Patricia West
by Kerry Dougherty
When Terry McAuliffe was governor he found a loyal Democrat lawyer to appoint to head Virginia’s parole board.
That was Adrianne Bennett, a failed candidate for the House of Delegates in 2011 and undoubtedly the most controversial parole board chair in Virginia history. She was a success if you believe, as McAuliffe apparently did, that the job of that board is to spring murderers and make Virginians less safe. Continue reading
by James C. Sherlock
Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch
Being a law enforcement officer is tough under the best of circumstances.
Do you think that exposure to losing your house and car in a civil suit for something you did in a split second to protect the public and yourself and did not have reason to know was against the law would deter you from a job in law enforcement?
Truth is, it would deter all of us.
Virginia Democrats in 2021 introduced legislation to eliminate under Virginia law a peace officer’s ability to offer an immunity defense in state courts against civil lawsuits for actions that violate constitutional rights:
A. Any law-enforcement officer, as defined in § 9.1-101, who, under color of law, subjects or causes to be subjected, including failing to intervene, any other person to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities granted to such person under the constitutions and laws of the United States and the Commonwealth, shall be liable to the injured party for compensatory damages, punitive damages, and equitable relief….
B. Sovereign immunity and any limitations on liability or damages shall not apply to claims brought pursuant to this section. Qualified immunity is not a defense to liability imposed by this section.
A 2017 per curiam (unanimous) opinion by the Supreme Court reiterated a long-existing legal standard that qualified immunity is an available defense for law enforcement officers unless there is “clearly established law giving each individual Officer fair notice that his particular conduct was unlawful.”
It is hard to imagine that the Supreme Court, unanimous there, would permit a state law that denied civil immunity without fair notice of the illegality of specific acts.
Regardless, under the 2021 Democratic bill in Virginia, officers were to be in jeopardy in civil suits whether or not they had fair notice that their actions, split-second or otherwise, were unlawful. They were specifically to be required to judge the constitutionality of specific actions.
With a gun in their face.
It draws a very clear line for political debate. Continue reading
by James C. Sherlock
I know. Schools. Again.
But Virginia’s schools have been shown to be getting worse faster than those of other states.
Perhaps we should do something.
Read the National Assessment Board’s press release from June 21st. One paragraph drew my attention:
The LTT assessments in reading and math measure fundamental skills among nationally representative, age-based cohorts and have been administered since 1971 and 1973, respectively.
Students were generally making progress until 2012, when scores started declining.
Scores took a sharp downturn during the pandemic. Today, the average score for 13-year-olds on the LTT reading assessment is about where it was in 1971.
Despite the large decline in math, the average score in 2023 remains higher than in 1973.
Declining since 2012 nationwide.
Virginia’s have been declining since 2017. In a hurry.
by The Republican Standard staff
The Virginia General Assembly passed several small bills due to the split between the Republican-led House of Delegates and the Democratic-controlled Virginia State Senate. Yet the areas where they did find co-operation could matter to many Virginians as we head into Fourth of July weekend.
Enhanced Penalties for Fentanyl Manufacturing or Distribution
Reeves SB1188 Senate 35-5 House 50-42
Provides that any person who knowingly and intentionally manufactures or knowingly and intentionally distributes a weapon of terrorism when such person knows that such weapon of terrorism is, or contains, any mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of fentanyl is guilty of a Class 4 felony.
Universal Occupational License Recognition
McDougle SB1213 Senate 40-0 House 99-0
Establishes criteria for an individual licensed, certified, or having work experience in another state to apply to a regulatory board within the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation and be issued an occupational license or government certification if certain conditions are met.
Police Chiefs May Enact Local Curfews during Disturbances
Norment SB1455 Senate 27-12 House 53-45
Enables the chief law-enforcement officer of a locality to enact a curfew under certain circumstances during a civil disturbance.
Making Sure Every District has a Legislator
Suetterlein SB944 Senate 39-0 House 99-0
Requires special elections to fill a vacancy in the membership of the General Assembly be held within 30 days of the vacancy if the vacancy occurs or will occur between December 10 and March 10 which coincides with time right before and during the General Assembly session. Continue reading
by James C. Sherlock
Effective May 1 of this year, Karen Shelton M.D. became Virginia’s Health Commissioner. Dr. Shelton is now the licensor and regulator of Virginia’s nursing homes.
By law, state-licensed nursing homes must comply with federal and state laws and standards. By regulation, the Health Commissioner “may impose such administrative sanctions or take such actions as are appropriate for violation of any of the standards or statutes or for abuse or neglect of persons in care.”
It is time.
I hope that she will pose a challenge to her Office of Licensure and Certification (OLC), of which I am a public admirer, that goes something like this.
Too many Virginia nursing homes are measured objectively by CMS (the Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services) to be dangerous to the health and welfare of their patients through a combination of:
- inspections that we ourselves conduct;
- staffing measures linked to payroll data; and
- medical quality measures from federal records.
Many have been that way for a very long time.
Current staffing far below CMS requirements seems to indicate that too many have no apparent path to improvement.
Come and see me in a couple of weeks with a list of the absolute worst of them.
And tell me why I should not shut them down to let the rest know that there are minimum standards beneath which they will not be permitted to operate in Virginia.
And one more thing.
Please let me know if there are organizations or individuals, current or recent, whose facilities have appeared regularly enough with the lowest staffing rating to indicate that understaffing may constitute a business model rather than a local exigency.
That too will not be tolerated.
We will take on those challenges here as if they are our own.
This article will identify the absolute worst of the facilities, using government records. The next will look at understaffing trends among owners. Continue reading
by James C. Sherlock
One of the most important and heart-wrenching decisions families make for their elderly loved ones is whether they are able to keep them in their homes as they get older and sicker.
Sometimes that is not feasible for a long list of reasons in each case.
More than 30,000 Virginians live in nursing homes.
Both the federal government and Virginia regulate them. The Virginia Department of Health, for both the Commonwealth and the federal government, inspects.
We should be able to expect patients to receive at least basic standards of care. A high percentage in Virginia have not .
In a five-star system, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rates 98 of Virginia’s 289 nursing homes at one star – defined as much below average. More than a third.
Nationwide, only the worst 20 percent receive a one-star rating.
The last time I reported, in October of 2021, those figures were 54 one-star facilities out of 288. Nineteen percent. So some of our nursing homes have gotten precipitously worse.
The ratings are backward-looking a couple of years, so the measured declines discussed here did not start recently. By definition of the way that Medicare compiles records and assigns scores, some have been bad for a long time.
People have suffered and died from the lack of proper care and effective oversight. Continue reading
USA Women’s National Team 2019
by James C. Sherlock
Abigail Spanberger, (D) Va. – Voted against protections for girls and women in sports
Every Virginia Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives voted against a bill to amend Title IX to prohibit biological boys and men from competing against biological girls and women in K-12 and college sports.
Voting nay: Donald Beyer, Gerald Connolly, Jennifer McClellan, Bobby Scott, Abigail Spanberger and Jennifer Wexton.
H.R. 734 Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023 amends Title IX (“on the basis of sex”) by stating that the term “sex” in athletics shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.
Jennifer McClellan (D) Va. – Voted against protections for girls and women in sports
The consequences of a no vote. H.R. 734 protects the dreams and hard work of girls who wish to play college sports.
The ones who got up early and stayed late training for their sport. The ones whose parents ferried them to practice and games on weekends.
It protects girls and young women in contact sports such as soccer and field hockey from inevitable injury from bigger, stronger, faster men.
Indeed, it protects their ability to participate.
It prevents the biological male who never won a medal from deciding — no hormones or surgery required — he is female to mount the platform and be awarded the gold. To break records set by girls and women.
To get rich with the new NIL rule in college sports and richer yet in women’s professional sports.
Everyone who thinks that won’t happen, raise your hand. Continue reading
by James C. Sherlock
This is addressed directly to Virginia public school principals.
You are compliant with current Virginia law whether you report assault and battery to police or do not.
Bad law makes for bad policy.
Depending upon your school division, your requirements may vary. A lot.
In gambling, and this issue is a big gamble for you, if you don’t know who the mark is, it is you.
The current law on reporting of assault and battery to police reflects a poorly conceived and poorly written attempt by Virginia Democrats in 2020 to break what they called the “school-to-prison pipeline.” They made reporting to police conditional upon on-scene medical and legal findings – by you.
The Board of Education has done nothing to improve the matter. School divisions are all over the spectrum on what to do about reporting. You cannot carry out either the law or many of the school division policies without personal jeopardy. Continue reading
by Robin Beres
The United States has not always been a bastion of religious freedom. When Virginia became an English colony in 1607, the English considered religious differences just as treasonous as political differences. Sure, Elizabeth I had reinstalled the Church of England following Queen Mary’s tumultuous reign, but the possibility of another Catholic on the throne remained a threat for decades.
As a result, English rulers decreed the Church of England to be the only official church in Virginia. For nearly two hundred years, there was no religious freedom in the colony. Even other Protestant denominations, such as Presbyterians and Baptists, were persecuted.
It wasn’t until 1786 that the Virginia General Assembly enacted Bill No. 82, “A Bill for establishing religious freedom.” Written by Thomas Jefferson and guided through the Virginia legislature by James Madison, the bill, eventually known as the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, was strongly backed by leaders of other religious factions.
The bill stipulated that no government had the legitimate authority to establish or compel anyone to hold certain religious beliefs. Jefferson firmly believed that if this newly-born nation was to survive, all men must be given the freedom to determine their own beliefs.
The bill was the first attempt to get religion out of government and government out of religion. Eventually the act became the basis of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment declaration that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” The bill also confirmed Virginia as the birthplace of America’s religious freedom.
Little wonder then why many Virginians were stunned and concerned to learn of a January memo issued by an analyst with the Richmond FBI’s field office. The memo seemed to determine there were white supremacists masquerading as Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass. The author of the “analysis” seems to have even created a name for this newly-discovered group: “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” or RTCs. Continue reading
Posted in Civil Rights, Culture wars, Federal, Freedom, General Assembly, Individual liberties, Law enforcement, Virginia history
Tagged Robin Beres
by James C. Sherlock
Crime, especially violent crime, is a constant topic in private conversations and in public politics, and thus here on Bacon’s Rebellion.
Comments on BR crime-related articles turn quickly to race, often without basis in fact.
I will offer below the actual crime statistics by race from 2021, the latest available year, in an attempt to cure that.
Then I will write about the causes.
I will almost certainly be called a racist. Continue reading
Posted in Budgets, Children and families, Civil Rights, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (K-12), Efficiency in government, General Assembly, Governance, Government Oversight, Health Care, Housing, Land use & development, Law enforcement, Mental illness and substance abuse, Parental Rights, Politics, Public corruption, Public safety & health, Race and race relations
Tagged James Sherlock
by Jon Baliles
Well, it seems Mayor Levar Stoney has finally picked up on a problem on Richmond’s streets that many of us have known about for three-plus years. If you live downtown, or in the Fan, Oregon Hill, Jackson Ward, the Museum District, Randolph, Scott’s Addition, Byrd Park, Malvern Gardens, parts of Northside, Monroe Ward, or several other neighborhoods, the sound of jet-like roaring from annoying packs of motorcycles has permeated the air at night (usually on weekends) in a way that would wake Rip Van Winkle with ease.
And for three-plus years, nothing has been done. I have talked to those in public safety who have been told for years that these insanely loud gatherings of cyclists, noisemakers, and idiots — whatever you want to call them — are off limits for stopping or arresting, even if they gather by the dozens (even during the day) and violate the city’s un-enforced noise ordinance or dozens of traffic laws in and around Bryan Park, Byrd Park, or on Broad Street.
But this past Thursday afternoon, several noisy riders caught the mayor’s attention in Shockoe Bottom. He not only called the police chief to track them with an airplane, but he also later made sure that all the local media outlets (all three TV stations and the Times-Dispatch) knew about it. The result was three young men from the Tri-Cities area were arrested (ages 19, 18, 17), one stolen gun was recovered, and one teen escaped.
Continue reading
by Jon Baliles
Public safety is one of every locality’s largest and most important responsibilities. If the sidewalks, streets, and neighborhoods are not safe, people go to places where they are. Walkers, joggers, businesses, customers, and everyone else won’t go to places where they feel their safety in in jeopardy.
At the same time, that responsibility of providing that level of safety of the people enforcing the law comes with the burden of being better than the people that are breaking the law and/or causing trouble. It is a two-way street. If you don’t have people enforcing the law, you will always have people breaking it, and then society and streets and neighborhoods break down, and chaos and despair follow. That’s a fact, even though some choose not to acknowledge it.
What is disturbing is what happened on a downtown street last summer when a 911 call led to an encounter with two Richmond Police officers responding to the call and ended up in a takedown and arrest of a gentleman named Mr. Holley at the Maggie Walker Plaza on Adams Street.
You can read the article about this by Luca Powell in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that ran on January 31, but it turns out that was a less-than-complete (to be generous) accounting of the facts. After the article ran, the Commonwealth’s Attorney felt compelled to write a lengthy and detailed email to the newspaper “to correct the inaccuracies and incomplete information. Had you taken the time to contact me directly, I would have provided you with the following information that would have resulted in a more informed and balanced article.”
What should trouble residents of the City is that the story that was reported seems to have omitted more facts of the case than it included. Maybe that was on purpose, maybe it was just sloppy reporting and a lack of proper editing. But the fact that it drew rebukes from both the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office and then a lengthy statement from the Interim Police Chief, Rick Edwards, suggests to me that important parts of the story that were omitted in the newspaper can be relayed in a forum like this newsletter where accuracy and counterpoint do not give way to space for ads and revenue. Continue reading
Posted in Law enforcement, Leadership, Media
Tagged City of Richmond, Jan Baliles, police, Richmond Times-Dispatch
by Hans Bader
The Virginia Senate has voted 24 to 15 to approve SB 842, the so-called “second look” bill. If it becomes law, inmates who have been in prison for 15 years or more could ask to be released, or ask for a reduction in their sentences. Originally, the bill applied to inmates of all types, but it was amended in the Senate Finance Committee to exclude first-degree murderers. Inmates released under second look legislation tend to be murderers (such as second-degree and first-degree murderers), although Oregon’s second look law excludes a few “aggravated” murders.
In 2022, the Democratic-controlled Virginia Senate passed an earlier version of the second look bill by a 25 to 15 vote, but it then died in a subcommittee of the Republican-controlled House of Delegates. That earlier bill was broader than this year’s bill in one way (it did not exclude even first-degree murderers such as serial killers) but narrower in another respect (it required inmates to meet specified “behavioral standards” in prison be released, which is not true of SB 842).
This bill faces an uncertain future in the House of Delegates. On the one hand, the bill is supported by many well-funded progressive interest groups with multi-million-dollar budgets, such as the ACLU, and supporters of the bill have massively out-lobbied opponents of the bill. On the other hand, it is opposed by the Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys, which most House Republicans pay attention to. And most Republicans already oppose the bill. Continue reading
Posted in Law enforcement
Tagged Hans Bader, prison, SB 842, Second-Look, Virginia General Assembly
Joe Morrissey
by Jeanine Martin
Last weekend Senator Joe Morrissey (D-Richmond) was banned from two Henrico County jails when he brought his three young children to Regional Jail West and refused to supervise them. His ban lasts for 90 days.
Morrissey came to the jail to introduce one of his incarcerated constituents to an attorney who would represent him. He left his 3 young children in the lobby of the jail with crayons and paper on which to color. Sheriffs at the jail informed the senator that rules require all children in the jail be supervised by an adult. Continue reading
by James C. Sherlock
I believe a major approach to address both education and health care in Virginia’s inner cities is available if we will define it right and use it right.
Community schools.
One issue. Virginia’s official version of community schools, the Virginia Community School Framework, (the Framework) is fatally flawed.
The approach successful elsewhere brings government professional healthcare and social services and not-for-profit healthcare assets simultaneously to the schools and to the surrounding communities at a location centered around existing schools.
That model is a government and private not-for-profit services hub centered around schools in communities that need a lot of both. Lots of other goals fall into place and efficiencies are realized for both the community and the service providers if that is the approach.
That is not what Virginia has done in its 2019 Framework.
The rest of government and the not-for-profit sector are ignored and Virginia public schools are designed there to be increasingly responsible for things that they are not competent to do.
To see why, we only need to review the lists of persons who made up both the Advisory Committee and the Additional Contributors. Full of Ed.Ds and Ph.D’s in education, there was not a single person on either list with a job or career outside the field of education. Continue reading
Posted in Attendance, Charity and philanthropy, Children and families, Civil Rights, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Discipline and disorder, Education (K-12), Efficiency in government, Entitlements, General Assembly, Health Care, Infrastructure, Law enforcement, Mental illness and substance abuse, Not-for-profits, Political Influence, Poverty & income gap, practice of, Psychology, Psychology, Public safety & health, Social services, Threat Assessment
Tagged James Sherlock
