Del. Anderson is to be commended for getting this important piece of legislation headed towards becoming a law. One question–Is it against the law to do the myriad of other things people manage to do on cell phones while driving? Angry birds, paying your bills, etc can be just as distracting. I can see the defense now being that the driver was playing Words with Friends and not texting. I hope there are stop gaps so this cannot happen.
Sally Jewell tapped as Secretary of the Interior
It will be a difficult task finding anything politically onerous about Sally Jewell. She is an unfamiliar face to most of us and definitely an Washington Outsider. In fact, she is not a politician. She is the CEO of REI, an outdoor outfitting company. Now she has been selected by President Obama has the Secretary of the Interior.
Washington Post:
President Obama’s unconventional pick to lead the Interior Department — a former oil engineer and commercial banker who heads the consumer co-op Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI) — represents an effort by the administration to defuse the partisan fight over conservation and energy.
Speaker William Howell: Doing the Right Thing
Character has often been describes as doing the right thing when no one is looking. In the case of Speaker Howell, character is sometimes doing the right thing when everyone is looking and it takes courage.
Today Speaker Howell proved his mettle by voting the sneak Republican plan to redistrict not germane. According to the Washington Post:
House Speaker William J. Howell, one of Richmond’s most reliable Republican votes, bucked his own party Wednesday to derail a Senate redistricting plan that could have handed the GOP control of that chamber for decades.
Howell (Stafford) used a procedural ruling to kill the new Senate map, resisting pressure from his caucus and Senate Republicans, who assured him that state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) was prepared to back the plan.
