Bacon's Rebellion

  • What Kind of Society Do Virginians Want? The Case of Fairfax County

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano

    by James C. Sherlock

    Yesterday I offered for consideration a lengthy list of misdemeanors that Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano in Fairfax County is declining to prosecute.

    I did that with a hope that the House of Delegates will amend and pass HB 1198.

    Today I am going to ask Virginians to consider in what type of society they wish to live. What is the proper balance between concern for victims and concern for perpetrators?

    Here are the classes of misdemeanor crimes that Mr. Descano does not consider  worthy of prosecution.

    No one wants anyone jailed unnecessarily. It can ruin the life of the perpetrator and the lives of his family. We agree with Mr. Descano on that.

    We value prosecutorial and judicial discretion. But we ask that it be used wisely, not in blanket refusals to enforce entire sections of the Virginia criminal code.

    Every scrap of historical evidence says that the citizens of Fairfax County will get more of the crimes Mr. Descano ignores. (more…)

  • Bacon in the News: Get It Straight, Waffle House!

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    James A. Bacon

    A 28-year-old man, Martin Jose Alvarez, was arrested Wednesday for causing a disturbance at a Cape Coral, Fla., Waffle House restaurant over the way his bacon was cooked. When police officers arrived, they heard him yelling expletives at the staff. “You better cook the f—– bacon right!” he was accused of yelling, according to the local Florida TV station.

    I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the problem. When a man pays for bacon, he is absolutely justified in expecting it to be cooked properly. The police charged him with disorderly intoxication, resisting arrest and intent to do violence. You call this justice? The cooks got off scot free! I doubt there’s a jury in the country that would convict him.

    — JAB

  • The Games Have Begun

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Andrew Wheeler Photo credit: Steve Helber/AP

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Senate Democrats are up in arms over Governor Youngkin’s nomination of Andrew Wheeler as Secretary of Natural Resources. Today, The Washington Post reports that Republicans have upped the stakes.

    It seems that a member of the State Corporation Commission is up for election. Angela Navarro was elected by the Democratically controlled 2021 General Assembly to fill a seat that had been vacated. Her term expires this coming Monday unless the General Assembly elects her to a full term.

    Angela Navarro

    The House Republicans are threatening to hold up, or scuttle, the re-election of Navarro unless the Democrats back off on their opposition to Wheeler.  If the SCC seat is left vacant when the General Assembly adjourns, the governor can appoint someone to serve until the 2023 session of the General Assembly. The Senate majority leader, Richard Saslaw, D-Springfield, declared, “We’re not going to operate that way.” However, another member of the Democratic caucus, Senator Scott Surovell, D-Mount Vernon, had a more nuanced view. He pointed out that a member of the SCC is much more important than a cabinet post. (more…)

  • Et Tu, Brute?

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    The backers of Glenn Youngkin on this blog have got to be feeling confused, at least, if not downright betrayed.

    Youngkin promised to expand the number of charter schools in the Commonwealth. They cheered.

    Now, he has revealed his plan for charter schools. As reported today by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Governor has gotten “the support of a number of Virginia higher education leaders who signed onto a proposal by the administration to open charter schools run by their institutions and funded by the state.”

    That’s right. The Governor wants the institutions of higher education to be his vehicle to expand the number of charter schools in the Commonwealth. And he is proposing to pay them $150 million over the biennium to do it.

    These are those same institutions of higher education that have been criticized endlessly on this blog for being hopelessly and dogmatically liberal; squelchers of dissenting viewpoints; purveyors of critical race theory; awash in diversity, equity, and inclusion nonsense; and top-heavy with bureaucracy, among other evils. In addition, their schools of education, which would probably take the lead on the development and running of these charter schools, have been held to be at the root of all that is wrong with education in Virginia today.

    The sounds you hear are screams of disbelief and anguish.

  • Some Virginia Senate Democrats Vote in Committee to Define Deviancy Down

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    by

    sherlockj

    Attorney General Jason Miyares Courtesy wric.com

    by James C. Sherlock

    The primary obligation of government has always been to protect its populace from harm. That is the basis of the social contract. The people give up absolute individual liberty to achieve group safety.

    Necessary restrictions on government power started in English-speaking countries with the Magna Carta. In the United States Constitution they are codified in the Bill of Rights.

    House and Senate bills have been filed that will permit the Attorney General to intervene at the request of local law enforcement to prosecute violent crime when Commonwealth’s Attorneys will not.

    A committee of the Senate voted the Senate bill down 8-7. All six of the Republicans and one Democrat in that committee voted in favor.

    The rest of the Democrats opposed it. They deserve the benefit of the doubt. Some may not have understood the facts on the ground. Few Virginians understand exactly what some progressive Commonwealth’s Attorneys are doing.

    They, and you, are about to find out. (more…)

  • From Fewer Births to Fewer School Kids

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    Source: Virginia Department of Health, via StatChat.

    The number of births in Virginia has been declining for years, not just in rural counties with shrinking populations, but across the state. Indeed, since 2016 the fall-off in births has been sharpest in Northern Virginia, according to data published StatChat, the University of Virginia’s demographic research group blog. Birth rates are declining in all developed countries. In Northern Virginia, suggests analyst Hamilton Lombard, the drop is aggravated by young adults and families leaving the region.

    Falling birth rates have been reflected, after a few years’ delay, in falling Kindergarten enrollments in public schools. In the reverse image of the pig-in-the-python — a mouse in the python? — the birth dearth will lead to smaller enrollments at every grade level as the smaller age cohorts pass through the system. Assuming the COVID-induced exodus of families to homeschooling is not reversed, enrollment projections look like this: (more…)

  • Poll: Bipartisan Support for Scholarship Tax Break

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    by

    Steve Haner

    by Chris Braunlich

    The following was issued today by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy as a news release:

    As National School Choice Week 2022 concludes, the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy today released results of a polling question demonstrating the overwhelming popularity of Virginia’s sole education choice program. Support is particularly strong in the state’s Black community. (more…)

  • War of Words in the House of Delegates

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    By Kerry Dougherty

    I’ve always thought that it would be a humbling experience — and an immense honor — to be elected to serve in Virginia’s General Assembly, the oldest continuous law-making body in the New World.

    To be part of the House of Delegates is to follow in the footsteps of great men of the Enlightenment: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry.

    You’d think the history of the place alone would be enough to make members leave behind their bad manners, their hateful diatribes, their name-calling.It’s an institution that demands decorum.

    You’d think that. But you would be wrong. Some partisan hacks can’t help themselves.

    Just two weeks into the term of the 74th governor of Virginia, one delegate stood up this week and gave a gratuitous, despicable speech attacking Gov. Glenn Youngkin and accusing him of not being a Christian. (more…)

  • Makary on Mandates

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    Marty Makary

    by James A. Bacon

    For insight into Governor Glenn Youngkin’s approach to managing the COVID-19 epidemic, read the latest column by Marty Makary, a research professor at the Johns Hopkins University, in The Wall Street Journal. He argues that society is paying a high cost for disparaging the immunological resistance that arises from exposure to the COVID virus. 

    Some excerpts from his column:

    Last week the [Centers for Disease Control] released data from New York and California, which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination.

    Yet the CDC spun the report to fit its narrative, bannering the conclusion “vaccination remains the safest strategy.” It based this conclusion on the finding that hybrid immunity — the combination of prior infection and vaccination — was associated with a slightly lower risk of testing positive for Covid. But those with hybrid immunity had a similar low rate of hospitalization (3 per 10,000) to those with natural immunity alone. In other words, vaccinating people who already had Covid didn’t significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization.

    (The CDC study can be found here.) (more…)

  • Showdown at the GA Corral

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    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares recently announced on the nationally televised Laura Ingraham show that “there’s a new sheriff in town.” That new sheriff was gunned down Wednesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    The issue was Miyares’s marquee proposal to broaden the Attorney General’s authority to prosecute criminal cases in circuit court. As originally introduced by Senator Ryan McDougle (R-Hanover) the bill, SB 563, would have enabled sheriffs and police chiefs to request the Attorney General to prosecute cases involving specified violent crimes, without the concurrence of the local Commonwealth’s attorney. (more…)

  • Fairfax County Bars Maggie, 9, and Max, 7, from School

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Asra Nomani

    Brave mama bear Carrie Lukas walked two of her cubs, fourth grader, Maggie, 9, and first grader Max, 7, up to the front doors of Forestville Elementary School here in Fairfax County, Va., for another day at school, but an interim assistant principal barred the two young children entry into the school, citing the school district’s mandatory mask policy.

    The refusal of educational services raises legal issues for new Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares because of state law that protects the right of children in the Commonwealth of Virginia to receive educational services and a new executive order by Youngkin allowing parents the right to choose if their children wear masks at school.

    An officious security official for the school district and a community relations official for the school district, both dispatched to the school over the mask issue, tangled with a local reporter (and local father) whom they demanded stand on the nearby sidewalk. Later, school officials called Fairfax County Police and squad cars arrived, the school district posting a tweet that the police were called on the journalist, not the mother and her children. (more…)

  • Richmond Fentanyl Deaths Reported by RTD. Next: Efforts to Arrest and Prosecute Local Dealers?

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Sometimes reporters commit errors of omission. Especially when a pet cause is threatened by the facts.

    Left-leaning newspapers, which include the large majority of such outlets, tend to write that an “SUV” ran down a crowd at a Christmas parade or that an “illegal gun” shot a cop. That removes personal agency and assigns guilt to inanimate objects.

    Which in turn allows them to advocate both “eliminate cash bail” and “prison reform” causes while pushing gun control. They stop short of mentioning criminals unless, of course, they can be identified as right-leaning.

    The Richmond Times Dispatch features a 1,200 word story:

    Richmond is Virginia’s overdose capital. Nine of 10 fatal overdoses in the city involve fentanyl. 

    Good reporting. Except for that inanimate object thing again. Fentanyl, in this story, is the equivalent of an SUV or an illegal gun. (more…)

  • First Bill to Amend VCEA Buried by Committee

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Failed bill may have given the SCC a path to refuse Dominion’s proposed offshore wind project.

    by Steve Haner

    The first of several pending bills to slow Virginia’s rush to an expensive energy future based on unreliable electricity just failed in a Republican-controlled committee. There is every reason to expect the same fate for two other pending measures with similar goals.

    In past years energy bills have gone to a subcommittee, usually for consideration in concert with similar bills on the same topic. House Bill 839, sponsored by Delegate Tony Wilt, R-Harrisonburg, appeared by itself Tuesday on the docket of the full House Commerce and Energy Committee.  (more…)

  • Restoring Process Over Politics

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Shaun Kenney

    Over the last eight years, Virginia Democrats have been swift to impose their will in violation of political process — a fact that continues to frustrate Virginia Republicans on fronts as wide as economic shutdowns, mask mandates, the tearing down of history and war memorials, the imposition of Critical Race Theory in government schools, and the enforcement of gender ideology in state government.

    The list is long and needs to be truncated quickly.

    Republicans acted in November, and with the election of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin there was the hope that incoming Republicans would act with the swiftness and speed demonstrated by the Democrats.

    Yet Youngkin has walked into a few checkpoints. Rather than run over top of them, Youngkin has chosen not to de-escalate but adjust on at least two fronts — namely Northam’s cap-and-trade schematic under RGGI and on repealing the mask mandates.

    But notice the play here. (more…)

  • Homeschooling Interest in Virginia Exceeds that of Other States

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon


    by James A. Bacon

    Virginians have a higher interest in home schooling than would be predicted by their level of education, political leanings, or incomes — demographic factors explored in a report by eLearningWorld.

    Interest in home schooling has soared nationally since the beginning of the COVID epidemic, writes self-described e-Learning technology geek Scott Winstead, and with school closures still in the cards in many districts, there is no indication that interest is diminishing.

    Partnering with Mindnet Analytics, a data science consulting firm, eLearningWorld used online search trends to gauge the level of interest in homeschooling for the 50 states. It found that the level of interest in Virginia was higher than in 35 other states (including the District of Columbia). (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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