Tag Archives: Kerry Dougherty

Vaccine Passports: Let’s Pass

Posted on April 16, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 6 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Want a peek at what some of the more authoritarian types in the U.S. have planned for you?

Look no farther than St. Vincent, a lovely little archipelago in the Windward Islands.

At least it used to be a lovely little island. On April 9 the most dangerous volcano in the Caribbean exploded, leaving much of the island uninhabitable.

Water supplies have been cut, airspace is closed due to volcanic ash and there are reportedly rivers of lava and debris racing down the mountainsides.

The kind of place you’d want to leave – quickly – if you were one of the nation’s 110,589 inhabitants.

But get a load of this. On Saturday, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves made a startling announcement: Only those who could provide proof of a vaccination against Covid-19 could be evacuated to nearby islands. Cruise ships were standing by, ready to transport them. Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in Individual rights, Public safety & health

Tagged COVID-19, Kerry Dougherty

Johnson & Johnson Danger: Same As Getting Struck By Lightning

Posted on April 15, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 40 comments

A chart rarely shown in the mainstream media because it doesn’t gin up hysteria about the virus.

by Kerry Dougherty

Here’s a prediction: We’re going to see a drop-off in the number of people being vaccinated against COVID-19. Thanks to bungling and fear-mongering by government officials.

Currently 3.1 million Americans are getting the vaccines daily.

Analysts will try to blame and drop on the Johnson & Johnson blood-clot scare — more about that in a minute — but a bigger reason will be the relentless messages of gloom from the Prince of Darkness, Anthony Fauci.

First Fauci urged Americans to get vaccinated. Then he declared that vaccinated people should continue to wear masks, avoid crowds, they should not travel and they should stay away from indoor dining.

He “can’t predict” when life will get back to normal.

If that’s true, what’s the point in vaccinations? Either the shots work or they don’t. Continue reading →

40 Comments

Posted in Public safety & health

Tagged COVID-19, Kerry Dougherty

AP StyleBook Beclowns Itself. Again.

Posted on April 14, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 13 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

The AP Stylebook has long been the “bible” of American journalism. This guide attempts to standardize language and grammar in newspapers. It deals with everything from when to use “concrete” and when to use “cement” to the use of hyphens when describing Asian or African Americans. New rule: No hyphens.

In recent years it’s also become the bible of political correctness. For instance, the editors scold writers who cling to the term “illegal alien” to describe, well, illegal aliens. The AP prefers euphemisms such as, “migrants” or “undocumented immigrants.”

Last fall, the Stylebook cautioned against using the incendiary word “riot” for mobs of people tossing incendiary devices in the streets of American cities. Those were “protesters” and “protests.” No matter how many buildings burned or people were killed.

Recently the AP declared that when writing about blacks the B should be capitalized, but the w should remain lower case for whites.

Now this.

The AP is deeply worried about offending women who sleep with married men. Continue reading →

13 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged Kerry Dougherty

Two Police Officers Made Windsor Famous

Posted on April 13, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 63 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Looks like Windsor, Virginia, is finally on the map.

For all the wrong reasons.

The tiny incorporated town in Isle of Wight County, just west of Suffolk, is home to about 2,758 people.

It’s not a place that makes much news and the folks there probably like it that way.

But a traffic-stop-gone-bad catapulted the town into the national spotlight this weekend. From the Drudge Report to The New York Times, the media zeroed in on the behavior of two gun-pointing small-town police officers caught on body cam footage yelling at an African-American Army officer who was being detained over a missing license plate.

At the request of the Windsor Police Department, Gov. Ralph Northam called for a state police investigation into the incident. Continue reading →

63 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Race and race relations

Tagged Kerry Dougherty

Cronyism Is Back in Virginia Beach

Posted on April 9, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 7 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

You know what they say, it’s easier to say you’re sorry than ask permission.

That’s especially true in Virginia Beach. If you’re a well-connected developer, that is.

Some of us had such high hopes that city officials would stop acting like poodles for the developers now that elections had given us a new mayor and knocked a couple of cronies off city council. They, in turn, had hired a city manager from Ohio with no local connections.

We were naive.

Looks like the owners of the Cavalier Hotel are once again enjoying Favored Developer Status. Continue reading →

7 Comments

Posted in Land use & development

Tagged Kerry Dougherty

Virginia’s Lt. Gov. and Emmett Till

Posted on April 8, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 17 comments

Justin Fairfax

by Kerry Dougherty

Justin Fairfax is a deeply unserious man with an inflated sense of his own importance.

On Tuesday night, as he shared a Virginia State University stage with four other Democrats who are competing for the nomination for governor, Fairfax demonstrated that he has no sense of proportion and little understanding of history, and will say almost anything to boost his chances of becoming Virginia’s next governor.

Fairfax is apparently still smarting over the fact that most of his fellow Democrats demanded his resignation after two women — one a Duke classmate of his, another a political science professor — accused him of sexual assault.

Following Democratic tradition begun by Ralph Northam and continued by Andrew Cuomo, Fairfax proclaimed his innocence and stubbornly stayed in office.

But on the debate stage he lashed out at all of his opponents, especially Terry McAuliffe. Continue reading →

17 Comments

Posted in Politics, Scandals

Tagged Kerry Dougherty

Charlottesville Deserves a Mayor Who Likes the City

Posted on April 7, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 16 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

There are few requirements in most places to run for mayor. Affection for your own city ought to be a minimal requirement.

Pity Charlottesville’s mayor doesn’t even meet that.

Let me back up.

After last Friday’s “Kerry and Mike” radio show a couple of listeners emailed to say I’d been a little rough on the mayor of Virginia Beach during an interview about the melee at the oceanfront that ended with 10 people shot and two dead on March 26.

Clearly these armchair critics have been watching too many mainstream media interviews of Joe Biden and members of his administration. Those who watch only network news, CNN and MSNBC, would be shocked to discover that good interviews are not a series of softballs lobbed at friendly pols to make them appear competent. Continue reading →

16 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Politics

Tagged Kerry Dougherty

Child Endangerment at Home and on the Border

Posted on April 6, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 40 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Baby Boomers are fond of social media posts that glorify their raised-by-wolves childhoods.

They usually go something like this:

We drank out of garden hoses, rode in the back of pick-ups, didn’t have seat belts let alone car seats, came home when the street lights went on, thought Howard Johnson’s was fine dining, played with BB guns and knives and earned our immunization to chicken pox, mumps and measles the old fashioned way. The fat kid in our class would be considered skinny today.

The implication? We’re tough. Today’s youngsters are pampered.

It’s worth remembering that not everything was wonderful when Boomers were growing up.

Suitcases didn’t have wheels.

Telephones were tethered to the wall.

Televisions received only three channels.

I could go on.

But one thing I remember well from my childhood in a small New Jersey town was that by the time I was six my mother would routinely send me to a corner store to buy her Pall Malls. The shop was probably about half a mile from our house. Continue reading →

40 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Immigration

Tagged Kerry Dougherty

Priorities: Pupils or Pot?

Posted on April 2, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 17 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

You can tell a lot about a politician by his or her priorities.

Take Gov. Ralph Northam, for instance.

On February 25th the General Assembly passed a bill requiring Virginia public schools to offer in-person instruction to all students. The original bill, proposed by Sen. Shiobhan Dunnavant, was quite simple and to the point.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:

1. § 1. That each local school division in the Commonwealth shall make in-person learning available to all students by choice of the student’s parent or guardian.

2. That an emergency exists and this act is in force from its passage.

After much foolish debate the second part of the bill was struck. The politicians on the left decided there wasn’t an emergency. No need to force schools to fully reopen before July.

As if we needed more proof of the power of teachers’ unions in Virginia. Continue reading →

17 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12), Individual rights

Tagged Kerry Dougherty, marijuana

Broken Windows

Posted on March 31, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 24 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Maybe it’s time to admit that bicycle cops high-fiving gangbangers isn’t the best way to protect the public at the Virginia Beach oceanfront. I mean no offense to the police officers who patrol that wild 10-block area. They have a tough job.

It’s time we let them do it.

For years, the city tried to play nice with the unruly crowds that congregated on the resort strip on warm nights. Business owners and restaurateurs complained and tourists with children found the atmosphere intimidating. Yet city officials deliberately downplayed the bad behavior.

Let’s just call these “leaders” what they are: violence deniers.

I mean, who will ever forget this headline from the May 2, 2018 Virginian-Pilot: “Despite Multiple Shootings, College Beach Weekend Was ‘A Calm Atmosphere’ City Says.” Continue reading →

24 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement

Tagged Kerry Dougherty

Richmond “Bleeding Heart” Released Killers From Supervised Parole

Posted on March 30, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 6 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Meet one of Virginia’s most notorious murderers: Joseph Giarratano. If his name isn’t familiar, it may be because you weren’t in Virginia — or Norfolk — in the late 70s and early 1980s.

On February 4, 1979 Giarratano strangled and raped a 15-year-old Norfolk girl, Michelle Kline, and stabbed her mother, Toni Kline, to death in their apartment. Two days after the crime, Giarratano turned himself in to authorities in Jacksonville, where he confessed to the killings.

He confessed several more times, but later recanted.

Giarratano was convicted and sentenced to die, but in 1991 Gov. L. Douglas Wilder commuted his sentence to life in prison.

By then Giarratano had become the darling of the set-em-free celebrity set, who championed his innocence. Yet Giarratano’s conviction stood.

But in 2017 Virginia’s Parole Board – chaired by Terry McAuliffe-appointee Adrianne Bennett – decided Giarratano had spent enough time in prison and they paroled him. Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement

Tagged Kerry Dougherty

A Chaotic Night in Virginia Beach

Posted on March 29, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 10 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

“Don’t drive near the oceanfront,” warned the caller on my cellphone Friday night. “Something’s going on.”

I was on my way home from a dinner near the courthouse and usually travel north on Pacific Avenue.

The other person, who’d left before me, was stuck in traffic. There were sirens and flashing lights. He said a dozen or so guys had just dashed from the west side of Pacific running toward Atlantic – where the action was.

They were wearing ski masks.

Another crazy night on the resort strip, I thought. Looks like the hot weather brought the kids out early.

But this wasn’t just another rowdy night in the roughly 10-block area that locals avoid and city officials pretend is perfectly safe for tourists after dark.

By dawn we knew that 10 people had been shot. Two were dead. Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement

Tagged Kerry Dougherty

“Drunk with Power”

Posted on March 26, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 6 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

Drunk with power.

That might as well be the Northam administration motto.

Those three words reportedly appear in a chain of internal emails among parole board members and staff that was obtained by WTVR CBS-6 Richmond.

CBS claims it obtained internal Virginia Parole Board emails detailing their deliberations.

“Dated April 2020, one showed then Parole Board Chair Adrianne Bennett telling a parolee his early discharge certificate was “not normal protocol.”

Another instance showed an email chain between Bennett and board employee Laura Hall, who at the time was going through a report of everyone in the Commonwealth on parole supervision. Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Scandals

Tagged Kerry Dougherty

Not All Shootings Are Racially Motivated

Posted on March 24, 2021 by James A. Bacon | 80 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

As a long-time opinion writer I have one rule that I try to follow.

I usually wait anywhere from 24 to 48 hours after a crime has been committed to weigh in.

All too often what seems clear moments after the criminal act becomes a little more complicated once the inconvenient facts dribble out.

Anyone else remember how dumb President Barack Obama looked in 2009 when he impulsively weighed in on the Cambridge incident involving a black Harvard professor who was arrested for disorderly conduct after cops responded to a 911 call about someone breaking into his house in the middle of the night?

The president said the cops “acted stupidly.”

They didn’t act stupidly. The details were far more nuanced. Obama said he “regretted” his rush to judgment and smoothed over his knee-jerk faux pas with his now-famous “beer summit.”

There’s a lesson to learn from Obama’s mistake. Continue reading →

80 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Race and race relations

Tagged Kerry Dougherty