Author
A commonwealth — a country — losing its ability to talk, to understand, to reason
Oh, East is East, and West is West and ne’er the twain shall meet, Till Earth and sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat. —Rudyard Kipling, “The Ballad of East and West” When this century began a generation ago, did you […]
For Trump, winning back the White House was ‘all about that base.’ It won’t win Virginia for him.
There was an interesting revelation in a recent panel discussion at the University of Richmond about the 2024 election where all of us outsiders learned – to varying levels of astonishment – that Donald Trump’s campaign had no interest in persuading undecideds. Mike Young, captain of Trump’s campaign in Virginia and North Carolina, came right […]
A GOP-dominated Supreme Court resuscitates Youngkin’s late-game Virginia voter purge
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a partisan vote, did exactly what many feared it would do Wednesday in this pivotal election season and green-lighted a Republican-ordered, late-in-the-game scouring of Virginia voter rolls in search of “noncitizens.” The court’s two-thirds majority of Republican-appointed justices (three by former President and current GOP nominee Donald Trump) granted a […]
Clean voter rolls are essential, but Youngkin’s late, politically driven ‘purge’ deserves challenge
By now, you probably know who will get your vote for mayor, for your congressional seat, for the U.S. Senate and for president. But do you know whether you’re still an eligible voter? Will you arrive at your neighborhood precinct on Nov. 5 and discover that you have been excised from the registered voter rolls […]
In Virginia, Trump’s return to the ballot portends more tough times for the GOP
In elections, the most important thing is who shows up. What makes things interesting in a democratically elected republic is that “who shows up” can vary wildly from election to election based on recent events plus economic and societal conditions and which party and candidates get the blame (or credit) for them. That’s about to […]
Appreciation: Roxane Gatling Gilmore
It was a balmy late summer afternoon during the busy presidential election year of 2000 and I sat on the steps leading to the little-used east door of the Virginia Capitol, affording me an unobstructed view of the Executive Mansion perhaps 100 yards away. Right on schedule, the first lady of the commonwealth, Roxane Gatling […]
With Biden out, Virginia Dems pray for new nominee and a boost from the top of the ticket
Until Sunday afternoon, Democrats in Virginia and elsewhere were in deepening despair over their prospects in the presidential election less than four months down the line. They had two options: worse and worst. President Joe Biden’s Sunday concession to the ravages of advanced age (already the oldest sitting president in U.S. history, he would turn […]
Why we’re actually fighting over a medical procedure that allows the infertile to have children
There’s no shortage of things to quarrel about these days, yet we keep finding more. Not long ago, in vitro fertilization — the medical process by which human sperm and ovum are united in clinical conditions outside a woman’s body and later implanted, giving the otherwise childless a chance at having a child — would […]
Mistakes happen. But Virginia’s hurried, anachronistic legislative schedule invites them.
Virginia’s political class loves to beat its chest over its “part-time legislature,” doing the people’s bidding in the dead of winter each year and then sending its citizen lawmakers back to their homes long before the first daffodils bloom. Yet here we are in the shank of June, one special session in the books and […]
The redemption of Timothy Michael Murtaugh
Let’s get this out of the way at the outset: Tim Murtaugh and I agree on little when it comes to politics, particularly his most famous boss: Donald Trump. I’ve known Tim for three decades. Early on, he was a member of the Virginia Capitol Correspondents Association by virtue of his job as Richmond correspondent […]
A tone-deaf attack on diversity at a university first built by the enslaved
Posts began popping up in my social media feeds a couple of weeks ago from friends in my demographic: white, male and old enough to know better. They linked back to stories in the Washington Examiner or the Washington Times about a report by the nonprofit group OpenTheBooks.com, asserting that the University of Virginia spends […]
Paid college internships: A smart way Virginia can ease its youthful brain drain
Virginia needs to keep the Breyana Stewarts who are graduating from our colleges and universities from taking their brains, their energy and their winning personalities to other states. In May, Stewart will become the first in her family’s line of descent to earn a degree when she graduates from Virginia Commonwealth University. At age 23, […]