9500 Liberty will have a screening Tuesday evening at the Naro in Norfolk.

Prince William County, Virginia becomes ground zero in America’s explosive battle over immigration policy when elected officials adopt a law requiring police officers to question anyone they have “probable cause” to suspect is an undocumented immigrant.

9500 Liberty reveals the startling vulnerability of a local government, targeted by national anti-immigration networks using the Internet to frighten and intimidate lawmakers and citizens. Alarmed by a climate of fear and racial division, residents form a resistance using YouTube videos and virtual townhalls, setting up a real-life showdown in the seat of county government.

The devastating social and economic impact of the “Immigration Resolution” is felt in the lives of real people in homes and in local businesses. But the ferocious fight to adopt and then reverse this policy unfolds inside government chambers, on the streets, and on the Internet. 9500 Liberty provides a front row seat to all three battlegrounds.

Check out the trailer. There are some familiar faces in it.

The film will begin at 7:15pm. Hope to see you there!

Senator Mark Warner held a roundtable in the Norfolk Main Library this morning to hear from military women and representatives of various veteran support groups on the issue of combat stress. Last month, Warner sponsored legislation directing the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to spend the next year studying whether it is adequately addressing the issue of combat stress in military women.

As if almost on cue, there was a story this morning on the very same topic.

More than 230,000 American women have fought in those recent wars and at least 120 have died doing so, yet the public still doesn’t completely understand their contributions on the modern battlefield.

Warner got an earful from the women in attendance, whose experience ranged from a few years to 30 years of active duty military service.  Some of the women quoted in the AP story were in attendance at the roundtable.

I tweeted the meeting as it occurred.

Afterwards, Warner spoke with the media.

I’m glad to see Senator Warner taking on this issue. Taking care of our veterans – both male and female – should be a priority.

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The Washington Redskins managed to grab a lead and hold onto it yesterday in 34-13 win over the Oakland Raiders. It’s been a long time between wins for this 4-9 team. It would have been nice to see: I missed most of the game because I had visitors. I caught a play here and there.

Next up: the New York Giants, losers to the Philadelphia Eagles in last night’s game. The Giants (7-6) are two games out of first place in the NFC East and as of right now, out of the playoffs. A win by the Redskins will help keep them out.

Annise Parker was the first openly gay person elected mayor of a large US city Saturday. Houston is the fourth largest city in the country.  Congratulations to Ms. Parker – and to the voters of Houston.

Congress, it’s been said, is like high school for old people.

Seems about right The December issue of  Newsmax Magazine includes a list of the Congress members most loved or or most hated by their colleagues. A couple of Virginians made the list. Among the most loved: Senator Mark Warner.

Democrats consider Warner a folk hero of sorts, crediting him with reviving the party’s appeal to rural and Southern voters. He reinvented his state’s Democratic Party, paving the way for Obama to become the first Democrat to carry Virginia since 1964. Warner has taken his recipe for success to Capitol Hill, where he’s considered one of the few Democrats interested in working across the aisle.

And among the most hated, which the author points out is not the same as being ineffective: Rep. Jim Moran.

If Wisconsin Democrat David Obey is the reigning champion of House floor tussles, Moran, 64, the son of a professional boxer who’s well known for his hot Irish temper, is a close runner-up. Most notably, during the 1995 debate over sending U.S. troops to Bosnia, Moran started a shoving match with then-Rep. Randy Cunningham, R-Calif., at the rear of the House chamber. The scuffle spilled into the hall, where Capitol Hill police officers were forced to break up what became known as the “brawl in the hall.” His GOP challengers frequently aim their attacks at his character.

Check out the article and the rest of the list here.

There’s a new book quiz out. But before I tell you what book I am, there’s an interesting disclaimer on the website:

Just for the record, I really hope no one gets offended by any of this. At times, I try to add some humor into the world of books, and if I’m not amusing to you, just know I wasn’t trying to offend anyone. I just think books and their authors are funny sometimes, and the jokes are meant in good taste.

Um, ok.  On with the my quiz results

You’re The Bible!

by ?

One of the most controversial, misunderstood, and yet powerful people alive, you spark extensive discourse wherever you go. People think you hate a whole lot of things, and you probably do, but people forget about your hatred for shrimp. Mostly, you like to tell stories and then be  overwhelmed by how many different ways people interpret the things you tell them. The older
you are, the less forgiving you become. While few can argue you’re trying to do good, most would say that you’ve wound up doing a good deal of ill. After all, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Maybe you should just beget while the begetting’s good.

Take the Book Quiz II
at the Blue Pyramid.

The first candidate to announce for the upcoming Norfolk council elections in May was Tommy Smigiel, who is taking on incumbent Randy Wright in Ward 5.

Smigiel, a former Virginia Teacher of the Year, has hit the ground running. He’s got his website up and has been knocking doors and attending meetings throughout the ward. Despite the fact that Wright only won by 479 votes in the last election over an underfunded challenger, this race, if Wright runs, will be a tough one.

I say “if” because there is talk that Wright is seeking a position within the administration of Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell. Wright supported Terry McAuliffe in the primary and was said to have been promised a position – some say Secretary of Transportation – by him. After the McAuliffe primary loss, Wright shifted his support to McDonnell. McDonnell is scheduled to make an announcement of additional appointments today, although it is unknown what positions will be filled.

Regardless of whether Wright runs, Smigiel is in the race and plans to win. But he needs our help. Contact him to volunteer on the campaign. And, of course, send money. I always say that even if you don’t live in a district, you can vote with your pocketbook

The articles last week on the proposal by outgoing Governor Tim Kaine to expand health care benefits of state employees didn’t tell the whole story. Now that we have the  proposed language for the changes, hopefully some of the commentors will rethink their positions. Let’s start at the beginning.

In 2007, then Attorney General Bob McDonnell issued an opinion (pdf) on the extension of UVA gym memberships McDonnell concluded:

It is my opinion that the University of Virginia is authorized to provide a recreational gym membership to an adult who is not a spouse and who lives in the household of the employee or student.

In footnote 9, McDonnell pointed out that expanding the eligibility based on the personal relationship of the employee or student and the adult coresident may violate the Constitution. It is because of this opinion that the issue on expanding state health care benefits arose. The proposed changes, which have been in the making for over a year, have been carefully crafted to fall within the parameters that McDonnell laid out. It is now winding its way through the Administrative Procedures Act regulatory process.

The key provisions are:

1. Employees would have to pay 100% of the cost of the other qualified adult (OQA) premiums for coverage. (This is in contrast to current state benefits that pay over 80% of the cost of premiums for employees, spouses and covered dependents.)
2. Only one adult in a household could be covered. If a spouse is already covered, you cannot add an OQA.
3. To qualify, the adult would have to be at least 19 years old and have lived in the employee’s household continuously for 12 months.
4. Renters, boarders, tenants and employees of anyone who lives in the household would be excluded from coverage.

There is also a provision to include a dependent, unmarried adult child who resides with the employee.

A few facts:

• Sixteen state governments, including Alaska, and 152 city and county governments offer similar benefits. In our region, there are nine cities and counties in Maryland and five in North Carolina.
• 308 colleges and universities offer similar benefits, including Hollins, Sweet Briar and Washington & Lee – all private universities – in Virginia. Other schools on the list include Brown, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and the Universities of  Alabama, Florida, amd Michigan.
• 66% of the Virginia’s 50 largest employers offer such benefits, including Newport News Shipbuilding, Lowes, Dominion Power and Capital One Bank.
• Eight of the nine Fortune 500 companies in Virginia offers similar benefits.

It seems to me that this “expansion” will really be quite small, as few people will be in a position to take advantage of it. However, since it is virtually cost-free, I see no downside to it. And even the conservative Richmond Times-Dispatch supports the proposal.

I will be voicing my support of the proposal and urge you to do the same. The comment period is open until December 23.

No longer can South Hampton Roads residents point to Norfolk for the follies of its elected representatives. Add Virginia Beach and Chesapeake to the mix.

In Virginia Beach, Dan Lowe, the school board member representing the Bayside district, resigned. The remaining members get to appoint a replacement. Current at-large member Carolyn Weems was one of the people who wanted to represent the district.  In order to be interviewed, she would have to give up her seat. So what did the school board do? Decide to not interview any candidates! Predictably, the board appointed Weems to the seat.

“I don’t like what we’ve done the last two weeks, but talking to the lawyers, I couldn’t find a way around it,” board Chairman Dan Edwards said.

The way around it, Mr. Edwards, was to interview the candidates. If Ms. Weems was serious about wanting the seat, she would have resigned her at-large seat in order to be interviewed. If not, another capable person from the district should have been appointed.

With Weems’ appointment, her at-large seat will become available. Wonder who they have already decided on for this seat?

Over in Chesapeake, we have the council appointing three members of the city’s Planning Commission. There was an application deadline of October 1. One of the people appointed last night put in his application on October 13, nearly two weeks after the deadline. Not a problem for most of the council in Chesapeake. Van Laethem, a former planning commissioner, was chosen for one of the slots. The claim that “it is common practice to extend the deadline when board nominations or appointments are continued for 30 days or longer” is a weak one. If that’s true, council could always extend the deadline by continuing the appointments, thereby leaving the process open until the person they wanted to apply did so.

It seems that Virginia Beach and Chesapeake are learning the lessons of its older siblings, Norfolk and Portsmouth. And that is really a shame.

According to a press release, senator Mark Warner is leading a freshman group of 11 Senators on health care reform issues.

The eleven freshmen are Sens. Mark Begich (AL), Michael Bennet (CO), Roland Burris (IL), Kay Hagan (NC), Ted Kaufman (DE), Paul Kirk (MA), Jeff Merkley (OR), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Mark Udall (NM), Tom Udall (CO) and Mark Warner(VA).  Since Labor Day, these freshman Democrats have organized six times to deliver back-to-back Senate floor speeches on the need for common-sense health reform

The group’s proposals are designed to strengthen the Senate health care bill in three ways:

• It establishes public-private arrangements to better synchronize changes across medicine, with an eye towards preventing cost-shifting to others.

• It eliminates red tape and fights fraud, which drives-up costs.

• And it compels Medicare to become a leader in overall health reform by speeding the move toward a higher-value, lower-cost model for the future.

That Warner is trying to keep Democrats happy while also not antagonizing his business supporters is nothing new. The specifics of the group’s amendments are below the fold.

Working More Closely with the Private Sector on Cost Containment

These amendments transform payment systems and improving quality to require the public and private sectors to move forward together on the shared goals of cost containment, improved quality, and delivery system reform.

• CMS Innovation Center: We give the new Innovation Center explicit authority to work with private plans to align Medicare, Medicaid and private sector strategies for improving care.
• Independent Medicare Advisory Board: We broaden the scope of the new Independent Medicare Advisory Board to look at total health system spending and make nonbinding, system-wide recommendations.
• Quality and Value in Private Insurance: We require the Secretary to consult with relevant stakeholders to develop a methodology for measuring health plan value, which would include the cost, quality of care, efficiency, actuarial value of plans.  Developing the tools to assess health plan value will help consumers and employers make better apples-to-apples comparisons when they shop for health insurance and get the best value for their health care dollar.

Stepping-up the Commitment to Reduce Regulatory Barriers and Fight Fraud

These amendments require the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to aggressively pursue streamlined regulations and anti-fraud initiatives to ensure that all sectors of the health care system work together to improve value.

• Administrative Simplification: We require HHS to develop standards that will allow efficient electronic exchange and streamlining of information among patients, providers and insurers.
• Health Care Fraud Enforcement:  We direct HHS to better utilize technology to prevent health care fraud.
• Eliminating Legal Barriers to Care Improvement: In tandem with this package, the freshman Senators will be requesting that the U.S. Government Accountability Office study current laws and regulations to identify barriers to implementing innovative delivery system reforms.  We also will request that the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission work together to provide clearer guidance to providers who wish to enter into innovative collaborative arrangements that promote patient-centered, high quality care.

Aggressively Moving Toward Delivery System Reform

These amendments allow HHS to experiment with promising new models to further lower costs, increase quality and improve patient health.

• Value-Based Purchasing: We require Medicare to implement pay-for-performance for more providers sooner, adding hospices, ambulatory surgical centers, psychiatric hospitals and others.
• Broader Payment Innovation: We allow a broader, more flexible transition to new payment models for Accountable Care Organizations (ACO).
• Medicare System Upgrades: We require HHS to modernize data systems so that valuable Medicare data can be shared in a reliable, complete, and timely manner.
• Good Quality Everywhere: We promote greater access to tele-health services, strengthen the provider workforce and the availability of high-quality hospital services to bolster health care access for Americans in underserved and rural regions.

Who doesn’t remember S. R. Sidarth, the young man whose recording of then-Senator George Allen brought the word “macaca” into the consciousness of  every Virginian in 2006 and brought down the Senator’s re-election campaign?

Apparently, Alex Trebek Last night, the older, clean shaven Sidarth appeared on Jeopardy, the long-running trivia game show. I caught the show, thanks to a Tweet from someone. In the brief interview process, no mention of his 15 minutes of fame came up. Instead, as Julian Walker reports, Sidarth and Trebek spoke about his trip with his mother on a yak.

While Sidarth didn’t win, he did OK, finishing in second place. (Can’t believe all the contestants, plus me, thought the final Jeopardy answer was Mr. Potato Head )

For the second time this year, Portsmouth Sheriff Bill Watson has threatened action in the city in a dispute over compensation. Earlier this year, Watson threatened to suspend services provided by inmate work crews unless his deputies received raises. This time, Watson says he will keep his deputies from providing courthouse security.

“Jan. 4, they better have some security,” Watson said, “or people will walk through that courthouse like it was Central Park.”

The issue is state budget cuts, which are causing Watson to have to lay off 11 employees. Portsmouth has agreed to fund half of the amount cut by the state, but that is not enough for Watson.

“I have to cut positions somewhere,” he said. “The freebie is over.”

[...]

Watson says state law  requires him only to operate a jail, serve legal papers  and provide security inside courtrooms.

Methinks Mr. Watson is wrong.

I can only assume that Watson is reading § 15.2-1609 of the Virginia code, which says, in part:

The sheriff shall exercise all the powers conferred and perform all the duties imposed upon sheriffs by general law. He shall enforce the law or see that it is enforced in the locality from which he is elected; assist in the judicial process as provided by general law; and be charged with the custody, feeding and care of all prisoners confined in the county or city jail. He may perform such other duties, not inconsistent with his office, as may be requested of him by the governing body.

The Virginia Compensation Board puts out a Policy & Procedure Manual for sheriffs (pdf). On page 3, it says:

All Virginia Sheriffs provide security in local courthouses, serve legal papers throughout their jurisdictions, summon jurors and witnesses, and execute upon court judgments.

And if that weren’t enough, the law appears to be quite clear: according to § 53.1-120 of the Virginia code, sheriffs are responsible for courtrooms and the courthouses.

§ 53.1-120. Sheriff to provide for courthouse and courtroom security; designation of deputies for such purpose; assessment.

A. Each sheriff shall ensure that the courthouses and courtrooms within his jurisdiction are secure from violence and disruption and shall designate deputies for this purpose. A list of such designations shall be forwarded to the Director of the Department of Criminal Justice Services.

I’m thinking that perhaps Watson simply doesn’t know what the duties are. (Of course, we’ve seen that before.) I suspect, though, that the judges do and Watson is in for a rude awakening.

UPDATE: The Pilot editorial board weighs in on this with Tuesday’s editorial, “Sheriff cries ‘wolf’ one more time“

In an earlier post, I asked your opinions on the sentence of a robber who used Craigslist to lure victims. The man was sentenced to five life terms. Due to his cooperation in the investigation, his sentence has been reduced to 33 years.

Interesting is that his co-defendant, against whom the robber testified, got only 22 years.

Brian over at Bearing Drift brought up an issue that I had been thinking about in conjunction with last Saturday’s Republican canvass.  Although I don’t live in the 8th Senate district, I was as inundated with TV and radio ads as anyone who did. The only thing missing was the mail, which I understand was unbelievable in the amount received.

That there has been no reporting on this race since June 30 seems to be antithetical to the premise of Virginia’s campaign finance laws. They are predicated upon transparency and disclosure, but when the reporting schedule (pdf) essentially treats a special election as a “candidate whose office is not up for re-election this year,” the result is anything but.  The next reporting required for a candidate in a special election doesn’t kick in until eight days before the general election. In this case, the nominating contest was, essentially, the general election, but there is nothing in the law to provide for a situation like that.

I note that the large, pre-election contributions of $1,000 or more kick in 12 days prior to the nominating contest. But no such reports are available on either vpap or the SBE website for either candidate.

My sense is that if the large, pre-election contribution rule applies to nominating contests, there should be a filing requirement prior to nominating contests. Yes, I understand that the timing of these things is difficult; the Republican Party of Virginia Beach did not decide on the date of the canvass until November 20, giving the campaigns just two weeks to “prepare.” However, even with the tight deadline, I agree that the filing requirement should be eight days prior to the nominating contest.

The general assembly needs to fix this issue.

~

Of course, the other big issue to me in campaign finance in Virginia is the lack of an audit requirement. As it stands right now, campaign finance reports can be pure fantasy: as long as the reports balance, no one is looking, unless a complaint is filed. (As I previously discussed here and which was the topic of this article.) There should be a random audit requirement and after each filing period, a small number of reports should undergo an audit. And this should apply at the local level as well, since many of the filings are made there. I’m from the school of “trust, but verify” when it comes to anything financial. If transparency is what we are after, random audits shouldn’t be a question; it should have been there all along.

In addition, let me suggest that the financial report include the bank account information. Right now, that information does not appear anywhere on the report. The report should include the name of the bank, the account number, and the bank balance, reconciled to the ending balance on the report. To be perfectly honest, if such a requirement had been in place, the embezzlement of Jason Robinson would have been discovered much earlier.  Ideally, there should be a way for a copy of the last bank statement (or all bank statements covered by the report) to be included with the report, as an attachment.

If you owe back taxes in Virginia, the deadline is today to take advantage of the amnesty. The Virginia Department of Taxation has an excellent website set up to handle the filing of returns, including links to the old forms, as well as the payments. The deal is a good one: one half the interest owed and NO penalties. There is a calculator on the site so you don’t have to compute the balance manually.

If you are filing and paying online, the deadline is midnight tonight. If you are mailing them in, make sure they are postmarked today.

Somehow, I missed this earlier. The Center for Digital Government and Digital Communities Magazine named its Top Digital Cities in America for 2009 and Norfolk was named the number one city in its category (125,000 – 249,999 population).

“This year’s winners demonstrate how cities have faced economic challenges with creativity and innovation in the use of information technology,” said Cathilea Robinett, executive director for the Center for Digital Government. “The Survey clearly shows that cities place a high value on positive experiences for their constituents when using government services. These winners are at the leading edge of the future in digital advances for citizens.”

Although the survey was open to all cities with population in excess of 30,000, only those cities who responded were included in the rankings. I’m not clear how many cities actually responded.

In the same category as Norfolk, Alexandria tied for 4th place, Hampton tied for 8th and Richmond tied for 10th. Virginia Beach tied for 6th in the category for the largest (over 250,000 population) cities. Roanoke ranked third in the 75,000-124,999 category while Charlottesville (4th) and Lynchburg (7th) ranked in the top ten for cities in the smallest category (30,000 – 74,999).

The digital counties rankings is here and includes Virginia counties in every category.

The election to select the next Senator from the 8th District may be scheduled for January 12, but the real election will take place tomorrow, December 5. With no Democratic candidate, the voters in the 8th will choose their representative in a Republican canvass. I’m urging everyone – Republican and Democrat alike – to head to the canvassing locations and vote for Rosemary Wilson.

Whenever a representative of the people is chosen, we hope to get someone who represents all of the people in the district, not just part of them – or even the majority of them. We hope to chose someone who will listen to all of them and act accordingly. Wilson has done so, something that even The Virginian-Pilot admitted although they endorsed her opponent.

Rosemary Wilson, a former School Board member who was re-elected last year to her third term on the City Council, is a lifelong resident of Virginia Beach whose knowledge of the city and its issues is unmatched. A Realtor and former teacher, she’s been a voice for good government, an advocate for the Navy and a leader on affordable housing, historic preservation, parks and open space – initiatives this page has supported. She’s voted to spend beyond basic services on projects such as the convention center and on public-private partnerships, including Town Center and the amphitheater.

Make no mistake: Wilson is a Republican. But I think she’s actually closer to the type of Republican that she is seeking to replace – Ken Stolle – than her opponent is. Wilson has the tools and the experience to be an effective legislator and will hit the ground running.

So head on out and vote. The canvass locations are below (click to enlarge). Polls are open from 10am-3pm.

Governor Tim Kaine is proposing to extend state health care benefits to “other qualified adults” living in the households of state employees.

Under the proposal, adults without health benefits who share a home with an insured state worker would be eligible for coverage. This would include domestic partners – heterosexual or homosexual – who live with a state employee. Sixteen other states provide benefits to domestic partners, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

As the article points out, Kaine’s administration is drafting the regulations but enactment would be up to Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell.

This proposal, which has the support of “several state college and university presidents,” is long overdue. I hope McDonnell sees fit to enact it. (Of course, I wish Kaine had done it earlier.)

Col. Van T. Barfoot (Joe Mahoney/RTD)

There is a saying in the military that “rank has its privileges.” As a corollary to that, I often say that age has its privileges. I think both apply in the case of 90-year-old Medal of Honor recipient Col. Van T. Barfoot.

According to a number of stories, the Henrico man has been ordered by his homeowner’s association to remove a flag pole from his yard. Apparently, it’s OK to have a flag pole attached to your house, but not a free-standing vertical pole.

Barfoot lives in the Sussex Square community in far western Henrico; its board of directors rejected a plea from Barfoot in July to approve the pole, disallowing the fixture on aesthetic grounds.

Aesthetic grounds? Really? No other reason than the board didn’t think it looked right? Wow. Take a look at this video (courtesy of The Richmond Times-Dispatch):

Sen. Mark Warner has jumped into the fray. But it shouldn’t have come to that. RHIP and so does age. Let the man have his flagpole.

Last night, the talk on Twitter was about the moon. These two pictures were taken about midnight, when the moon was directly overhead. (Click to enlarge.) I can tell you – the pictures don’t capture the way things looked out there. The ring was so large and the moon so bright that it reminded me of all those pictures of alien spaceships sucking people up (Kinda like this commercial.)

An explanation of the cause of the rings can be found here.

The Virginian-Pilot broke with tradition today with its endorsement in a primary race that is tantamount to election. The winner of this Saturday’s Republican canvass will be the representative of the 8th Senate District in Virginia Beach, unless a late Democratic opponent emerges, which is unlikely. I applaud the Pilot for finally endorsing in races such as these.

But reading through the endorsement of Jeff McWaters still leaves me with a question, the answer to which I find lacking. My question relates to the breakaway congregation that McWaters and others started, no mention of which was made in the editorial.

Unlike Truro Church in Fairfax, where over 90% of the congregation voted for the split, it appears that only a small number of people left the 2,100-member Galilee Episcopal Church in Virginia Beach to start Trinity Church. And also unlike its Northern Virginia counterparts, Trinity did not affiliate with another Episcopalian diocese. But the reason for the split appears to the the same: women and gays, the latter gleaned from the article linked above and the former gleaned from a reading of this “explanation” on the church’s website.

Actually, I think that explanation has been cleaned up.

I have in hand a copy, dated 7/16/2007, in which the elders draw on a biblical passage to justify allowing only men to be elders in the church:  1 Timothy 2:11-14.

¹¹A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. ¹²I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. ¹³For Adam was formed first, then Eve. ¹⁴And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

The document says that the writer, Paul, “draws upon the creation account, not the contemporary church culture to substantiate his position.” More from this document (emphasis mine):

The first reason for male authority in the church is order of creation: Adam (man), was created first, and given original authority on earth.

[...]

The second reason is the difference in the sin of Adam and Eve, flowing from their differences in authority. Both Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, and Eve clearly sinned first. Yet, the Bible never blames Eve for the fall of the human race, but always blames Adam (through one man sin entered the world, Romans 5:12). Why does man get the blame for the fall, when Eve at the forbidden fruit first? Because there was a difference of authority. Because Adam had an authority Eve did not have, he also had a responsibility Eve did not have. Adam failed in his responsibility in a far more significant way than Eve did. As well, Eve was deceived, and Adam was not deceived. Eve was tricked; but Adam sinned with his eyes wide open. This means that though Adam’s sin was worse, Eve’s ability to be more readily deceived made her more dangerous in a place of authority – and in this sense, God looks at men as sons of Adam, and at women as daughters of Eve.

A whole lot different from the explanation now on the website, which reads in part, again, emphasis mine:

We also believe that men and women are of equal worth and dignity before God and in church ministry (and that women are empowered by the same Holy Spirit and equally gifted).

We committed this matter to prayer, a great deal of discussion, and a diligent study of Scripture. In searching Scriptures, we found that both men and women were integrally involved in various leadership positions in the church, including the teaching ministries. But it also seemed plain that the qualifications for Elders/Pastors presumed that those roles would be filled by the men of the church while the roles for Deacons and other leaders were not limited in that way. We have established a church leadership council that tracks this biblical model as best we know how—comprised of male elders and both male and female deacons who will serve in key capacities on the council.

Surely the editorial board of the Pilot knows about this document. Surely they are aware that Trinity came about as the result of the Episcopalian church’s ordination of a woman and a gay man. And yes, many of the participants in Saturday’s caucus will be conservative Republicans. But whoever wins Saturday will be representing all of the 8th, including the women and gays there, and not just the evangelical Republicans.

So my question to McWaters is simple: will you allow your religious beliefs to affect your decision-making?

That the Pilot didn’t comment on this is troublesome. (And for those who think that the Pilot doesn’t weigh in on these things, take another look at its endorsement of Deeds and Shannon.) They did the voters in the 8th a disservice.

Governor Tim Kaine announced Monday that the special elections to fill seats in the 8th and 37th Senate districts will be held Tuesday, January 12, 2010. The opening in the 37th, which covers part of Fairfax County, was created by the election of Ken Cuccinelli as Attorney General. The opening in the 8th, which covers part of Virginia Beach, was created by the election of Ken Stolle as sheriff of that city.

In the 37th, there are three Republican candidates who will face off tonight in a firehouse primary. Delegate Dave Marsden is the Democratic candidate.

The deadline to file to run in either election is Friday, December 11. As of this writing, no Democratic candidate has emerged in the 8th. The district is rather Republican, with McCain having defeated Obama by 10 points here and which McDonnell won by a 67%-33% margin over Deeds. A rather heated battle between Republican candidates Rosemary Wilson and Jeff McWaters will come to a head this Saturday, with a canvass.

Democrats currently hold a slim 21-19 majority in the state Senate.

I’m no fair-weather Redskins fan. But these close losses are really hard to take. Last week, it was a 1-point loss to the much hated Dallas Cowboys. And yesterday, it was a 3-point loss to NFC East rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles. Both losses occurred due to points scored late in the game.

While I was pleased to see the Skins score three touchdowns in yesterday’s game, the fact that the Eagles were able to score not only a touchdown but a two-point conversion which tied the game really dashed my hopes of a win. I’m thinking that the defense, which has been so strong, feels the same way and actually gives up a little at the end of the game.

I don’t anticipate a close game next week. The Skins face the New Orleans Saints, who take a 10-0 record into tonight’s game against the New England Patriots (7-3).

Now that Thanksgiving is over, time to think about Christmas. I’m sure that all of you are planning on giving your “true love” the gifts in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Just to give you a heads up: it’s going to cost you a pretty penny.

According to the Associated Press, you need $87,403 to purchase the items listed in the song. The most expensive item on the list? Nine ladies dancing, which costs $5,473. I’m betting you could find nine ladies to dance for less than that

How come eight maids-a-milking only cost $58? Perhaps you could find a ninth and have them dance

Have to admit I’m a little surprised at the cost of the five golden rings. Where in the heck can you buy a $100 gold ring? Must be mighty small

The cost of the items was compiled by PNC Wealth Management, who has been calculating the cost each year since 1984. The increase over last year was less than 1%.

Now here’s the question: how many of you could sing all twelve of the items without looking at the list to the left? (One thing is for certain: I couldn’t sing it 1-12, but I could probably do it backwards, from 12 to 1, as long as someone gave me the 12 drummers )

Graphic from The Virginia Pilot

Each day, I start off by deleting spam: that delivered to my Blackberry, my desktop mail client, my online mail and my blog. It is perhaps the least productive part of my day. Spammers are creative: despite having spam filters everywhere (except on my BB – don’t like the way those filters work), I still deal with hundreds of spam emails that get through the filters. It seems that the spammers overwhelm the filters at night, since very few of them get through during the day. (The filter on my blog, Akismet, is very good. Rarely does one get through.)  And I do have to review those caught in the spam filter because, invariably, there are a couple of legitimate ones in there.

So I was happy to read that the so-called “Godfather of Spam,” Alan Ralsky, was sentenced to 51 months in prison for sending emails in a bogus stock scheme. Three others were also convicted. According to the article, the group raked in nearly $3 million in the summer of 2005 alone.

The one thing that I find most annoying about spam – besides the content, of course – is the email spoofing. Probably half of the spam that I get looks like it is sent from one of my own email addresses. There seems to be little that I can do to stop that from happening. And such email spoofing sometimes causes me headaches: my own domains can end up on the spam lists of various servers and I end up having to go through a lot of headaches to get them off the lists. Which, of course, ends up benefiting the spammers.

Perhaps if more of the spammers were sent to prison, they would stop. And I wouldn’t have to clear out the endless emails touting Viagra, watches, and so forth. Nor would I have to deal with the emails that my clients forward to me supposedly from the IRS or the Social Security Administration. Not to mention the ones containing viruses that come from what appear to be real addresses of people I know.

Interestingly enough, I back up my email on Gmail and it seems to catch nearly all of the spam. So if the Gmail folks can figure out how to do that, I would hope that the other email providers out there would figure out the same. (And yes, I’ve been thinking about using Gmail to clean all of my mail before it comes into Outlook and my Blackberry. Just haven’t had the time to figure it all out yet.)

I started cooking Wednesday and finished up this afternoon. The menu was pretty much unchanged from last year, except this year I cooked a whole turkey (my cats are going to love that!) instead of just a breast.

A couple of my sisters stopped by just after dinner and we got a chance to chitchat and drink some eggnog, while getting the kitchen cleaned up and the leftovers put away.

I try to give thanks every day – not just one day a year – for so many things in my life, not the least of which are family and friends. The list is long. And as another Thanksgiving Day winds down, take a look at the list The Virginian-Pilot put together this year. You might find some new things to be thankful for

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

]]> http://blog.vivianpaige.com/2009/11/26/happy-thanksgiving/feed/ 4 vivianpaige Thanksgiving 2009 http://blog.vivianpaige.com/2009/11/25/who-is-rosemary-wilson/ http://blog.vivianpaige.com/2009/11/25/who-is-rosemary-wilson/#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:30:38 +0000 vjp http://blog.vivianpaige.com/?p=10827 ]]>

I guess I haven’t paid nearly as much attention to the Virginia Beach City Council as I probably should have. A quick search on my blog reveals very little about the second candidate for the Republican nomination for Senate in the 8th district, Virginia Beach councilwoman Rosemary Wilson. Not a problem, really, as Wilson and I had an opportunity to talk Tuesday morning.

I believe the first time I met Wilson was at a fundraising breakfast for a local children’s arts organization a few years ago. From that day forward, whenever we run into each other, it’s like we’re old friends. If I could describe Wilson in one word it would have to be genuine. Despite our rather obvious differences in political philosophy, Wilson comes across as a personable public servant who seeks solutions to problems.

A quick look at her bio and  a couple of things immediately jumped out at me. First, she’s a fellow alumna of Old Dominion University. And until I looked, I had forgotten that a couple of her colleagues at Prudential Towne Realty are clients of mine.

Wilson is a lifelong resident of Virginia Beach. She was a school teacher and served four years on the School Board prior to being elected to City Council, as an at-large member, in 2000.

Wilson and I spoke at length about her experience with legislators. As a member of the School Board, she served on the legislative committee. When she was elected to council, there was no such committee on that body. At her suggestion, a legislative liaison committee was formed and she has been a member since its inception, which was around 2001. In that position, she works closely with legislators of both parties to help further the agenda of the City, which included trips to Richmond during the General Assembly session.

In addition, Wilson was just elected Vice Chair of the Virginia Municipal League, “a statewide, nonprofit, nonpartisan association of city, town and county governments established in 1905 to improve and assist local governments through legislative advocacy, research, education and other services.”

Obviously, the budget deficit that Virginia is facing will have to be dealt with by the next session of the legislature. Wilson reminded me that when first elected to the School Board, it was facing a $12 million deficit, a situation that was the subject of a grand jury investigation and resulted in the resignation (in lieu of being indicted) of several members . (Every article I located on the topic was behind a firewall, so no links are available.) Restoration of fiscal discipline was required and Wilson, along with the other members, made some tough decisions to do so. More recently, the City of Virginia Beach has experienced its own share of budget deficits. “No one lost their jobs,” Wilson told me. The City has a Triple-A bond rating, and the council managed to move the money around “so that it hurt the people and the services the least,” she said.

Wilson said that it will be very important to protect education and public safety “as much as possible” when the General Assembly tackles the budget shortfall. She couldn’t come up with specific programs or projects that she would cut but she said that “we are going to have to stay within our means” and pledged to do so.

Following the lead of Governor-elect Bob McDonnell, Wilson supports bipartisan redistricting.

If I’m elected.. I will be representing all 100,000 people in the 8th, not just the ones with an R next to their names. So I think it’s important that we all work together and support Bob McDonnell’s efforts.

And I hope that McDonnell keeps his word.

If there is an issue that separates Wilson from her opponent, Jeff McWaters, it would be where they stand on health care. Wilson is quite clear in her belief, although I disagree, that the healthcare plan before Congress would be bad for small businesses.

When asked for one thing that she wanted to try to accomplish over the next two years should she be elected, Wilson gave me two: the economy and transportation. She emphasized how important it is to get companies back to hiring and getting people back to work, along with fixing transportation. “I think those are the two most critical things that we have to keep our eye on,” Wilson said.

Wilson has been endorsed by nearly every elected official in Virginia Beach. Listening to her interview with JR Hoeft, she invoked one of my favorite political phrases: all politics is local. Her longtime public service at the local level is a testament to that.

Speaker Bill Howell has released the report of the House Ethics Panel inquiry into Newport News Delegate Phil Hamilton. The report (pdf) is, as expected, brief: since Hamilton has resigned, the panel says it lacks jurisdiction to proceed.

In an email, Speaker Howell says:

While I regret that their fact-finding inquiry did not reach a final conclusion whether an actual violation of state law occurred, I understand the decision by the Ethics Panel and respect them for not wanting to operate outside of the legal authority granted by the Code of Virginia.

Howell initiated the ethics panel inquiry after a series of stories in the Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press exposed the potential conflict of interest, with Hamilton having obtained a job with Old Dominion University after having inserted a line into the budget to fund the project.

Howell promises to “lead in ensuring that the manner in which legislative ethics inquiries are conducted is thoughtfully examined during the 2010 Session of the General Assembly.” I suspect we will see some well-needed ethics reform in the coming session.

The federal inquiry into the Hamilton/ODU matter is ongoing.

What a way to spend your birthday! Krystal Ball, one of two Democrats seeking to take on Republican incumbent Rob Wittman, appeared this morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Meeting.” Happy birthday, Krystal!

Back in 2007, then AMERIGROUP CEO Jeffrey McWaters wrote an article about health care, which I opined on here.  Today McWaters is one of two Republican candidates seeking to represent the 8th Senate District in Virginia Beach. Due to a conflict, McWaters was unable to make our interview, which had been scheduled for Monday afternoon.

Jeff McWaters (photo from campaign website)

I first met McWaters at a luncheon back in September where both of the gubernatorial candidates spoke. It just so happens that I sat at the same table with him and a couple of members of his staff. I’ve run into him on a couple of occasions since, most notably the Kiwanis Harbor Party. He strikes me as a natural politician, with a knack for remembering names and an outgoing personality.

Until I read the bio on his website, I was unaware that his background was in accounting. That’s not all we have in common: as I was researching him for this article, I came across this piece on his home. It’s a small world: I know the architect.

McWaters is a native of Kentucky. He has lived in Virginia Beach since 1990. In 1994, McWaters founded AMERIGROUP, a company which provides managed care to low-income families. With the help of venture capitalists NEA and others, he grew the company into almost a Fortune 500 company: it is currently ranked at 509.

The voters in the 8th Senate district are not hiring a CEO, though. They are hiring someone to represent them in the State Senate. McWaters has no prior experience in elected office, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. In listening to his interview with JR Hoeft, one thing he said jumped out at me. McWaters said that he has written legislation. I see from his bio that he has testified before various legislative bodies but nothing about writing legislation. I really wish JR had asked him for specifics on this. Heck, most members of the General Assembly don’t write legislation, so that’s a pretty significant claim in my book.

There were a couple of other issues that I wanted to touch on with McWaters had he been available for interview. I believe there are two pretty big issues that the General Assembly will face in the next couple of years. Probably the biggest is the budget – or rather, the constraints that the budget will present.  Just Monday, the governor and the governor-elect met with the money committees to discuss our predicament. McWaters’ issue page on taxes and spending only mentions the budget in passing, saying the “Commonwealth needs a more balanced and realistic budgeting process,” whatever that means. His page on education – one of the major components of the budget – is still under construction.

The second big issue that will come up in the next two years is redistricting. If elected, McWaters will be a member of the minority in the Senate. Does he support bipartisan redistricting? His website is completely silent on the issue.

I understand that the voters in the 8th have been deluged with mail. Some of that mail is available on McWaters’ website. But mail generally doesn’t tell the whole story about the candidate. I doubt, for example, that any mail piece makes mention of the $225 million settlement of a lawsuit against AMERIGROUP for its denial of coverage to pregnant women, something McWaters claimed that the state told the company to do. “We did what we were asked to do,” McWaters told the writer.

While each mail piece on the website screams “conservative,” I doubt if any of them reference McWaters’ role in the establishment of the breakaway congregation of Trinity Church. McWaters proudly announces that he is an elder in this church, one in which women are not allowed to be elders. And, of course, there is his stance on health care, which no doubt raised a few eyebrows and called into question his commitment to conservatism.

I had hoped to be able to bring my readers more insight into McWaters, the man who would be Senator. But I am left with the same publicly available information that any voter in the 8th Senate district has at their disposal.

The Electoral Board today certified the results in the November 3 election. This afternoon, the campaign of Bobby Mathieson released the following statement:

There are still open questions in this race, and it is in the best interest of the voters of the 21st District for Bobby Mathieson to seek a recount. Bobby will continue to fight to ensure every single legally cast ballot gets counted in an open and transparent manner. As a lifelong public servant, he will always stand for good government, for transparency, and for serving the public interest. Close elections like this provide citizens the opportunity to shine a bright light on the electoral process, learn important lessons, and emerge better prepared for the next election.

The website shows a 14-vote lead for Republican challenger Ron Villanueva.

Beginning Tuesday, I’ll be taking a look at the two candidates who will be facing off in the Republican canvass in the 8th Senate district: Jeff McWaters and Rosemary Wilson.  The seat is being vacated by Ken Stolle, who was elected sheriff of Virginia Beach. The canvass will be held on Saturday, December 5, from 10am to 3pm at five locations in the district:

• Red Mill Elementary School, 1860 Sandbridge Road
• Holland Road Elementary School, 3340 Holland Road
• VB Republican HQ, 2955 Virginia Beach Blvd., Suite 105
• VB Fire & Rescue Squad, 740 Virginia Beach Blvd.
• VB Christian Church, 2225 Rose Hall Drive

The date for the election has not been set.

It has been two years since bloggers from around the Commonwealth gathered. This past Saturday, Blogs United held another conference. The number of bloggers was much smaller than in years past but the number of non-bloggers in attendance was larger. Most of the non-bloggers in attendance held positions within the Republican Party. Add to that the presence – later in the day – of the various candidates for office, most of them Republican, and one could get the sense that this event has become less bipartisan.

That the room tilted to the right wasn’t the fault of BU. Holding it after the election sounded like a good idea – that is, until we finished the election I can only assume that the election results had a dappening effect on the participation of Democratic Party officials: while representatives of the House and Senate Republican caucuses were in attendance and participated, no one from their counterparts on the Democratic side was able to attend.

The highlight of the day, in my opinion, was the media panel. Participating were four members of the mainstream media who also blog: Anita Kumar of The Washington Post, Ryan Nobles of NBC 12 (Richmond), Kimball Payne of The Daily Press, and Julian Walker of The Virginian-Pilot. With the exception of Kumar, who blogs almost full time, the rest of the panel has to hold down a “day job,” in addition to their blogging duties. They each spoke about how they came to blogging and what they are trying to accomplish. The juggling of responsibilities between their main jobs and blogging is something to which I am sure most bloggers can relate.

A couple of big issues came out of the panel. The first was the process by which content appears on their respective blogs. While the panelists all work for media outlets, there is no real oversight of their content. Kumar did say that she uses editors for her content, but that is mainly to make sure she doesn’t misspell something. Payne had us laughing about the fact that his editor didn’t tell him for ten months that he could post directly to the blog without waiting for the articles to be approved. Nobles’ blog was his own creation to start with. And it was Walker who suggested the Pilot have a political blog in the first place.

The corporate part of things showed up in the technology end of their blogging. Nobles, for example, uses the free WordPress.com to host his site but his station wanted it on the station site so they embedded it there. Kumar said that getting things on the site changed – such as correcting a bad link or adding a blog to the blogroll – takes forever, because it has to go through another department. Neither of the blogs of Walker or Payne have a blogroll, something pretty standard on standalone blogs.

The second big issue that came out was about the tone of the blog posts. Journalistic standards of reporting generally require that the information be as unbiased as possible. By its very nature, blogging is opinion. The panel all said that while they may inject some personality into their posts, they never cross the line into opinion. My reading of the blogs finds this to be mostly true, although I’m not sure that a casual reader would be able to make the distinction. Of the four, Walker probably injects the least of his personality into his posts and Payne the most.

At the end of the day, the role of MSM blogs is far different from that of standalone bloggers. There is room for both and while there is some crossover in terms of information provided, they are not interchangeable.

I missed almost all of the next segment, which featured Rep. Rob Wittman (R-01).

The big part of the afternoon was a parade of candidates.  The two Democrats looking to unseat Wittman were both there: Scott Robinson and Crystall Ball. Also in attendance were the gaggle of Republican candidates looking to unseat Glenn Nye: Scott Rigell, Ben Loyola, Ken Golden, and Scott Taylor. Coby Dillard, who is exploring a run against Democrat Bobby Scott, was in attendance, along with one of the many candidates seeking to unseat Tom Perriello in the 5th, Michael McPadden.

There is a plan underway to have another conference next year. If you want to participate in the planning, or just stay up to date on what’s going on, visit the Blogs United website.

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Posts around the blogosphere on the conference (will update as they become available):

New Dominion Project
Bearing Drift
Pilot on Politics
Virginia Politics
novatownhall (several posts)

It seems that animal shelters find black cats and dogs difficult to be adopted. In a play on words, the Norfolk Animal Care Center is holding a “sale” on the animals, to coincide with Black Friday, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season. The “sale” provides for adoption fees of black cats and dogs at half of the normal charge for the weekend after Thanksgiving.

The original flier promoting the event (courtesy of PilotOnline) shows the words “blowout adoption event for our black babies,” wording which has drawn the ire of some.

“On the face of it, I do think it’s insensitive to African Americans who did come to this nation as slaves and were sold,” Norfolk NAACP President James Rivers said. “It does seem sort of strange they would use that as a promotion for selling animals.”

“Yet I know that in many instances we do things without thinking about the broad implications,” Rivers added.

The language on the flier has, according to the article, been changed to “blowout adoption event for our black furry friends.”

So, dear readers, what do you think? Was the reference to “our black babies” insensitive? Or was it political correctness gone too far?  Or something else?

Inquiring minds want to know

The Virginia Public Access Project today updated their website with the party performance data for statewide candidates for the House of Delegates and Senate districts. A lot of red on that house map to the left (click to enlarge).

I took a look at the contested races in Hampton Roads where there was a Democratic candidate and compared their performance to that of Creigh Deeds as well as President Obama. The results for these twelve races are shown in the chart below (also click to enlarge).

A couple of notes:

• In the 89th House district, the only opponent was an independent candidate. Thus the incumbent Democratic candidate, Kenny Alexander, statistically out-performed even President Obama. So while technically a contested race, in truth, it was closer to being an uncontested race.
• In the 91st House district, the race was a 3-way one, with a strong independent candidate, Gordon Helsel. In fact, Helsel was so strong that he got a larger percentage of the vote (32.6%) than did Deeds (31%).

Three Democratic candidates – Sam Eure in the 91st, Gary West in the 94th and Matthew James in the 80th – performed worse than gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds. Only James managed to pull out a win in a heavily Democratic district. Winning Democratic candidates averaged nearly 10 points better than Deeds did, with Lynwood Lewis (100th) leading the way with a 23 point spread. Nearly matching the average of the winning candidates was Bobby Mathieson, who, as of this writing, lost by 14 votes.

For these contested races, Deeds averaged nearly 11 points behind the percentages posted for Obama.

More below the fold.

District 77, 79, 92 and 95 had unopposed Democratic incumbents while the remaining districts had mostly unopposed Republican incumbents. (The 85th had an independent candidate.) As you can see, some of those districts are inhospitable to Democratic candidates. Obama only one one of the Republican-held districts – the 84th, which is represented by Sal Iaquinto (and before that by Bob McDonnell).

Interestingly enough, when compared to Obama, Deeds did a little better in these uncontested districts, running a little less than 10 points behind.

So in Hampton Roads, Deeds ran, on average, 10.23 points behind Obama. This is better than what he did statewide, where his 41.25% of the vote compared to 52.62% of the vote for Obama in 2008 was 11.37 points behind. Given the historic nature of the 2008 race, I doubt if anyone expected that Deeds would be able to get the same numbers that Obama got.

One last chart.

This compares the performance of Deeds, Obama, and Tim Kaine (2005) across all of the districts in Hampton Roads. While the tendency may be to compare Deeds to Obama, it is interesting to note that there were areas of Hampton Roads where Kaine outperformed Obama, mostly areas we would consider Republican. Had Deeds done as well as Kaine – or as well as the winning Democratic candidates this year – the gubernatorial race would have been much closer.

I won’t be able to make this (because I’ll be at the Blogs United conference) but here’s your chance to talk to Rep. Glenn Nye.

Just a quick reminder that the Blogs United conference is coming up this Saturday, November 21. The event will be held from 9am-4pm at the David Student Union Center on the campus of Christopher Newport University in Newport News. Among the media personnel scheduled to attend are Anita Kumar of Washington Post, Ryan Nobles of NBC 12, Kimball Payne of Daily Press, and Julian Walker of Virginian-Pilot. Also planning to attend are Rep. Rob Wittman (VA-01), and candidates Scott Robinson (VA-01), Coby Dillard (VA-03), Scott Rigell (VA-02), Ken Golden (VA-02), Scott Taylor (VA-02), and Ben Loyola (VA-02).  Other electeds and candidates have been invited to attend.

Register here. And remember, you don’t have to be a blogger to attend this conference.

EDIT: forgot to mention that the conference is now free, thanks to some generous contributions from our sponsors.

The Virginian-Pilot has been all over the latest information on the Phil Hamilton situation. In an article on the front page of Tuesday’s paper (strangely buried on the website here), the cancellation of the ethics probe is causing concern.

Frustrated by the halt to the inquiry, House Minority Leader Ward Armstrong, D-Henry County, said Tuesday that his caucus plans to push a package of ethics reform bills during the upcoming legislative session.

While some of the specific ideas are still being discussed, Armstrong said, one proposal will call for meetings of the ethics panel that are now held in private to be made public

Um, yeah. That would make sense. Or at the least this:

A report of the panel’s work is provided to the person who requested the investigation – in this case, [Speaker of the House Bill] Howell. He said he doesn’t plan to make it public.

We should keep the pressure on Mr. Howell. The report should be public.

Of course, I happen to agree with the editorial board: the probe should continue. Even The Daily Press, who endorsed Hamilton for re-election, finds the cessation of the ethics investigation “regrettable.”

A single line in the Pilot article mentioned something intriguing:

Last month, the clerk for the House of Delegates turned over documents related to Hamilton in response to a federal subpoena.

The details of this are in this Washington Post blog post:

House Clerk Bruce Jamerson said today that he received a subpoena for Hamilton’s economic interest forms, travel vouchers and documents relating to the Old Dominion University teaching center where Hamilton secured a job.

The subpoena was hand-delivered Sept. 22. Documents were to be made available by Oct. 21 — the next meeting date of the federal grand jury, according to Jamerson.

How come this didn’t come out during the election? It certainly would have been useful to know, even if it wouldn’t have changed the election results. I doubt if the reporters covering the General Assembly would have kept this information quiet so someone – and I’m not pointing a finger at Jamerson here – made the decision to do so. That they would go to those lengths to keep this under wraps until now should scare all of us: what else are they, our elected representatives, keeping from us?

“Sunshine is the best disinfectant,” according to Justice Lewis Brandeis. Let the sun shine in on the Hamilton investigation.

UPDATE: Gov. Kaine says the investigation should continue. Funny – he used the same Brandeis quote as I did.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever does.” — Margaret Mead

The quote above is one of my favorites. And Tuesday, we got an opportunity to see it happen.

It started with a phone call that I received Monday morning. Yes, I’m on the city’s email list so I got a copy of the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting. The email, unlike the copy on the city’s website, doesn’t contain hyperlinks to the supporting documents. (Which makes no sense, in my opinion.) So I just scanned the email and went on with my day. Someone who didn’t receive their email decided to go online and look at the agenda. When she saw the rather undescriptive mention of the charter changes in Public Hearing 4, she decided to look at the documents. What she saw prompted her to make several phone calls, including one to me.

Once I looked at the documents, I put up a post about the proposed changes and sent emails with a link to it. I also made a few calls. But it wasn’t just me. Once the information was out there, it went viral. Emails flew fast and furious through the various communities of interest.  The Virginian-Pilot posted an article on PilotOnline, which was printed in Tuesday morning’s paper.

No doubt there were numerous emails and phone calls to members of council. So many, in fact, that by the time they met in the informal session (I call it the meeting before the meeting), the mayor had already decided that the charter changes related to recall and petition should be voted down. Here’s a brief synopsis of that session that was sent to me, as I was unable to attend:

Mayor started by saying that there is a “great deal of confusion about what we are trying to do “( PH-4 charter changes). He appreciated how the community could be upset but the “City Attorney threw us under the bus by being pro-active after a 5 or 15 minute discussion earlier”. “Lot of misunderstanding in the community. Let’s put this to bed and vote no on the referendum and recall changes. Then he asked the City Attorney “if we vote no can we bring up in say a year?” The City Attorney’s answer was you don’t have to wait any period of time before you can bring it up again. Dr Whibley was very impressed with the number of people who read our agenda and responded. Mayor also had some concerns about a small group of people who could form a recall for any reason whatsoever. These proposed changes “just jumped through the system”

When I arrived for the formal session, the group gathered was not as large as I had hoped, but given the shortness of the time frame, it was a good crowd. It was interesting to watch as people mingled and introduced themselves to each other. Nearly every person present had come to speak on this one agenda item. One woman told me her mother had just come in for a visit that day but she told her that she had to come to council to speak against this. A total of 16 people (14 by the mayor’s count plus two others that somehow got lost in the mix) signed up to speak. Despite the mayor opening the meeting with an apology for the way these changes to the charter had come about and a statement that council would be voting against them, nearly all of the 16 chose to speak and be heard. After the speakers were done, the council voted against the charter changes to recall and petition. (They voted in favor of the charter change for supplemental compensation for the director of the Department of Public Health.)

The people won Tuesday. There were no Democrats or Republicans – just Norfolk citizens who wanted what is best for our city. A very big thank you to all who participated in any way in making this happen. My faith in the power of citizen involvement got a pretty big boost.

And a very special thank you to the person who actually read the links and alerted us to the problem. Without her, none of this would have happened.

I’m sitting in the Norfolk City Council meeting. After the informal session, council had already decided to vote down the charter changes.

Thanks to all who called, emailed and otherwise contacted our council members. This is Democracy in action, folks!

h/t Left of the Hill

City Council will meet tomorrow, Tuesday, November 17, at 2:30pm. The council agenda is here. Included on the agenda is a public hearing on charter changes, which have to be approved by the General Assembly. You can read the proposed changes in this pdf.

Of particular concern to me is the change in sections 32 and 35, which increases the minimum number of signatures required for petition from 4,000 to 8,000. This unfairly raises the bar on citizen input. One of the largest petition drives ever undertaken by the citizens was that relating to Bay Oaks Park.  That petition garnered 5,376 signatures. More recently, the residents of Highland Park undertook a similar petition, gathering over 5,000 signatures.

I urge any who can attend tomorrow afternoon’s council meeting to do so and to urge council to reject this attempt to silence Norfolk voters.

If you cannot make the meeting, call, fax or email your council representatives. Their contact information is here. We need to stop this before it goes to Richmond for approval.

Other changes to the charter being proposed:

• Allowing a salary supplement for the Director of Public Health. That we continue to add more people to the city payroll at a time when the city is stressed financially makes little sense to me.
• Removal of the recall process. The entire section related to recall of members of council (as well as references to it) are being removed. The Virginia Code § 24.2-230 et seq, and § 24.2-233 in particular, will be controlling. Interesting that the charter section being removed had a requirement of a minimum of 300 signatures on the recall petition while the Code has no minimum. Also interesting is that no reason was required for the recall under the charter but the Code has specific requirements (neglect of duty, misuse of office, or incompetence in the performance of duties).

One more interesting tidbit: I didn’t see the announcement in the newspaper and it’s not included in the pdf, where it was supposed to be attached as Exhibit B. But if the description of the charter changes were as per the agenda, I doubt if anyone would have known the contents, anyway. Perhaps the General Assembly could make the requirement that public notices be in plain language.

UPDATE: Brian over at Bearing Drift points out that requiring 8,000 signatures is almost as many votes as were cast in the last municipal election.  Bryan at Left of the Hill points out that only 10,000 signatures are required for statewide candidates for office!

Del. Phil Hamilton (STEVE HELBER, Associated Press / February 25, 2004)

I have just received confirmation that Phil Hamilton did indeed resign effective midnight last night, as reported by Bearing Drift.  The question now is what happens to the ethics probe.

Some are saying that as a part of the deal, the probe will cease. I don’t know that such action is appropriate. Chapter 13 of Title 30 of the Virginia Code deals with conflicts of interests in the General Assembly.  In particular, § 30-116 lays out the procedure for disposition.  If the complaint is without merit, it is to be dismissed. If the complaint has merit and the violation was “not made knowingly,” the case is referred to the House Privileges and Elections committee.

If, however, the violation was made knowingly, the case get referred to the Attorney General’s office for disposition.

Surely the investigation should continue to the point of determining whether Hamilton knowingly or unknowingly violated the ethics rules. (I consider dismissing the complaint to not be an option.)

Seems both the Democrats and the Republicans kept their House leadership intact, with the exception of the addition of David Englin as Vice Chair of the Democratic Caucus. Funniest thing: Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell spoke at the meeting of the Democrats but not the Republicans.

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The Norfolk Council races are starting to shape up. Six of the eight seats (all except the two superwards) will be on the ballot in May. Mayor Paul Fraim announced his intention to run for re-election the day after the gubernatorial election and will hold a campaign kickoff tomorrow. There was a decent writeup in Sunday’s Compass (the Norfolk insert) about the six races. At this time, there are announced candidates in the Ward 1 (incumbent Don Williams) and Ward 5 (incumbent Randy Wright) but from what I’m hearing, there will be more.

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Gov. Tim Kaine was in Hampton Roads Saturday, touring parts of Hampton and Norfolk hit hardest by the storm. (No link to the PilotOnline story as the site is down right now.)

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The date has been set for the Republican firehouse primary in the 8th Senate district.  It will be held Saturday, December 5.  Guess I need to get cracking on getting out some posts about these two

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So what’s on your mind? Consider this an open thread.

It’s been a long time since the last one but today the Denver Broncos played worse than the Washington Redskins. A win is a win – I’ll take it.

Still think Dan Snyder needs to go, though.

The storm came through Hampton Roads Thursday and I had no problem with my power. Overnight, the power went out (not sure for how long) but it was working again when I got up this morning. Then around 10:30am, it blinked a couple of times and then went out for good.

I have no idea what caused the power to be out but my whole neighborhood and the surrounding area had none. The weather today was a little wet but nothing like yesterday.

We were without power until about 5:30pm. So I spent most of the day trying to entertain myself. Played the piano for a little while (thank goodness I had the piano tuned a few weeks ago), then I discovered a Logic Puzzles book that I had bought a while back and never opened. So I spent some time doing some of those.

It’s amazing, when you think about it, how much we rely on power. My newspaper wasn’t delivered today and without power, I couldn’t read it online. No way to charge my cell phone – since until this afternoon, I didn’t have a car charger – so I couldn’t keep it on the whole time. I did manage to make coffee before the power went out; otherwise, a trip to the local 7-11 or something would have been necessary. No power meant no heat (and all the wood for my fireplace was wet); thank goodness it wasn’t that cold today. I did go to the local hardware store to pick up some of those logs: I managed to get the last one in the store. Seems I wasn’t the only one unprepared for the power outage.  And given that I have a waterbed, I’m really glad the power is back on in time for it to reheat before I go to bed.

Anyway – hope y’all had a good day

It’s that time again. Bloggers from all over the Commonwealth will be coming together on Saturday, November 21, for Blogs United, a day of fun, food, and, of course, a little politics The event this year is being held at the David Student Union on the campus of  Christopher Newport University from 9am to 4pm. Part of the program will be a media panel and confirmed guests for the event include Ryan Nobles from NBC 12, Anita Kumar of The Washington Post, Julian Walker of The Virginian-Pilot, and Kimball Payne of The Daily Press. Elected officials and/or their representatives will also be in attendance.

Doors open at 8am and the $15 registration fee includes breakfast and lunch. You can register for the event here.  Hope to see you there!

For months now, Republicans in Virginia Beach have been campaigning for the seat currently occupied by now Sheriff-elect Ken Stolle. Jeff McWaters jumped out early: he’s been all over the place (I’ve run into him a number of times) and a drive through Virginia Beach prior to the November election would make anyone think he was on that ballot, as he had signs up everywhere. The other candidate, Rosemary Wilson, has been much less showy but no less energetic.

The Democrats, on the other hand, have no candidate as of this writing. Jeffrey Breit dropped his bid back in June and tells me he has no intention of getting back in. Sonny Stallings told The Washington Post that he’s not running, either.

Any Democrat would have a hard time winning this seat. The 8th Senate district is reliably Republican: while vpap hasn’t posted the numbers for November yet, it is telling to note that McCain won the district by 10 points last year. I am told that Thelma Drake also won this district last year.

So I think the only question for Democrats in the 8th is which of these Republican candidates will better represent the entire district. I’ll have more thoughts on this as time goes on.

By now, you’ve probably heard that the votes in the 21st House of Delegates district have been counted and that Republican Ron Villanueva has been declared the winner by a scant 13 votes.

I received the following statement from the campaign of Bobby Mathieson:

Yesterday, more votes got counted in the 21st District House of Delegates race because of an open and transparent process we fought to let run its course. After examination of rejected absentee and provisional ballots, seven more voices were heard in this close and important election, and the vote totals have changed.

Unfortunately, the Virginia Beach Electoral Board decided, at their own discretion, NOT to count four absentee ballots. These voters did what they needed to do – signed and dated their ballots, and had someone witness them. But the Virginia Beach Electoral Board chose to silence those voices on a technicality. That is not the way you encourage citizens to participate in the foundation of democracy – our electoral process – and it is tragic.

There are still open questions in this race, and it is in the best interest of the voters of the 21st District to seek a recount. Bobby Mathieson will continue to fight to ensure every single legally cast ballot gets counted in an open and transparent manner. As a lifelong public servant, he will always stand for good government, for transparency, and for serving the public interest. Close elections like this provide citizens the opportunity to shine a bright light on the electoral process, learn important lessons, and emerge better prepared for the next election.

Once the results are certified, Mathieson will have the opportunity to ask for a recount. Since the margin is so small, the city will have to pay for it.

The State Board of Elections website shows the difference to be 14, not 13, votes, out of a total of 15,365 votes cast.  The vote total represents less than 33% of those registered in the district.  Two things jump out at me.

First – more people participated in this election than in 2007. The total votes cast two years ago was 7,725, which was just over 18% of registered voters.  That the number of votes cast almost doubled says that people were paying attention enough to get to the polls. And not just Republicans, either. The number of votes cast for Mathieson alone this year almost matched the total votes cast two years ago.  This being a gubernatorial year, you would expect higher turnout, but I didn’t expect it to be almost double.

Second – wonder if those 33 people who cast write-in votes wished they could have a do-over?

As our nation is engaged in two wars, I was saddened to see that the front page of our local paper paid more attention to the death of a sniper than to those who serve and who have served. There was a single front page story – and it was more about the individual than veterans in general, a story that some might even find offensive.

Lots of information on PilotOnline about what’s closed on this national holiday but little about about what the holiday means. Interesting that the banks and the courts are closed, but trash pickup in Norfolk goes on as scheduled.

Senator Jim Webb gets what Veterans Day is about. Here is a short clip of his remarks today on the Senate floor.

His entire remarks are below the fold.

“This Veterans Day, we will stop as a nation to commemorate the service of all of those who have served our country throughout our history and to thank the nation’s 23.4 million veterans for the service that they have given in war and in peace, extending all the way back in terms of living veterans of World War I. We want to do our best to take care of those who have served our country, to honor that service.

“As the son of an Air Force officer, the father of a Marine, and a Marine combat veteran myself, I understand the value of having leaders in Congress who know first-hand what it’s like to be deployed, to have close family members deployed and, ultimately, to join the ranks of my fellow veterans.

“As a member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and as the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee, I take very seriously my commitment to serving our nation’s veterans and our active duty, National Guard, Reserve service members, and their families. I believe that the extraordinary devotion to duty demonstrated by our military veterans in defending our nation’s security must be matched by a corresponding commitment to their welfare by their elected representatives in Congress.

“As we honor those who have served in uniform this Veterans Day, we should remember that they have always done what the country asks of them in every war. When they take off their uniform to return to family and friends in civilian life, it is our responsibility to act as their stewards to demonstrate the value we place on their service to our nation.”