Author Archives: Bob Rayner

Virginia Dems Have Their Panties in a Twist

Posted on February 29, 2024 | 51 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

This is what triggers Virginia Democrats today:

There was an exchange at the Virginia Capitol between Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, who presides over the State Senate, and Sen. Danica Roem of Prince William County.

Roem identifies as a woman, although Roem was born a man. The politically correct crowd insists that failing to use feminine pronouns for someone like Roem is “misgendering.” A sin invented by the left.

Roem stormed out of the Senate chamber after Sears addressed her as “sir.” Several other senators with their panties in a twist followed. Eventually Sears apologized.

Sheesh.

Look, my main problem with the trans movement is when children are involved. And the trans movement is actively recruiting kids. It needs to stop.

Beyond that, children shouldn’t be chemically castrated, sterilized with hormone blockers or have their body parts carved up because they’re confused. And no child should be allowed to pretend to be a member of the opposite sex in school without the permission of their parents.

Biological males should be banned from playing sports with biological females and they need to be forbidden to enter traditional girls’ safe spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms.

That said, adults may do what they want. If a man wants to put on lipstick and wear a dress, fine.

What they cannot do is force the rest of us to play along. Continue reading →

51 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, General Assembly, Politics

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Must Be an Election Year: Kaine’s Staff Is Answering the Phone!

Posted on February 28, 2024 | 50 comments

Sen. Tim Kaine

by Scott Dreyer

Life is full of surprises, and I got one today when I called the Roanoke office of US Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA)… and a real voice picked up! The receptionist was friendly and professional as I requested the senator help block the proposed Kroger buy-out of Albertson’s.

I then asked her why none of my calls to that office had been answered by a human being for quite some time. I told her, “I haven’t been marking my calendar, but I guess it’s been at least one year, maybe two, since I’ve called this office and gotten a human voice. For a long time, all my calls went to voicemail.”

She tried to assure me, “we listen to all the calls that go to voicemail and pass them along to the senator.”

I then replied: “That’s nice, but from a human point of view, it’s better to call and get a human voice than just voicemail. Besides, almost every time I call the offices for Sen. Warner or Congressman Cline, a real human answers the phone.” Continue reading →

50 Comments

Posted in Elections, Politics

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Democrats Proposal to Cut Sentences Would Undermine Public Safety, AG Says

Posted on February 28, 2024 | 7 comments

Jason Miyares

by Hans Bader

On February 27, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares sent a letter to Virginia state legislators about a Democratic proposal to allow some violent offenders to receive sentence reductions previously available only to non-violent offenders.

Miyares asked legislators to prevent the proposal, passed by the House of Delegates on February 22, from going into effect, by adopting Gov. Glenn Youngkin‘s proposed budget item 390(R)(2).

“Cutting sentences for violent crime, especially in cases identified as a high risk for recidivism, is having a detrimental impact on public safety throughout Virginia,” Miyares wrote in the letter. “Aggressive sentence reductions for violent criminals and those with high risk for recidivism disregards past and future victims. Allowing such a practice is not justice, and it’s not safe.” Continue reading →

7 Comments

Posted in Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, General Assembly

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Common Sense from Young Delegate Earley

Posted on February 28, 2024 | 28 comments

Del. Mark Earley Jr.

by Gordon C. Morse

Occasionally, a member of the House of Delegates will stand up, speak to a matter of public interest and do so coherently. 

Del. Mark L. Earley Jr., R-Chesterfield, achieved this feat on Friday afternoon, Feb. 23, 2024, when he offered his thoughts on state Sen. Bill 212 — legislation that would sanction skill games, described by the Richmond Times-Dispatch as “electronic slot machine-like devices the General Assembly tried to ban in 2020.” 

While the measure cleared the House of Delegates on a 57-38 vote, Del. Earley spoke to a broader concern:  

Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen of the House, I don’t want to take a lot of your time today. I know it’s Friday. But I just feel compelled to comment on this briefly. 

As we all know, in the last few years, really about a five-year time frame, we’ve have had a serious expansion, in a very short amount of time, in gaming and gambling here in Virginia. At this point, we got the lottery, we got casinos, we got sports betting, we got all sorts of things.

And now we have these gray games, skill games, whatever you want to call them, that have really sort of come here imposed upon us in a certain way, and now we’re dealing with it. 

Now,  don’t get me wrong, I certainly understand the arguments about how small business can potentially benefit from this, and I appreciate that. I am very sympathetic to it. 

But I do think that we have a different obligation, and perhaps a higher obligation, to consider what this means for our neighborhoods and our families. 

I’m concerned about turning every neighborhood store and every gas station into a mini casino.  Continue reading →

28 Comments

Posted in Gambling, General Assembly

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Virginia Budget Amendment Could Lead to Lawsuits Seeking Many Inmates’ Release

Posted on February 26, 2024 | 25 comments

from Liberty Unyielding

On February 22, Virginia’s progressive House of Delegates removed language from the state’s proposed budget that limited early releases of inmates who committed both violent and non-violent offenses. It removed that language in a 53-to-44 vote, then passed the House’s version of the state budget by a 75-to-24 vote.

If the final state budget also lacks this language, it will be argued that the affected inmates are entitled to be released earlier, including at least 500 of them this year, and thousands more in the years to come. In 2023, the Virginia Mercury reported that 8,000 offenders in Virginia prisons are there for a combination of violent and non-violent offenses, and thus would be affected by this sort of provision.

This provision would allow the affected inmates to benefit from a 2020 law passed by Democrats that released many non-violent inmates earlier by dramatically expanding time off inmates’ sentences for avoiding major prison infractions and participating in prison programs. This time off is known as “earned sentence credits.” Affected inmates who previously received 4.5 days off their sentence for every 30 days they largely complied with prison rules instead got 15 days off . Effectively, this shrank their period of incarceration by nearly a quarter from what they otherwise would have served. Prisons have been emptied as a result: Virginia recently announced plans to close four state prisons in 2024.

Continue reading →

25 Comments

Posted in Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, General Assembly, Government Finance

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What Is It with Democrats and Criminals?

Posted on February 23, 2024 | 59 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Elections have consequences.

And when Virginia voted last November to give Democrats a slim majority in the General Assembly they also voted to give almost 8,000 violent criminals a shot at getting back on the streets.

This ill-conceived measure – SB427 – is the evil brainchild of Sen. Creigh Deeds, who believes that juries and judges should be second-guessed once an inmate has served at least 25 years of his – it’s almost always a male – sentence.

News flash: any inmate who’s served that many years in prison is a bad dude. A murderer, a rapist or some other sort of vile reptile. These are not petty criminals or marijuana users.

(Deeds’ initial bill wanted to spring felons after 15 years behind bars, but he amended it.) Continue reading →

59 Comments

Posted in Courts and law, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, General Assembly, Virginia Law

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The Grim Reapers of Virginia’s General Assembly

Posted on February 21, 2024 | 67 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

When she was hospitalized in September 1998, my brother and I had a somber discussion with her physician. We asked how long our mother – who was clearly failing – would live.

“How long is a piece of string?” the doctor shrugged.

She died four days later.

I’ve been thinking about my mother, her suffering and her last years spent under a death sentence since I learned that Virginia Democrats are again pushing an assisted suicide law. Unlike earlier bills that died in committee, this one, introduced by Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, cleared the Senate’s health subcommittee, a first step toward becoming law.

This measure – SB280 – would allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication to patients who are determined to be terminally ill with less than six months to live.

As if that’s an exact science. Continue reading →

67 Comments

Posted in Ethics, General Assembly, Virginia Law

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Partisan Poison: Va Dems Quash a Bill to Protect School Kids

Posted on February 20, 2024 | 10 comments

Del. A.C. Cordoza

by Kerry Dougherty 

How exactly is Virginia’s General Assembly celebrating Black History Month?

By killing a bill to protect children in public school lavatories, introduced by Del. A.C. Cordoza of Hampton.

Cordoza is an African-American. And a Republican. He was famously denied membership in the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus when he was elected in 2022.

Sadly, to the caucus, he’s not the right kind of Black man. Because his views are on the right.

Cordoza claims his bill that would require school personnel to check bathrooms every 30 minutes would not require added personnel nor would it cost taxpayers a dime.

It was tabled, he told the Virginia Mercury, because he’s a Republican.

While the proposed legislation was not expected to impact state spending, Cordoza said his bill was still forwarded from the House Education Committee to the House Appropriations Committee for review. It died in that committee without a hearing.

“It’s sent there to die,” said Cordoza, “to die quietly because they don’t want the world to know that they’re killing a bill to protect little girls in the bathroom, but they want to make sure that a Black Republican is not the one who does it.” said Del. A.C. Cordoza, R-Hampton.

It’s actually a practical suggestion, given that there have been a number of assaults in several school bathrooms, and perhaps some that have not been reported. Having an adult stick his or her head in the lavatory every 30 minutes would certainly discourage bullies and sex offenders. Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Politics

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Progressive Legislators Declare “Profound Solidarity” with Criminals

Posted on February 19, 2024 | 30 comments

from the Liberty Unyielding blog

Killings and violence have risen in the U.S. over the last decade, as some government officials have come to sympathize more with criminals than their victims. The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus recently said it is “in profound solidarity” with Virginia’s prison population, and that its members “work to dismantle the unjust criminal system.” They said the criminal-justice system has the “role of dehumanizing, abusing and punishing Black America.”

Thirty-two of Virginia’s 140 state legislators belong to the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, including the speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates, Don Scott; the president pro tempore of the state Senate, Louise Lucas; the head of the House Appropriations Committee; and the head of the Senate Rules Committee.

On February 14, the VLBC issued a statement that began:

The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus (VLBC) remains in profound solidarity with the 122,500 Virginians who are actively trapped in our state’s criminal justice system, nearly half of whom are Black. When slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment, it was qualified with “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” With that, mass incarceration was born and the criminal justice system absorbed the role of dehumanizing, abusing and punishing Black America. Continue reading →

30 Comments

Posted in Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, General Assembly

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We’re Doctors. Implicit Bias Training Has No Place in Medicine.

Posted on February 19, 2024 | 28 comments

by Martin Caplan, MD, and Kenneth Lipstock, MD

Apparently, Virginia’s doctors and nurses are racist.

This is the message of two bills that are moving through the state legislature. The bills would force medical professionals to take ongoing “implicit bias training” to get and keep their license. The problem is that such training is insulting, dangerous, and scientifically indefensible. It’s grounded in the false idea that people mistreat and even oppress others, especially those of a different race.

It’s a popular narrative, but there is no sound evidence to support it. What is clear is that if our lawmakers pass these bills, they’ll encourage racial division and tribalism, while undermining the medical profession and hurting patients who need our help. Continue reading →

28 Comments

Posted in DEI, Education (higher ed), Health Care, Race and Race Relations, Virginia Law

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Judge Uses Crude Statistics to Find Racial Profiling by Richmond Police

Posted on February 16, 2024 | 34 comments

by Hans Bader

A judge recently found that the City of Richmond racially profiles black motorists, dismissing the indictment of a black convicted felon accused of illegally possessing a gun. The judge did not find that defendant Keith Moore had been treated differently than a similarly situated white motorist. Instead, he ruled that Richmond police stops are racially discriminatory, based on statistics showing blacks are stopped and arrested at much higher rates than whites; and based on Richmond’s past “history of discrimination,” such as racialized zoning and redlining, and the “Confederate foundations” of the Richmond Police Department. “The Court will not require Moore to provide evidence of similarly situated individuals to prove his selective enforcement claim,” wrote the judge.

This is likely to create big problems for the City of Richmond, potentially leading to many criminals being released from jail. If a judge claims racial discrimination happened, he should identify what policies are racially discriminatory, or give concrete examples of discrimination, so that the problem can be fixed.  But Judge Gibney failed to do that in his February 12 ruling in United States v. Keith Rodney Moore. So now the City is deemed guilty of discrimination, based on things no individual police officer can change (such as city-wide statistics), and things that literally no one can change (such as  the confederate origins of the police department and Richmond’s segregated past). If other judges follow this flawed ruling, other criminals can also have their indictments dismissed based on city-wide statistics, even if it is undisputed that they committed the crime for which they were arrested.

Although the judge cited statistical disparities, he did not cite any specific police practices that led to blacks being stopped at higher rates, as he should have done if police were actually at fault. In Smith v. City of Jackson (2005), the Supreme Court ruled that even unintentional discrimination (disparate-impact) cannot be proved through statistics unless “specific” practices are identified that caused the “statistical disparities.” The disparities themselves are not enough. Continue reading →

34 Comments

Posted in Courts and law, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement

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Nasty Social Media Message Attacks Virginia’s Speaker of the House

Posted on February 16, 2024 | 31 comments

Speaker Don Scott

by Kerry Dougherty

Great. Just what embattled Virginia Republicans need now: an ugly social media post attacking the new speaker of the House of Delegates over a crime he committed and did time for almost 30 years ago.

It’s no secret that Portsmouth Democrat Don Scott was convicted on drug charges in 1994 and served seven years in prison for his crime. He was released, turned his life around, became a lawyer, a member of the House of Delegates and was elected speaker this year.

The Washington Post sums up Scott’s biography this way:

Scott was convicted of carrying drug-related money across state lines just as he finished law school in Louisiana. Years after his release, Scott had his Virginia voting rights restored by then-governor Robert McDonnell (R), got his law license and has risen rapidly through the ranks at the General Assembly to become the first Black speaker in state history.

Oh, and when his friend and neighbor, Portsmouth Circuit Court Judge Johnny Morrison, needed a kidney, Scott donated his.

That’s an extraordinary act of generosity.

Look, I don’t agree with Scott’s politics and I think that most of the initiatives Virginia Democrats are pushing are radical and bad for the commonwealth. The party’s soft-on-crime positions are long-standing and detrimental to public safety.

But that has nothing to do with Scott’s past. Continue reading →

31 Comments

Posted in General Assembly, Politics

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Dartmouth Reinstated the SAT. Will Virginia Universities Follow Suit?

Posted on February 16, 2024 | 13 comments

by Nancy Almasi

Dartmouth College is making news regarding its return to using the SAT/ACT scores once again as a part of its admissions process. The policy will become effective in 2025 for the incoming class of 2029.

Many colleges and universities decided to make the SAT/ACT test optional during the COVID-19 pandemic when health protocols made taking these tests more difficult for students. This came on the heels of many years of pressure from those who believe that SAT and ACT tests are biased towards those who are wealthy and/or white, arguing that those who can afford SAT prep classes, tutoring, and books have an unfair advantage.

Dartmouth’s policy reversal came as the result of a faculty study prepared by three economists and one sociologist. The professors compared the admissions data from the years when the standardized tests were optional with the data when the tests were required. They concluded that the scores were helpful in finding well-rounded, academically prepared students from diverse backgrounds.

Dartmouth President Sian Leah Birlock wrote the following in her email to the Dartmouth campus about the policy change.

SAT and ACT scores reflect inequality in society and in educational systems across the nation. The research does not dispute that. Crucially, though, the research shows that standardized test scores can be an important predictor of academic success at a place like Dartmouth and beyond—more so even than just grades or recommendations, for example—and with a test-optional policy, prompted by the pandemic, we were unintentionally overlooking applicants from less-resourced backgrounds who could thrive here.

Continue reading →

13 Comments

Posted in Education (higher ed)

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Moving the Goalposts (for Banning Books)

Posted on February 15, 2024 | 22 comments

by Joe Fitzgerald

Everybody probably already knew what moving the goalposts meant, but with Taylor bringing in a new set of football fans, the sports-related metaphors can probably be used more widely.

Moving the goalposts is of course a reference to changing the standards in the middle of a process. Latest example: the Rockingham County School Board’s half-assed approach to banning books.

We all know the things wrong with their approach. Some of the books aren’t in the library; they haven’t read them; they can’t substantiate their claims of parental complaints; they’ve over-ruled a policy they didn’t know existed; and they’ve interfered in an educational process in which they have no training.

Two writers in The Harrisonburg Citizen have recently suggested that there are two sides to the issue or that the problem is not the book-banning but the way it’s being discussed. Giving the Fahrenheit 451 crowd this benefit of the doubt moves the goalposts toward censorship and religious domination of public discussion. There’s a reason the First Amendment is the first one, and there’s a reason its first clause says the nation won’t give special respect to an establishment of religion. Continue reading →

22 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (K-12), Uncategorized

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Swallow the Money, Part 3 of 3

Posted on February 14, 2024 | 21 comments

by Joe Fitzgerald

VPAP and CFReports let you go from “How about that?” to “Oh, my God!” in 5.2 seconds. They’re attractive to the kind of nerds who used to go through the encyclopedia or the World Almanac. Yes, I did. Why do you ask?

One local PAC became a subject for a dive into CFReports and VPAP when someone asked if it was true they paid for health insurance for one of their principals. The answer is that with Virginia’s campaign finance reporting rules, it’s hard to say.

VPAP and CFReports are explained in Part 1 of this series. A PAC, as explained there, is a political action committee. It raises money from political donors and spends it on political candidates or causes.

That cause for Rural Ground Game, RGG, is electing rural Democrats. The perceived need for the PAC is the myth that the Democratic Party ignores rural areas and therefore doesn’t win rural elections. The actual case is that Democrats don’t win rural elections because rural voters vote overwhelmingly Republican, but the myth is popular among those who run better against their fellow Democrats than against Republicans. Continue reading →

21 Comments

Posted in Campaign finance reform, Elections, Electoral process, Politics, Virginia Law

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