation,” they contended. (more…)
Two years after the COVID school lockdowns, the collapse in K-12 learning still has significant downward momentum. Of the 1.4 million high school seniors who took the ACT college preparedness test in 2023, the percentage meeting all four benchmarks — English, math, reading, and science — was 20.8% — down 1.3 percentage points from the previous year, according to ACT.
That’s not 21% of all high school graduates, it’s 21% of students who took the exam, which varied from 2% in Maine to 100% in Alabama.
“This is the sixth consecutive year of declines in average scores, with average scores declining in every academic subject,” ACT CEO Janet Godwin said in a press release. “We are also continuing to see a rise in the number of seniors leaving high school without meeting any of the college readiness benchmarks, even as student GPAs continue to rise and students report that they feel prepared to be successful in college.”
In Virginia, a mere 8% of high school graduates took the ACT exams, meaning only a highly self-selected group of college-bound students participated. Here is the percentage of Virginia students meeting ACT benchmarks of having “a high probability of success in credit-bearing first-year college courses”:
English — 83%
Math — 72%
Reading — 61%
Science — 63%
I learned a lot about transgender activists and advocates at the Abigail Shrier event at the University of Virginia last night. Some are bitter, angry people who hurl non-stop invective. Some are close-minded but willing to engage in rational conversation. But at least one is courteous, friendly and willing to engage in a thoughtful, one-on-one exchange. I look forward to having lunch with her next week.
Shrier, the author of “”Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” was herself polite, charming and attentive. Even as more than 100 protesters were chanting and demonstrating outside Minor Hall, she remained unflappable inside the auditorium under questioning that ranged from skeptical to hostile.
Shrier is the object of venom in the transgender community because her book dared to ask questions that many do not want to be asked. While acknowledging the gender dysphoria is real and those who suffer from it deserve compassion, she argues that much of the transgender “craze” is a social contagion mainly affecting teenage girls, that “affirmative” treatment such as testosterone shots and top surgery are fraught with ill-understood risks and dangers, and that a legion of affirming educators, counselors, and even medical doctors have abandoned science in favor of ideology. She elaborated on those themes in a Q&A session hosted by the Jefferson Council in partnership with the Young Americans for Freedom and the Common Sense Society. (more…)
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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by Dick Hall-Sizemore
