As reported in Part 1, in a move hailed as “historic” and “first in the nation,” members of the Roanoke College women’s swim team held a press conference at Hotel Roanoke on October 5 to highlight the emotional, mental, academic and physical trauma they have been experiencing this semester.
In essence, the women were protesting a student who swam for Roanoke College on the men’s team two years ago, took a year off to experience a sex change, and then returned this semester to swim on the women’s team.
Award-winning swimmer and woman’s rights leader Riley Gaines opened the press conference by putting Roanoke College administrators and other “adults” who failed their students on full blast. (more…)
The Richmond casino referendum this week was once again in the forefront of the news but not because of the impending vote or the discussion of the numerous proposed “benefits” the casino advocates have promised every group under the sun. No, this week it was made known that the company driving the effort to approve the casino referendum (again) is facing the possibility of being delisted by NASDAQ.
Nevertheless, the casino advocates assure all of the potential voters that they will be able to pay the city the $26 million up front payment within 30 days of the approval of the referendum (as spelled out in the agreement), AND build their proposed $562 million casino, AND provide $30 million to the city tax coffers every year from here to eternity, AND still pay off all the organizations and groups and investors they are promising largesse to win approval of the second casino referendum.
No promise is too big, no cost is too high, and no vote is too expensive. (more…)
USS Gerald R. Ford with Carrier Air Wing 8 embarked. Official Navy photo.
by James C. Sherlock
The U.S. Navy has sailed towards the sounds of battle for more than 200 years.
This time it is responding to the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, already in the Mediterranean Sea as part of permanently increased presence in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to move to east as a reaction to Saturday’s attacks in Israel.
The Israelis will deal with Gaza.
The repositioning, crucial for our Israeli ally and our own regional interests, holds at deadly risk other actors in the region that may consider joining in the battle.
The officers and sailors in that battle group are mostly Virginians. (more…)
Roanoke College women’s swim team (front row) and supporters at press conference at Hotel Roanoke, Oct. 5. (photo/Scott Dreyer)
by Scott Dreyer
At noon on Thursday, October 5, the Hotel Roanoke’s Washington Lecture Hall was the scene of a press conference featuring ten members of the Roanoke College women’s swim team. Aided by Riley Gaines and several women’s rights groups, they sought to shine a spotlight on what they portrayed as gross negligence and “emotional blackmail” at the hands of Roanoke College administrators, the NCAA, USA Swimming, and, by extension, state and federal politicians who have allowed them to suffer in many ways. (more…)
On Saturday morning Hamas terrorists unleashed Hell on innocent Israelis. As Israel’s ambassador to the US pointed out, given the population of Israel 600 dead Israelis is the equivalent of 20,000 dead Americans.
This was Israel’s 9-11. Their Pearl Harbor. Some say it was the most deadly day in history for the Jewish state.
And all I can say today, after this weekend of horror in Israel, is thank God for Elon Musk.
Had Musk not spent a chunk of his personal fortune on Twitter, many of us would not have seen the horror Hamas inflicted on innocent Israelis. No way Jack Dorsey’s crowd of left-wingers would have allowed citizen journalists to tell the real story, the unfiltered truth, about the unimaginably grotesque attacks throughout Israel.
We wouldn’t have seen the graphic videos of these fanatical men driving around in a Jeep with the dead body of a young woman in the back like a slaughtered animal, stopping to allow cheering bystanders to spit on her mutilated corpse.
We wouldn’t have seen the bloodied woman – clearly a rape victim – being dragged by her hair into the street by men screaming about Allah and then shoving her into a car overloaded with men who were grabbing for her. God rest her soul. Chances she survived the next few hours are slim.
We wouldn’t have seen the bawling children being shielded by their parents as they were savagely herded into cars and taken as hostages.
We wouldn’t have seen the stacks of bodies.
Nope.
All we’d have is sanitized references to “Hamas militants” – as if this is a regular army – and criticism of “Israel’s right-wing intelligence” for failing to thwart the unprovoked attack on civilians. Oh and lots of whataboutism about how hard life is in Gaza for Palestinians and that Israel is to blame. (more…)
A family plot in the cemetery of a church in the Northern Neck completed in 1714 is the final resting place of a Virginia native who was one of the United States’ modern heroes.
A highway historic marker caught my eye this weekend while I was exploring the Northern Neck on my way back home from a conference in the Newport News area and I decided to visit the grave site of a man whom I had heard much about: Marine Lt. Gen. Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller.
Puller was the most decorated Marine in the history of the Corps. He was awarded five Navy Crosses (second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor for the Navy), the only person to receive that many. In addition to the Navy Crosses, he was awarded the Army equivalent, the Distinguished Service Medal, as well as the Army Silver Medal. Along with those medals and other awards, he was awarded a Purple Heart for being wounded in battle. (more…)
Welcome to the new normal. In 2020 the General Assembly enacted a law giving local school districts the right to engage in collective bargaining. Our friends at the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy warned that much mischief would ensue, an assessment I shared.
On November 2022 the Prince William County Board of Supervisors adopted a collective bargaining ordinance, allowing county employees to negotiate contracts, though not to strike. “Prince William County workers are one step closer to bargaining a historic contract that will lift up all working families,” said David Broder, President of SEIU Virginia 512, reported the DCist at the time.
Now the Prince William Education Association is demanding a 17% pay raise for teachers, which, if enacted without budget cuts, would add $364 million to the county’s $1.5 billion school budget. According to the Potomac Local News, such a pay raise would require a 73% hike in homeowner tax bills. The working families paying real property taxes might beg to disagree with Broder’s assessment.
Among other demands, the teachers union is protesting a new regulation that requires teachers to teach classes remotely when bad weather disrupts in-school instruction. (more…)
A transgender man has filed a lawsuit against the LGBT Life Center in Virginia Beach, which provides health, housing, and other social services to the LBGQT community, on the grounds that it maintained a toxic work environment.
Alexia Kaelber, reports The Virginian-Pilot, had “dreams of helping the marginalized community and uplifting LGBTQ+ Hampton Roads residents.” Among other issues, he told the newspaper, the financially ailing nonprofit was unable to pay rent and electric bills for his clients. But here’s the kicker:
Kaelber, who is a transgender man, said his managers misgendered him and would not stop after being corrected.
Jeez, if you can’t get properly gendered at an LGBTQ+ center, where can you get properly gendered?
Schisms are occurring in the LGQBT community that the mainstream media is not reporting. It seems that many gays — how’s that for a sign of where we are as a society when traditional gays are now the reactionaries? — have reservations about the whole transgender thing. (more…)
It is gratifying to see the editors of The Cavalier Daily engage in an exchange of ideas, albeit indirectly through dueling editorials, with conservative proponents of free speech at The Jefferson Independent, the University of Virginia’s independent student publication, and The Jefferson Council.
It is even more gratifying to see that the CD editors embrace a principle in an editorial yesterday with which we whole-heartedly agree: “Free speech does not guarantee comfort” (even though we’re pretty sure that it’s our comfort that deserves no guarantee, not their own).
However, even as they tout the University of Virginia’s No. 6 ranking in the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) 2024 free speech survey, the authors argue that there are justifiable limits on speech — and that those limits should apply to people at UVa whose views they happen to dislike.
The event precipitating the editorial is the impending visit to UVa of Abigail Shrier, a journalist whose writings about the role of social contagion in the spread of transgender identity among adolescent girls has triggered trans activists across the country. “We must … recognize that certain types of speech simply should not be tolerated here on Grounds,” writes the editorial board, “even if this speech is technically permissible under the law.” (more…)
They tried. Lord knows they did their best to find fault.
But even the leftie Washington Post was forced to hold its nose and admit that Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s commitment to his signature program — “Partnership for Petersburg” — is genuine and getting results.
For more than a year, Youngkin has been working with local and state officials, the private and public sectors and especially with Petersburg Mayor Sam Parham to turn that city’s fortunes around.
Petersburg is a city in distress. It’s riddled with crime, grinding poverty and the worst-performing schools in the commonwealth.
A hopeless example of urban decay, some would say, and on the decline.
In a lengthy story this week, The Post wrote about the friendship that has blossomed between Youngkin and the African-American mayor of that troubled city. (more…)
On the evening of Friday, Sept. 22 and on Saturday, Sept. 23, The Virginia Council and Common Sense Society were planning to host citizen-journalist Andy Ngo (pronounced no) at a forum in Richmond. The intention was to hear Ngo speak about his experiences exposing the violence and intimidation from leftwing Antifa and autograph copies of his book, “Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy.”
The original venue was to be at downtown Richmond’s Commonwealth Club. According to their website’s “Welcome” page, “Founded in 1890, the Commonwealth Club is proud of its history as a premier social club, outstanding event venue, dining destination, and Richmond institution.”
However, when word about the event got out, Antifa began an intimidation campaign, club management buckled, and withdrew their welcome. Scrambling, the event sponsors quickly found a second venue: the Westin Hotel, owned and operated by Marriott Corporation.
Seemingly encouraged by their success at intimidating the Commonwealth Club, the bullies next directed their attacks at the Westin by sending threatening phone calls.
As Ngo shared in his PowerPoint, one example of a threat was a tweet on X, formerly known as Twitter, that stated: “Example script: ‘Hey, the event this evening features a racist, misogynistic, homophobe intent on provocative neo nazi (sic) speech. His name is Andy Ngo and he’s a violent extremist. Many of his attendees are armed neo nazis.’”
The threats fly in the face of all reality. As for racism, Ngo is himself non-white, the first-generation son of parents who fled communism in their native Vietnam. As for homophobia, Ngo is himself an open homosexual.
Nevertheless, around 7:00 am on Sept. 22, a mere twelve hours before the event was to begin, Marriott too folded.
The Roanoke Star reached out to the managers of The Commonwealth Club and Westin, Eric Abuneel and Rodney Moubray respectively, asking what was the exact wording and nature of the threats received, and why they chose to cancel. (more…)
The primary duty of board members of Virginia’s public colleges and universities is to the commonwealth, not to the individual institutions, Attorney General Jason Miyares wrote Monday in response to an advisory opinion requested by Governor Glenn Younkin.
According to Miyares’ missive,Youngkin asked whether Virginia law imposes upon boards of visitors “a duty to serve the interests of the university or college only, or the Commonwealth more broadly.”
“Although they extend services to non-residents, Virginia’s institutions of higher education exist to fulfill the commonwealth’s commitment to provide education to the students of Virginia,” the AG answered. “It is clear that the boards of visitors serving them, as public officers of the state, have a duty to the Commonwealth as a whole.”
The letter does not elucidate the particular circumstances that led to the request for clarification, but the issue of board members’ primary duty did arise during the September 2023 meeting of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors meeting. Rector Robert Hardie had invited Clayton Rose, former president of Bowdoin College and currently a Harvard University professor, to lead a discussion of “best practices in board governance.” (See our coverage here.) (more…)
When I had a meeting set up with (JMU President) Ron Carrier soon after I was elected to (Harrisonburg) City Council in 2000, someone warned me that he would change the time at the last minute just to show he was more important than me. He did, and maybe he was. But it was good to be warned.
Some years later, those of us who had to use a new software for our jobs found that a prerequisite for the technical training was an orientation session with a JMU communication official. Not only did he change the time at the last minute, disrupting the schedules of a few dozen people, but he began the unnecessary meeting when it eventually happened by talking about how many Grateful Dead concerts he’d been to.
The session was about the philosophy and vision of the new software. The JMU official fulfilled the academic administrative definition of a visionary as someone who knows exactly how things should be done if he knew how to do them. (Using “he” in this instance is not a generic pronoun, but a bow to the statistics of who fits this description.)
I was reminded of those earlier occasions recently while watching Councilman Chris Jones interrupt and disrupt his way through a liaison meeting between City Council and School Board members. I had to wonder if his attempts to dominate the meeting with irrelevant or borderline false information were obvious to the casual observer. Not that a casual observer is going to be watching a governmental liaison meeting on a Wednesday afternoon. I may be a nerd.
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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