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Dominion wants offshore wind profits, but performance metrics? Not so much.
Imagine you’re going into a pitch meeting to outline a proposal that could put your prospective client years ahead in its industry and be worth millions in consulting and development fees for your own firm. It’s a can’t miss project, you tell the client. Once it’s up and running, you can enjoy not only market […]
Why not Virginia? An open letter to Florida, Texas guvs on immigrant junkets
October 3, 2022 Richmond, Virginia Dear Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, I have watched with keen interest your kind efforts to provide free transportation for new immigrants to visit some of our nation’s grand cities. I recall the time in my childhood when I first saw the gleaming towers of […]
Dr. Petrolove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love fossil fuels
We always knew it would come to this. That it would start … out there. Out on the Left Coast where all the loonies live: California, the land of surfboards and wildfires; of Google, Apple and Microsoft; of swimming pools and movie stars. And godless liberals. That’s the sort of place where wild-eyed, un-American ideas […]
Miyares plays ‘election integrity’ politics to romance the MAGA base
Politicians will play politics. And there’s nothing wrong with that, generally. The problem comes when the malignant notion takes hold that an overwhelmingly clean, fair process of administering elections is fair game for a partisan disinformation campaign to subvert public faith in the process and impose a corrupt system under one-party control. The MAGA wing […]
Obscenity suit exposed an outdated law and a society too reliant on government to raise kids
Last week, a court in Virginia Beach was asked to find two books depicting sexual activity obscene and ban their sale at a Barnes & Noble store to people younger than age 18. The court declined, largely sidestepping the question of whether the content was legally obscene and instead deconstructing the anachronistic state obscenity law […]
Virginia heads into the fall as a barometer for U.S. House control
If you are determined to stay awake until you know which political party will control the U.S. House of Representatives next year, you will be sleepless throughout the long night of Nov. 8 and possibly past dawn on Nov. 9. Or, if you want a pretty good idea how things are going to go, just […]
Football must address brain trauma to survive
Tomorrow, the first rituals of fall and a fresh school year will renew themselves as boys (and some girls) across Virginia snap the chin straps to their helmets, dig their cleats into the turf and start a new season of high school football. For me, the nostalgia gets so thick I could spread it with […]
Charlottesville is more than Unite the Right. But many Americans won’t see it that way.
Selma. Kent State. Both are known to history, at least on first blush, as loaded euphemisms for notoriously violent upheavals, characterizations that blemish the goodness of those places and their people. Just over five years ago, another city joined the list of those that need no state name, datelines that stand alone in implied infamy. […]
Subpar pay, burnout, pandemic disruptions and a teacher exodus
Virginia has justifiably prided itself on its kindergarten through 12th grade public schools that have been well regarded nationally – certainly as a cut above those of most of her sister Southern states. On average, our student outcomes and college admission statistics have been, over the decades, comparable to those of the perennial elites in […]
Dogwood Dell: a massacre foiled or a tale too good to be true?
If you don’t live near Richmond and get your news from its regional media market, the last time you probably heard of a place called Dogwood Dell was a little over a month ago when Virginia’s capital city made national news for boldly claiming to have foiled a mass shooting. The claim by Richmond’s police […]
Unheeded lessons: Torpid U.S. and state monkeypox responses evoke dark early months of COVID
Why is it that when a new transmissible pathogen arrives in Virginia, it seems as though governmental agencies responsible for coordinating the response are mired knee-deep in wet cement? Did COVID-19 teach us nothing? Last week, the Mercury’s Kate Masters revealed that Virginia was behind the curve in responding to monkeypox, a viral infection growing […]
Appreciation: Del. Jack Reid
I knew Del. John S. “Jack” Reid was in the building just by his unique booming voice and Foghorn Leghorn dialect. It echoed through the marble-floored corridors of Virginia’s Capitol and even pierced the chaotic din of the press filing room. When I heard it, I knew it was almost showtime. The House of Delegates […]