Bacon's Rebellion

  • A Day in Court

    Posted on

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Henrico County Courthouse

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    I spent some time today observing proceedings in Henrico County District Court. (No, I was not a defendant.) I recommend the experience to anyone interested in seeing how the criminal justice system works in real life.

    District court is the venue for hearing traffic offenses and misdemeanors. It also hears more serious cases for probable cause to be sent to circuit court.

    I sat in on two different courtrooms. The atmosphere in both was somewhat reminiscent of that depicted in the old TV series, Night Court. The Henrico judges, of course, were not as unorthodox as Judge Harry Anderson in that series nor were there the slapstick and irreverent humor prevalent there. However, there was an informal feeling with lots of friendly interaction among the defense attorneys, prosecutors, police, and judges. The judges were respectful and, sometimes, friendly toward the defendants, while at the same time admonishing them for their misdeeds. (more…)

  • Abigail Shrier Will Be Livestreamed Tonight

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    James A. Bacon

    *** Sponsored Content ***

    Abigail Shrier, author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” will be speaking tonight (Oct. 11) at 7:00 p.m. at the University of Virginia. Register here.

    If you can’t make it to Charlottesville, you can livestream the event by clicking here.

  • Another Race Institute at UVa

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    sherlockj

    Kimberly J. Robinson, UVa Professor of Law. Official Photo

    by James C. Sherlock

    Fund it and they will come.

    The Daily Progress reports that thanks to a $4.9 million gift from an anonymous philanthropist, a new “Institute” has been launched at UVa’s School of Law.

    The new organization, the Education Rights Institute, plans to

    “find ways to improve K-12 education and help educators address the obstacles that face disadvantaged students.”

    Staff have been hired and the institute’s first projects are already in development. There will be a star-studded roll out on October 16th.

    Excited?

    Hold that thought while you read about the Institute’s leadership, goals and intentions. (more…)

  • Youngkin Orders Flags at Half-Mast to Honor the Dead in Israel

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    Bob Rayner

    by The Republican Standard

    Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin issued an order Sunday to fly flags around the state at half-staff.

    This was the statement issued by his office:

    “In accordance with the authority vested in me as Governor, I hereby order that the flags of the United States of America and the Commonwealth of Virginia be flown at half-staff on all state and local buildings and grounds to honor the lives lost in the horrific terror attack committed against Israel and to hold those injured and held hostage in our thoughts.

    I hereby order that the flags shall be lowered immediately on Sunday, October 8, 2023, and remain at half-staff until sunset on Saturday, October 14, 2023.”

    Iranian-funded Hamas terrorists attacked Israeli citizens on Saturday morning, a day that totaled the single largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. The attacks were also carried out on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.

  • “My Defeat Was Written in Biology”: Roanoke College Swimmers, Part 2

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Scott Dreyer

    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…)

  • Incapable at Least; Incompetent at Worst

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Jon Baliles

    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…)

  • Virginians Sail Towards Gaza

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    sherlockj

    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 Swimmers Stand Up for Equality

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    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…)

  • Stop All Aid to Palestinians and Other Terrorists. Every Bit of It

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Kerry Dougherty

    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 Native Virginian Hero

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    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Lt. Gen. Lewis B. Puller (USMC)

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    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…)

  • Be Careful What You Ask For, You Just Might Get It

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    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…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    From the Bull Elephant.

  • Bacon Meme of the Day

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

  • Transgender Man Sues LGBT Life Center

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Bing image creator: “Call me by my pronouns”

    by James A. Bacon

    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…)

  • Free Speech and the Abigail Shrier Event

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    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…)

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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