Does an elected official’s religion matter? Much was made behind the scenes about Mitt Romney being a Mormon. Recently, a disgruntled office-seeker lambasted one of our supervisors for supporting a pro-choice candidate and congressman. Both the disgruntled office-seeker and the supervisor are Catholic. Why should it matter?
Mom, Jean Smith, along with her son Jim, 19, were murdered,Friday afternoon, in their home in Dale City. The surviving children and father must be reeling from this senseless tragedy. My heart goes out to the family. According the article in the Potomac News, Jean was very active in her childrens’ lives.
By JONATHAN HUNLEY
Published: December 19, 2008
A mother and son described as the “kind of people you aspire to be” were found dead in their Dale City home Friday afternoon, Prince William County police said.
Jean Claire Smith, 39, and James Marshall Smith, 19, were discovered by a younger son of Jean Smith at about 3 p.m., Maj. Ray Colgan said.
Mother and son were found in different rooms of their house in the 13600 block of Langford Court, Colgan said.
“It appears to be a double-murder,” he said.
How the Smiths were killed was unclear Friday night, and Colgan said police hadn’t developed a motive for why anyone would harm them.
“They would be called ‘low-risk victims,’” he said.
The family was active at Holy Family Catholic Church, Colgan said, and in activities at C.D. Hylton High School. They seemed to get along with their neighbors.
“This is a fairly quiet neighborhood,” he said as he stood a few feet in front of the Smith home.
About 500 chickens remain in Loudoun County custody as part of a cockfighting crackdown in Lovettsville, VA. Even though the chickens which are mostly roosters will remain on the farm, they are considered evidence in an ongoing investigation.
Charges have not yet been brought but 2 farms are involved. Much cockfighting paraphernalia has been seized. The cockfighting laws have tightened up since the Michael Vick dog fighting scandal broke. The commonwealth’s attorney has not yet decided if he will press charges. If he does, this will be the first test case under the new anti-cockfighting laws.
It is interesting that this little indiscretion happened in Loudoun County. I guess the muckety mucks aren’t quite as muckety muck as they once thought.
Before I start crowing too much though, fancy roosters with spurs on have been seen running loose in Westgate subdivision. Perhaps Prince William County has a similar problem. The News and Messenger had better be ready to break this big story. Has anyone out there seen any odd animals that could be used in illegal animal fighting? Besides animal cruelty, illegal gambling is generally at the heart of some of the cockfights as well as dog fights. These aren’t your ordinary barnyard roosters.
We decided to have an Open Mic Day. Many people here have talked about everything but the thread topic. When that happens, that usually means that you all have something on your mind that you need to talk about. So…here’s your chance. Put it here and let’s try to keep the threads to topic, or semi topic, if at all possible. Let’s roll.
Adam Walsh, the 6 year old son of crime fighter John Walsh was murdered 27 years ago. John Walsh turned his grief into helping others, by going after child abductors and other criminals with a vengeance as the host of the TV show America’s Most Wanted.
Today, John Walsh got his final answer. The suspect, Ottis Toole, a known imprisoned pedophile, had given a death bed confession in 1997. Today the Hollywood, Florida police announced that they were closing their investigation and that Toole was the murderer, after sifting through confessions, recants, and more confessions. The Walsh family now has some justice and closure. John Walsh tonight, through his tears, told other parents never to give up.
John Walsh helped change the way America looks at missing children. He helped found the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 1984. He also helped get Adam’s Law enacted in 2006 which created strict requirements for registering sex offenders.
We have had some horrific things happen in Manassas and Prince William County. Our local police departments have been fabulous crime solvers. However, let’s face it; there are bad people out there. Just this past week or so, we have had a senior citizen sheriff deputy arrested for child pornography, a 13 year old and a developmentally delayed woman raped. This is the tip of the iceberg.
We have to continue to arrest, prosecute, sentence and incarcerate people to do evil things to other people. It does no good to single out people by ethnicity, age, immigration status, or other attributes. We need to watch our children very carefully and we need to remain vigilant and alert to protect those we love.
Above all, John Walsh has made us aware. Through his suffering and grief, he has saved many other children by his persistence. Child predators cannot continue to move freely through our society. They must be caught, brought to justice, and put where they can no longer prey upon others.
I am truly fascinated with this story. Caroline Kennedy has always been such an enigma to the world, always very private, reserved, and dedicated to her father’s memory and ideology in an unassuming manner. Her desire to seek public office comes as a pleasant surprise! I believe she would make a great senator.
Caroline Kennedy to Seek Appointment to N.Y. Senate Seat
UPDATE, 9:00 p.m.: Stefan Friedman, a spokesman for Caroline Kennedy confirmed to the Fix this evening she is seeking the Senate appointment. Kennedy made a round of calls today to influential New York Democrats, added Friedman. She spoke to, among others, Rep. Louise Slaughter who offered an endorsement this evening, as well as New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, December 16 will be the last BOCS meeting of 2008. Money will be the big agenda topic as the country frantically tries to find ways to fill the public coffers.
Ideas that were met with supervisors turning up their respective noses several months ago are now being eyed with less repulsion. Dana Fenton, director of legislative affairs, will bring up 2 previously rejected ideas. First to be considered will be a tax on admissions, meals and cigarettes. Second to be considered will be a bifurcated tax structure, where residential and commercial taxes will differ.
These ideas seem bearable if some sort of sunset clause is incorporated. Government always seems to hate to remove a tax, so auto-expire would make much more sense.
February 16 will be a holiday, by unanimous vote of the School Board last night. Here is communication that was sent out in email today:
High School Testing Schedule, Inservice/Workday Modified for January
The School Board voted unanimously on Wednesday to add the Presidents’ Day holiday back on this year’s school calendar meaning students and staff will be off on Monday, February 16, 2009.
With this latest change, and the School Board previously making Tuesday, January 20, 2009, Inauguration Day, a school holiday, other adjustments also had to be made. The high school testing schedule has been modified to help students achieve maximum success on semester-ending exams. Based on the consensus of high school principals, along with input from the Superintendent’s Staff, Wednesday, January 21, will be a review day instead of the first day of exams. Since this will push the end-of-semester exam cycle into the next week, the teacher inservice/workday (a student holiday) will now be on Tuesday, January 27, instead of Monday, January 26. The new date for the elementary school half-day/parent-teacher conferences will be Monday, February 2.
For elementary schools, the School Age Care (SAC) program will be closed during school holidays (January 19, January 20, and February 16), but open on teacher workdays and half days (January 27 and February 2).
Additional School News:
Prince William School Board Postpones Construction Contract for 11th High School
When does it end? Why do people behave like animals?
Friday, Jose Sucuzhanay died of a wounds suffered when he was beaten with a baseball bat. His crime? He was walking home from a church function with his brother Sunday night, December 7. Jose Sucuzhanay was beaten senseless by 4 men who jumped from a car shouting anti-Latino and anti-gay epithets at the 2 brothers. Jose’s brother escaped serious injury and was able to talk to police officers.
The parents had applied for a visa to come make medical decisions about their son. Permission to visit didn’t arrive in time. Friday Jose died of head injuries sustained during the beating. He was 31 years old.
Thr FBI days that hate crimes against Latinos are on the rise.
NYC Latinos express their outrage over this senseless killing.
MOSCOW, Dec. 13 — The e-mail that arrived Monday night in the inboxes of two organizations tracking hate crimes in Russia carried a disturbing message and an even more disturbing photo — that of a man’s severed head resting on a wooden chopping block.
As an online community of responsible Prince William County residents and American citizens, can we judge the Russian people for their views, and the violence to which it has led? Do we have more right, or less right, to comment than Americans who have not gone through what we lived through in 2007?
Real Estate is booming in Prince William County. This is a good news/bad news situation. While houses are selling at dirt cheap prices, these sales are helping to set the assessment rate and therefore, the amount of money brought in by the county. The sales are also helping lock in our home value. Anyone who needs to sell their home in the near future is going to be giving away their house.
Another down side of the real estate boom in PWC is that investors are gobbling up properties. Some of our neighborhoods are about 15% rental. The county is considering a rental inspection program down the road. Currently, in order to do that, an area must be declared a blighted area. Very few homeowners would like their neighborhood declared a blighted area.
Neighborhoods that have too many rental units are often plagued with problems from home upkeep to overcrowding. Absentee landlordism has been responsible for the downfall of many local communities as owners moved onward and upward and kept their properties. Other folks sold out to investors. Several examples of rental properties gone bad can be seen in the county and in the city.
Cheaper isn’t always better. Homeowners will have to be vigilant to maintain their neighborhoods if a disproportionate number of homes become rental units. Ideally, the investors will be members of the community. Then there is a real interest in who rents your house.
Hopefully, the upturn in the real estate market is a sign of recovery and that soon good news will emerge.
Once again, the ADL clearly states that there is an important discussion that needs to happen regarding immigration, and yet, still, people with little insight, miss the point. It is amazing that the for an article with the subtitle, “Blog comments reflect stereotyping and bigotry”, you will find hateful and misinformed comments replicated in the comment section of THAT article. What the ADL IS advocating, AGAIN, is that people step away from the scapegoating of hispanics and look at the historical relationship between hate rhetoric and the dangerous journey it has taken some nations.
The Houston Chronicle made some important discoveries with its recent series by Susan Carroll on the failure of law enforcement officials to deport or keep in jail illegal immigrants who commit crimes.
Certainly the Chronicle’s investigation pointed out shortcomings in our legal and immigration systems that need to be fixed. The release of any criminal who goes on to commit more crimes, whether he or she is in this country legally or not, can be called a miscarriage of justice.
What concerns us at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is despite Carroll’s attempts to reach readers with the results of research that “found that recent immigrants are far less likely than their U.S.-born counterparts to commit crimes and end up in prison,” anti-immigrant bigots seized on parts of her series to insult, stereotype, and even advocate violence against immigrants and others they perceived to be immigrants, especially Hispanics.
Here are some examples of the comments from Chronicle blogs:
• “This is a no-brainer to me. Start with the jails and get all those people deported, then construction companies, garbage companies, landscape companies, restaurants and must I go on?”
• “All of our grandchildren’s children are going to live in a third world country.”
• “We the taxpayers are footing the bill for these society leeches.The people from Katrina were bad enough. Our crime rate is still high.”
• “I got a great idea — just shoot them on the spot if they commit a serious crime in Texas.”
These comments should offend all of us, and must be challenged. One only need look at the Holocaust to see the results of relentless, pervasive bigotry. The Nazis began their campaign with words and pictures against Jews, Slavs, political dissidents, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and the mentally and physically disabled.
Today’s Washington Post revealed quite an embarrassment for the Department of Homeland Security.
For 4 years James Reid, who owns a cleaning company, has been sending workers weekly to the home of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. The secret service has been screening the workers before they enter Chertoff’s home. They have flown through the checks with flying colors. Now James Reid is furious. He now has in excess of $22,000 in fines. Why?
Now, owner James D. Reid finds himself in a predicament that he considers especially confounding. In October, he was fined $22,880 after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators said he failed to check identification and work documents and fill out required I-9 verification forms for employees, five of whom he said were part of crews sent to Chertoff’s home and whom ICE told him to fire because they were undocumented.
Reid has found the fine so excessive that he might just have to go out of business. He feels it is extremely difficult for a businessman to distinguish between fake and real driver’s licenses and social security cards. What really frosts him is that he is being fined after being given the green light by the secret service. The secret service actually does not do immigration checks.
Immigration laws are unevenly enforced, he [Reid] added, allowing big companies to stay in business while crushing small-business owners and workers. He said the rules punish “scapegoats” such as him while inviting people at every level — customers, subcontractors and contractors — to look the other way while benefiting economically from cheaper labor.
“No one wants to put the blame on the head; they’d rather put the blame on the business owner,” said Reid, who owns Consistent Cleaning Services. “Damned if I should be fined for employees that I took over to their house.”
Chertoff declined to comment. “We’re very constrained in what we can say about anybody who has any kind of issue with the department,” he said.
It is easy to see why Secretary Chertoff is keeping his mouth shut. How embarrassing. I guess the expression not being able to police your own has come home to roost.
Supervisor Frank Principi had a letter in the News and Messenger this morning defending his position as a pro-life elected official. As I was reading it, I wondered if perhaps we ought to bring dueling back.
In Saturday’s News & Messenger, Chris Royse, under the guise of wishing residents a Merry Christmas, indicated that I supported a pro-choice agenda and called upon church officials in the Arlington Catholic Diocese to deny me communion. Although I normally keep my personal and religious life private, I felt it necessary to respond to his letter.
First I would like to state that I am a pro-life, Knight of Columbus, practicing Catholic who believes in the separation of church and state. My faith has always been a very important part of my life.
Second, I am a life-long Democrat and I can honestly say that there has never been a time that I agreed 100 percent with the party’s platform.
Third, I hope that most people who read this article are aware that Chris Royse was my Republican opponent for Woodbridge Supervisor. It would seem that as a former candidate, he would be aware that the Board of County Supervisors does not make decisions regarding abortion. This is a matter addressed by the state and federal government.
This is a very special time of year to Americans. Whether we celebrate Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah , or Eid Day, it is a season of love, of giving back and appreciating all of our blessings. That we live in troubled economic times is all the more reason to look at the good in our community and work to make it better. We accomplished this recently when businesses and volunteers came together in Woodbridge to host Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for those in need in our community. This makes a positive difference in our community.
In the New Year, let’s turn our focus to something we can influence on the local level, the public policy issues affecting our quality of life. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,
FRANK J. PRINCIPI
Prince William County Supervisor
Woodbridge Magisterial District
