Antifa Failed to Make Conservative Conference a Ngo Go

Posted on September 24, 2023 by | 60 comments

Andy Ngo

by James A. Bacon

A conservative media summit featuring journalist Andy Ngo was disrupted by threats of violence by left-wing militants, but the show did go on Saturday. The conference of roughly 50 attendees was scheduled originally to be held at the Commonwealth Club in downtown Richmond. Organizers lined up an alternate venue, but that was scuttled too. Fortunately, organizers found a third venue at the last minute, kept the location secret and got out the word to the roughly 50 attendees. At least one person traveling from out of town headed to the second venue only to find it had been canceled. (He managed to make it to the revised location.)

The main feature, of course, was Ngo, who has carved out a niche reporting about the activities, tactics and social composition of the decentralized, left-wing anarchist movement often labeled Antifa.

Ngo has angered the so-called anti-fascists by highlighting their proclivity for violence. Ironically, local militants proved his point by intimidating the club and hotel where the event was to be held. Fox News has part of the story here.

I was privileged to participate in the event as a panelist discussing the evolution of Bacon’s Rebellion and the economics of the blogosphere in Virginia. My understanding of what transpired comes from the organizers: the Virginia Council and the Common Sense Society. People objecting to Ngo’s appearance made phone calls to the club and hotel proprietors, implying that violence would occur. The most vivid quote I recall is that “there will be dead people” if the event went on. Continue reading →

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Posted in Culture wars

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No Republican Says “Pregnant Persons”, WaPo

Posted on September 24, 2023 by | 6 comments

By Steve Haner

There is no way House Republican spokesman Garren Shipley used the term “pregnant person” in discussing the ongoing campaign debate over the abortion issue with a Washington Post reporter. The reporter or an editor intentionally broke up his quote to insert the now politically correct term in a recent story.

Here is the paragraph, with a highlight to show the direct and indirect portions of the quote:

“Voters have a very distinct choice,” said Garren Shipley, spokesman for the House Republican Caucus, which paid for what he called a “six-figure” ad campaign. “Republicans have been absolutely clear from the get-go” that they favor a 15-week limit with exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the pregnant person, he said. “But Democrats can’t give you a straight answer about what they want to do.”

Shipley would have referred to the life of the mother or the life of the woman. But, no, the Washington Post could not even use those terms in a direct quote in today’s environment. In woke Post land, people who are not women, who are not born with wombs, can carry unborn children.

The story focused on a new GOP-sponsored 30-second broadcast ad also tied to a website, and having the Post cover the development at all was a boost to Shipley’s team. The story concedes Democrats are less clear about their intentions. That one issue is already dominating the airwaves, with both sides accusing the other of blatantly lying about their plans if given control of the legislature. Continue reading →

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Posted in Abortion, Culture wars, Elections

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Jeanine’s Memes

Posted on September 24, 2023 by | 14 comments


From the Bull Elephant

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Posted in Uncategorized

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Bacon Meme of the Week

Posted on September 24, 2023 by | 2 comments

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Posted in Uncategorized

“Blessed“ Is the Second RVA Casino Referendum

Posted on September 23, 2023 by | 16 comments

by Jon Baliles

Early voting has begin in Virginia and the Richmond casino advocates have gone all-in with the mayor and City Council to make sure the referendum got back on the ballot and now are betting the house with an absurd amount of money to make sure the referendum passes this time.

Jimmy Cloutier at Virginia Investigative Journalism has an interesting piece on the all out effort by the casino advocates to buy their way to a victory at the polls  this time around. He points out that two out-of-state companies (Urban One, based in Maryland and Churchill Downs, based in Kentucky) have already raised $8.1 million which “dwarfs the amount of money raised in every Virginia legislative race and ballot initiative in state history, according to an analysis of campaign finance data by OpenSecrets.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Economic development, Elections, Gambling, Money in politics, Open Government, Politics, Public safety & health

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Early Voting Starts Today: Bank Your Vote

Posted on September 22, 2023 by | 62 comments

And there’s no need to leave the house!

by Kerry Dougherty

This may be my autumn of living dangerously.

Heck, I may roller skate down a flight of stairs. Without a helmet. I may drive on the interstate. Without a seatbelt. Shoot, I may even give gas station sushi a try.

If I don’t make it till Election Day? Who cares?

I’m voting by mail.

My vote will count, whether I’m dead or alive!

Yep, conservatives and libertarians are late to this game, but it’s time we all joined in. Gov. Glenn Youngkin launched SecureYourVoteVirginia.com in July, urging Republicans and Independents to do what Democrats did to great success in the last election:

Bank those votes.

That way, unforeseen emergencies – illness, car problems, hurricanes – can’t disrupt your plan to get to the polls.

Mail-in voting makes a difference. And there are 45 days of it in Virginia this year. Beginning today.

Consider what happened in the whisker-close Kevin Adams vs. Aaron Rouse special election in January to fill the state senate seat Jen Kiggans vacated when she was elected to Congress.

Rouse, a Democrat, won. With about a 1% margin or just 696 votes.

Yet Adams took the in-person vote on Election Day and even the early, in-person voters.

Adams was slaughtered, however, in the mail-in vote. Continue reading →

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Posted in Elections

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In New Mexico, Union Troops Have Been Cancelled

Posted on September 22, 2023 by | 43 comments

By Steve Haner

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, when the wave of historical monuments destruction hit three years ago, it was a memorial to Civil War Union soldiers that was toppled by a mob.

There were Union soldiers out in what was then a sparsely populated territory? Yes, the Civil War reached that far. Santa Fe was briefly occupied by Confederate troops from Texas in 1862, for about a month. A couple of battles (skirmishes by eastern standards) were fought on its territory, the final one just 25 miles from town at Glorietta Pass.

The forces loyal to the Union, including the famous Christopher “Kit” Carson as a leading officer, were commemorated with the standard obelisk in Santa Fe’s beautiful Plaza, near the restored Spanish colonial-era Palace of the Governors. The obelisk was broken and what remains is the ugly box covering the pedestal you see above, an empty stand missing a plaque and a sign providing “context” put up by the city’s Culture, History, Art, Reconciliation and Truth (CHART) Commission.

Why was a Union monument vandalized? Because the soldiers were also praised for participating in battles against “savage” local indigenous populations. At the same time, memorials in town to the aforementioned Carson were also removed, along with a statue of the Spanish colonial governor who reconquered the territory after a successful 1680 Indian revolt. That statue was removed from the grounds of the Cathedral of St. Francis. Continue reading →

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Posted in Culture wars

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Charts of the Day: Teacher Vacancies

Posted on September 22, 2023 by | 13 comments

by James A. Bacon

The teacher shortage at Virginia’s public schools is getting worse. School divisions report 4,304 unfilled positions in the 2023-24 school year, according to a recent report by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC). Out of a teacher workforce of about 87,000, the creates an average statewide vacancy rate of 4.8%.

The shortages are not evenly distributed, however, as seen in the table below.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12)

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Transparency? Hah!

Posted on September 21, 2023 by | 27 comments

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Maybe it was the weirdness of amending the biennial budget after Year 2 of the biennium had started.  Maybe all the money they had to spend made them dizzy. Maybe they were in a hurry because many of them were in the middle of re-election campaigns. Whatever the reason, the General Assembly decided in its special session to adopt the budget to sacrifice transparency in favor of efficiency.

A quick review of the normal procedure will serve to clarify how different this year was. Normally, after both houses have considered the budget bill and rejected each other’s version, the bill is sent to a conference committee comprised of members from both houses. In a largely shrouded process, the conference committee eventually produces a report consisting of all the changes to the introduced budget bill that its members have agreed upon. (Comparisons to the Vatican College of Cardinals electing a new Pope are apt.) Continue reading →

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Posted in Budgets, General Assembly

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Woke Bloat at Virginia Universities

Posted on September 21, 2023 by | 15 comments


by James A. Bacon

Step aside California! Public universities in Virginia have built larger diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies than taxpayer-funded universities in any other state, concludes a new backgrounder by The Heritage Foundation. The DEI bureaucracy at the University of Virginia includes 94 employees listed on its website, says the report. Virginia Tech has 83 DEI personnel, while George Mason University has 69.

Expressed as a ratio of DEI bureaucrats to tenure-track faculty members, GMU earned the top spot as DEI top-heavy, with a ratio 0f 7.4 to 100. UVa was close behind with 6.5, while Tech was 5.6. In comparison, uber-woke Cal Berkeley has a 6.1 per 100 ratio.

(I’ll have to stop making quips about UVa being the Berkeley of the East Coast. From now on I’ll describe Berkeley as the UVa of the West Coast.) Continue reading →

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Posted in Culture wars, DEI, Education (higher ed)

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Navy Ditches Drag Queen Recruiting Videos

Posted on September 21, 2023 by | 55 comments

Norfolk naval base

by Kerry Dougherty

Whoa. Stop the presses. Big news out of Washington.

Navy brass has confirmed that it’s scrapped its ingenuous recruiting tool. You know, the one we wrote about last spring: drag queens.

Yep, Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, a non-binary sailor who likes to dress up like a woman and prance around on stage as drag queen Harpy Daniels, will no longer be featured in Navy recruiting videos.

We wrote about this sailor last May.

This is a stunning about-face. Who could have predicted that fishnet stockings and lipstick wouldn’t be an irresistible lure to bring in the sort of sailors we need in the modern American Navy? Who knew that drag queens would rather be reading to pre-schoolers than twerking to serve their country? Continue reading →

55 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Defense

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By the Way, What Is Virginia Tech’s View on Parental Rights?

Posted on September 21, 2023 by | 42 comments

Catherine Cotrupi

Virginia Tech’s interim dean of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion has been accused of violating Tech’s email policy by forwarding a message that slammed local conservative school board candidates as “hateful,” according to The Daily Signal. In responding to an email sent to her Tech account blasting the local candidates for their “anti-trans” and “anti-woke” outlook, Catherine Cotrupi forwarded the email with the notation, “Sharing in case you’re interested.” One of the school board candidates is contemplating a lawsuit.

Undoubtedly, Cotrupi deserves a hand slapping, but it’s not as if she originated the email chain. One can interpret her action as careless, not a commandeering of state resources to advance a political agenda. Of far greater concern is her implicit endorsement of the representations in the email, which is indicative of a mindset that informs her DEI work at Tech.

The local school board candidates, it appears from the Daily Signal article, are guilty of the cardinal sin of supporting Governor Glenn Youngkin’s “Model Policies on Ensuring Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students,” upholding parental rights in transgender issues at public K-12 schools. One wonders if Cotrupi believes Virginia Tech parents have any right to be informed of, or involved in, life-altering decisions — hormone therapy, surgery, etc. — made by their children with the university’s knowledge and consent. Continue reading →

42 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed)

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Giant Utility Rejects Net Zero Power; Big Fight Follows

Posted on September 20, 2023 by | 82 comments

by David Wojick

Dominion Energy, Virginia’s big electric utility, is telling the state it does not foresee complying with the 2045 net zero power target in the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). The preferred option in Dominion’s latest Integrated Resources Plan (IRP) retires no fossil-fueled power generators, other than the few old ones that are already in the process of retirement. In fact, it adds a lot more fossil juice.

Up front in the IRP, Dominion puts it this way: “Due to an increasing load forecast, and the need for dispatchable generation, the Alternative Plans show additional natural-gas-fired resources and preserve existing carbon-emitting units beyond statutory retirement deadlines established in the VCEA. The law explicitly authorizes the Company to petition the SCC for relief from these requirements on the basis that the unit retirements would threaten the reliability or security of electric service to customers.”

So, in effect, this is a notice to Virginia’s utility regulator, the State Corporation Commission (SCC), that Dominion is prepared to petition for permission to not comply with the net zero power generation mandate in the VCEA. Continue reading →

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Posted in Business and Economy, Energy, Uncategorized, Virginia Law

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Fear and Loathing in Harrisonburg

Posted on September 20, 2023 by | 23 comments

by Joe Fitzgerald

Fifteen months ago, I wrote the following about last year’s Harrisonburg City Council elections:

We need people, independent or party, who value pragmatism over ideology. And we need people who know the difference between pragmatism and cynicism, and the difference between opportunity and opportunism. This would be the year for people who are concerned, in the words of an ancient Greek poet, about what is right and good for their city, and are willing to sacrifice the time, treasure, and energy to work for those concerns.

The Harrisonburg Democratic Committee reacted by kicking me off a database I’d been using to help candidates for 20 years, and continued a nomination process marked by two deeply flawed caucuses. The year ended with a council dominated by ideological opportunists. (The reference to the database is thrown in to highlight absurdity; you get it or you don’t.)

Next year three out of five City Council members will be on the ballot. Mayor Reed, elected eight years ago as “Everywoman,” has since grown to become the moral center of the council. The other two are a man with the personal behavior of a person half his age and a woman who, in the immortal words of Jed Bartlett, has turned being un-engaged into a Zen-like thing.

In that same West Wing scene, Bartlett says, “We should have a great debate. We owe it to everyone.” Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?

There is a class of people in the city, from the serious to the absurdist, who have managed to keep up with or remain engaged in local politics even with the diminution of local journalism. Many would probably like to see that great debate about the city’s future. Right now they’re asking questions like “What are the Democrats going to do?” and “Will the Republicans run anybody?” Continue reading →

23 Comments

Posted in Elections, Leadership, Politics

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Alumni Groups File Amicus Brief in Virginia Tech Free Speech Case

Posted on September 20, 2023 by | 17 comments

by James A. Bacon

The Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) and alumni groups from nine colleges and universities, including The Jefferson Council, submitted an  amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday urging the court to hear a case brought by Speech First over the issue of bias reporting practices and procedures at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

“The use of bias reporting systems has become pervasive across American college and university campuses and these systems create a climate of fear and intimidation that causes many students to self-censor and discourages constitutionally protected speech,” said AFSA President Charles Davis. “These bias reporting systems have no place at a university whose defining purpose as a place of learning and human fulfillment can only be achieved through a steadfast commitment to free speech.”

From the brief:

Rather than adopting explicitly punitive speech codes or conditioning participation in university life on acceptance of prevailing views, colleges such as Respondent created “bias response” systems. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (higher ed), Individual liberties

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