Tag Archives: Kerry Dougherty

AG Miyares and Safe Schools

Posted on January 19, 2022 by | 17 comments

Jason Miyares. Photo credit: Washington Post

by Kerry Dougherty

On Day One in office, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced that his office would be investigating Loudoun County schools. He’s vowed to learn exactly how an accused sex offender who allegedly attacked one girl in May 2021 at Stone Bridge High was quietly moved to another Loudoun County school, Broad Run High School, where he was able to attack a second girl in the fall.

The public has an absolute right to know how this happened and who covered up the sex crimes.

When Miyares finishes with Loudoun County he should turn his attention to another school district: Newport News.

In September of 2021 a 15-year-old student at Heritage High School brought a gun to school and opened fire on two Newport News classmates. A 17-year-old boy was shot in the head and hand, a 17-year-old girl was shot in the leg. Continue reading →

17 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Education (K-12)

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School Board Bullies

Posted on January 18, 2022 by | 25 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

You’re guilty. I’m guilty. We’re all guilty.

Admit it. At election time most of us know exactly who’s running for president, congress, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, commonwealth’s attorney, treasurer, sheriff and city council.

We study bond issues and constitutional amendments.

We know how we’re going to cast our votes before we enter the polling place.

But by the time we get to “school board” on the ballot we often suffer from ballot boredom. We either don’t vote for those offices or just shrug and cast our votes for familiar names.

Never again. Continue reading →

25 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (K-12)

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Virginia Becomes a Free State

Posted on January 17, 2022 by | 29 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Blue skies, sunshine and crisp temperatures greeted Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s first day in office Saturday in Richmond.

Within hours, he signaled his respect for the Virginia Constitution, which protects the rights of parents to decide what’s best for their own children by reversing Ralph Northam’s mask mandate for all school students.

Youngkin also scrapped Virginia’s vaccine mandate for all state workers, while urging everyone to take the vaccines.

Day One promises had been made and were kept.

With that, Virginia joined the other free states, where citizens are treated as adults and don’t have to live in perpetual dread of their governor’s next dictatorial whim. Continue reading →

29 Comments

Posted in Individual liberties

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No More “Medical Bandwagon Thinking” for Virginia

Posted on January 13, 2022 by | 41 comments

Dr. Marty Makary

by Kerry Dougherty

For the past several weeks, Glenn Youngkin has been busy appointing top members of his administration.

One of the most exciting announcements came this week when we learned that Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon and public policy researcher with a dazzling resume at Johns Hopkins University, agreed to chair Youngkin’s COVID advisory team.

In other words, he’ll be Youngkin’s Fauci. Only Makary appears to be a lot smarter than Fauci and is unafraid to question the groupthink that forms many of America’s ineffective COVID policies.

Makary’s written two best-selling books and more than 250 articles on public health for publications that include The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. He’s also a frequent contributor to Fox News, the only cable network that seems to allow dissenting views about Washington’s response to COVID-19 and Biden administration edicts. Continue reading →

41 Comments

Posted in Public safety & health

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Northam Solves Mystery of the Man in Blackface

Posted on January 12, 2022 by | 14 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Let’s just call it a missed opportunity.

Yesterday, with just three days remaining in his term as governor, Ralph Northam unveiled the official portrait of himself.

Surely some practical joker behind the scenes was tempted to replace the commissioned painting with that well-known portrait of Northam in blackface standing beside a friend or date in a Klan hood.

Imagine the gasps when the assembled crowd might have seen an enlargement of the notorious black and white snapshot instead of the painting that truly is destined to hang somewhere in the Capitol beside images of Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson.

Alas, no pranksters on the scene, so it appears that everyone politely applauded at the likeness painted by Stanley Rayfield, a gifted 34-year-old Virginia portrait artist. His painting features a tieless Northam beside two newspapers with the headlines “Virginia Repeals Death Penalty” and “The Country’s Biggest Remaining Confederate Statue Comes Down in Virginia.” On the bookshelf behind the governor is a photo of Pam Northam and a leather-bound book titled, “Covid-19 Pandemic Response.” Continue reading →

14 Comments

Posted in Scandals

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Northam’s Final Presser: No Remorse

Posted on January 11, 2022 by | 9 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

For the first time since the pandemic began, a news bulletin that Gov. Ralph Northam was holding a press conference yesterday didn’t fill me with dread.

Four days left in his term. How much damage could he do?

In the past we never knew which civil liberties would be thrown into the wood chipper by the governor who never admits he’s wrong.

Any time infections rose, we knew with certainty that Northam would flail about, instituting new rules that would have absolutely no impact on the trajectory of the virus.

Cases rose, and cases fell. It mattered little if Virginians were sitting on beaches, staying out past midnight or wearing state-mandated face diapers. Continue reading →

9 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

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Northam Apologize? LOL

Posted on January 6, 2022 by | 80 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

You would expect that Governor Ralph Northam, in the final two weeks of his governorship, would engage in a little self-reflection, maybe even a bit of humility and admit that he and his “team” made colossal mistakes on Monday that left hundreds of travelers stranded on a frozen 50-mile stretch of highway for more than a day.

Shoot, a normal person might even — dare I say it — apologize for the endangerment of so many people.

Ha.

If there’s one thing all Virginians know about Northam by now it’s that this guy is incapable of admitting he was wrong and he never apologizes. Continue reading →

80 Comments

Posted in Disasters and disaster preparedness

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Northam’s Frozen Failure

Posted on January 5, 2022 by | 86 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Let’s face it. Lots of us are cranky as we start the New Year.

Thousands — shoot, probably hundreds of thousands — of air travelers were stranded around the country this week after flights were cancelled because of weather or staffing shortages.

Including me.

As our taxi approached the New Orleans airport Monday morning my phone beeped. There it was: A text saying my flight to Norfolk was cancelled. Snow and ice at BWI.

Saw that one coming. I’d been watching the Baltimore weather the night before with growing alarm. Continue reading →

86 Comments

Posted in Disasters and disaster preparedness

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It’s New Year’s Eve. What, Me Worry?

Posted on December 31, 2021 by | 3 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

When I was a kid, my mother said I worried too much.

“Consider the lilies of the field,” she’d say, taking a drag on a Pall Mall before paraphrasing Scripture. “They neither toil nor spin, yet the Bible says God gives them beautiful blossoms.”

“So cut it out, and just relax,” she’d say, as she stubbed out a cigarette and began to gnaw on her cuticles.

Anxiety came naturally to me. It was in my DNA. Like my parents, I worried about everything. I stayed awake at night fretting about communism, nuclear war and what I could do to make the popular girls like me.

I still worry. About big things and small ones. Instead of communism I worry about socialism, AOC-style. I also worry about my kids. My granddaughter. And whether my Welsh Terrier will ever stop biting us. Continue reading →

3 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

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Bear With Us. It’s a Slow News Day.

Posted on December 29, 2021 by | 2 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Just what we need right now.

As the national and local news turned once again to COVID, COVID and more COVID, a mama black bear and her three cubs provided Tidewater with a brief but delicious distraction.

The furry family was first discovered on Monday, napping high in a tree in the Western Branch section of Chesapeake.

The appearance — and the fact that it occurred on Bruin Drive — was a gift to journalism. There is nothing news outlets crave more during the dead week between Christmas and New Years than a human interest story with a happy ending. Cuddly animals? A bonus.

The media was so hungry for a non-COVID feature that the quartet of suburban interlopers made the national news. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in Media

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Mask Mandates Causing Air Warfare

Posted on December 27, 2021 by | 79 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Almost two weeks ago the CEO of Southwest Airlines, Gary Kelly, told a congressional committee that face masks were essentially useless as protection for airline passengers. He supported a repeal of the executive order that made face coverings mandatory on flights until March 2022.

“The statistics, I recall, is that 99.97 % of airborne pathogens are captured by the (high efficiency particulate air) filtering system. It’s turned over every two or three minutes,” Kelly testified.

Kelly added that masks “don’t add much, if anything, in the air cabin.”

The CEO of American Airlines agreed, claiming that “an aircraft is the safest place you can be.”

The media was quick to point out, with undisguised glee, that Kelly tested positive for Covid shortly after testifying. Frankly, I don’t see the connection between Kelly’s likely head cold and the need for masks on planes. There’s no evidence that he caught Covid as a result of flying bare-faced. Continue reading →

79 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

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Del. Jay Jones Quits Before He Starts

Posted on December 17, 2021 by | 18 comments

Sorry, Delegate, I don’t buy it.

I’m delighted that you and your wife are expecting your first baby. And your determination to be a good dad is admirable. Every child should be so lucky.

But you’re quitting your job because a child is on the way? You’re gone in two weeks? You’re not even going to finish your current term, let alone begin your next one?

Huh?

None of this makes sense. Continue reading →

18 Comments

Posted in Elections, Politics

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Lame Duck Northam Tries to Piggyback on Youngkin’s Success

Posted on December 16, 2021 by | 44 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Is this guy for real?

Does Lame Duck Ralph Northam honestly believe that by Tweeting about the odious grocery tax with just 32 days left in his term he can somehow claim this populist issue for his own?

Virginians can be thick sometimes — heck, they voted for Northam in 2017 — but they aren’t stupid.

Northam had four years to scrap the regressive grocery tax that squeezes the poor more than the rich. Four years to convince his fellow Democrats to do away with a tax on every loaf of bread sold in the commonwealth. Four years to offer relief to every family in Virginia.

But Northam’s pals in Richmond were too busy springing murderers from prison and passing silly bills about balloon releases to care about the tax on food. Continue reading →

44 Comments

Posted in Taxes, Uncategorized

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Countdown to Freedom: 32 Days

Posted on December 14, 2021 by | 12 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Oh look.

California’s dopey governor is following New York’s crazy executive. They’re both re-instituting what didn’t work the last time that COVID cases began to rise: Sweeping mask mandates and more restrictions.

There, but for the wisdom of the electorate, goes Virginia.

Oh, I suppose lame duck Ralph Northam — in an explosive display of tyrannical behavior — could impose another mask mandate on the commonwealth or tell us to be home by midnight as he did last Christmas. He could close bars again, order us not to have more than five people in our homes over the holidays and close schools.

But even the Governor knows none of those measures made a bit of difference last time and they’d be wildly unpopular today.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin will be inaugurated on January 15th and Virginians will be safe from any more sudden and erratic mandates from Richmond. Continue reading →

12 Comments

Posted in Public safety & health

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Tornadoes: December Devastation

Posted on December 13, 2021 by | 19 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

It’s the drone footage that gets you.

Those silent video clips showing mile after mile of unimaginable devastation. Flattened homes and factories, overturned railroad cars and trucks, trees reduced to toothpicks and debris fields full of the colorful remnants of ordinary peoples’ lives.

And wandering through the Armageddon are people, eyes down, slowly searching. Are they looking for loved ones, mementoes or pets? Impossible to know from the drone’s eye view. Continue reading →

19 Comments

Posted in Disasters and disaster preparedness

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