RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – The percentage of people arrested after being denied permission to buy firearms at Virginia gun shows has increased over the last two years.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that 10.6 percent of the people who were denied permission to buy guns in 2011 were charged with an offense related to being someone legally prohibited from possessing a firearm. That increased to 12.4 percent in 2012 and to 27 percent last year.
Thomas Baker is a criminologist at Virginia Commonwealth University. He says that while the upward trend is a positive sign, it’s important to note that those who weren’t arrested after failing a background check could simply go to a private seller at a show and buy a gun. Existing law requires only federally licensed dealers to run background checks.
Pre-School: For want of a nail a shoe was lost…for want of a shoe….
Prince William County qualified for enough state funding this year to provide pre-kindergarten classes to more than 1,600 children from low-income families. But the county turned down nearly all of that money and instead serves just 72 children in four classrooms.
Manassas Park was eligible for state funding to help 104 children prepare for kindergarten, but its program serves just 36.
Across Virginia, about $23 million designated for preschool was left on the table because localities — citing limited resources, lack of classroom space and politics — did not contribute the required matching funds to take full advantage of the program. As a result, more than 6,000 disadvantaged children missed the opportunity to go to school before kindergarten.
Stay Away from the Olympics in Sochi!!!
Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine has a blunt message for U.S. athletes: Don’t go to the Sochi Olympic games.
Citing security concerns ahead of the winter games in Russia, King said: “I would not go, and I don’t think I would send my family.”
“It’s just such a rich target,” King said in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It would be a stretch, I think, to say I’d send my family.”
King’s comments come amid increased concerns from some U.S. officials that Russia hasn’t done enough to combat the possibility of a terrorist attack.
Let’s say money is no object. Would you go to the Olympics this year? Would you encourage your family to go? How safe are they? Do you expect a terrorist event to take place during the winter Olympics? I think you can bet on it, I am sorry to say.
State Republicans attempt legislation to control Attorney General Herring
The Republicans who dominate the Virginia House of Delegates are gearing up for legal battle with state Attorney General Mark R. Herring, the first Democrat to hold the post in twenty years.
Del. C. Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) has put forward a bill that would give General Assembly members legal standing to represent the commonwealth when the governor and attorney general choose not to defend a law.
If the bill succeeds, it could set up a situation like the one in the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans hired a private attorney to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court.
The attorney general’s office declined to comment directly on the legislation, but spokeswoman Ellen Qualls noted that “the constitution of Virginia provides for a duly elected attorney general to do this very job.”
Climate change denier to head Environmental Subcommittee
Huffingtonpost.com:
WASHINGTON — House Republicans selected Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), who is on the record questioning whether humans are causing climate change, to head of the Science Committee’s environment subcommittee.
Schweikert will replace Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), who moved to the House Appropriations Committee. He said he plans to use his new post to target the Obama administration’s regulatory agenda.
“Too often, this Administration has tried to bypass Congress and impose its will on the American people through regulatory fiat,” Schweikert said Thursday in a statement, The Hill reported. “We have a responsibility to provide a check-and-balance to ensure there is fairness and openness in the process and that taxpayers are not being subjected to onerous and unnecessarily burdensome rules and regulations.”
Supreme Court Justices question 35 foot buffer zone at MA clinics
Supreme Court justices on Wednesday aggressively questioned whether a Massachusetts law that creates buffer zones around abortion clinics unconstitutionally inhibits the free-speech rights of antiabortion activists.
Several justices made clear in their questioning that they felt the law’s restrictions on who can enter a 35-foot space around a facility’s entrance unfairly targets those who want to hand out leaflets or speak to the women planning abortions.
House passes $1.1 Trillion spending bill
NYtimes News Alert:
The House on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly, 359-67, to approve a $1.1 trillion spending bill for the current fiscal year, shrugging off the angry threats of Tea Party activists and conservative groups whose power has ebbed as Congress has moved toward fiscal cooperation.
The legislation, 1,582 pages in length and unveiled only two nights ago, embodies precisely what many House Republicans have railed against since the Tea Party movement began, a massive bill dropped in the cover of darkness and voted on before lawmakers could possibly have read it.
The conservative political action committee Club For Growth denounced it and said a vote for it would hurt any lawmaker’s conservative scorecard. Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, castigated it as a profligate budget buster that is returning Washington to its free-spending ways.
So let’s see who is fighting this spending bill. It looks like Congress is tired of dealing with obstructionists and people who want to shut down this country for their own purposes.
Will the Senate pass their own version of this spending bill? In all probability.
Down in Jersey Land…the Tollbooths of Glory
Jimmy:
In the day we sweat it out on the streets stuck in traffic on the GWB
They shut down the tollbooths of glory because we didn’t endorse Christie
Sprung from cages on Highway 9
We got three lanes closed, So Jersey get your ass in line
Read More
Coal Miner’s Water
How inexcusable is this hazardous waste spill? It was last inspected in 1991. That’s 23 years ago! That date is pre-Bill Clinton. If the states do not regulate their plants, then the feds will have to do it. Water and rivers affect us all.
In fact, the federal government has a moral obligation to regulate plants in order to avoid incidents like this one. Where does the Elk River flow? How does it get to the sea? How many of us will be exposed to this industrial filth?
Downton Abbey Season 4 episodes 1, 2, 3
As promised, our very own Downton Abbey discussion page. I haven’t figured out how to keep it running but I will. I have put my favorite character at center stage. Let’s begin with calling out our favorite characters. Mine is definitely Violet. Et tu?
Transparent KKK or Condom Men?
I am a bad person. I simply could not resist. Once I saw this picture which was taken of the Virginia General Assembly at the Inauguration yesterday, a SNL skit went running through my bad head.
What a horrible picture. I can’t decide if the Virginia General Assembly looked more like Condom Men or if they looked more like a transparent KKK rally with their pointy hoods. At any rate, it is a horrible, unforgivable picture. I am scarred for life just from seeing this photo op which was in the Washington Post.
“Carry me back, to Ole Virginny….das where our assemblymen …” oh, never mind. If there are assembly women in there, I simply cannot tell. No, no women. No woman would come out in public in a condom costume.
Surely there could have been other contingent plans for rain other than matching KKK condom costumes.
Open Thread…………………………………Sunday, January 12
Winter is a rough time for animals. Not all will make it through. Buffalo in Yellowstone are no exception. These buffalo are in danger not only of cold and starvation but also of heat. The buffalo sometimes get too close to the geo-thermal activity which can also kill.
Governor Terry McAuliffe inaugurated
In the nine weeks since Election Day, political observers say, Terry McAuliffe (D) has been shockingly gubernatorial.
With moderate Cabinet picks and an ardent courtship of Republicans, the colorful former Democratic National Committee chairman and political fundraiser has projected an image of seriousness, caution and bipartisanship that critics had doubted he could muster.
His deliberate approach appears meant to win over skeptics in both parties who dismissed him as a flamboyant Washington insider with no interest or experience in state politics before his failed bid for governor four years ago. He especially needs to woo Republicans if he wants to get his priorities through a House dominated by the GOP and a Senate where control is in flux.
“I was expecting it was going to be crazy liberals and political hacks,” Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax) said of McAuliffe’s Cabinet appointees. “And I have been very surprised — pleasantly surprised — that he really seems to be appointing people who know what they are doing, who are mainstream, who know how to run a government, who’ve been in the job before. So, pretty impressed.”
Everyone had it all decided last fall. The detractors of Terry McAuliffe had him pegged as a political hack who was partisan and knew nothing about governing. It seems that that assessment was just a little premature, as Virginia’s new governor has proven again and again that the way to move forward is by finding common ground.
Readers should note that not all of the McAuliffe detractors are Republicans. More than a handful are Democrats.
Loudon BOCS Demonstrating Cohones!
Much to my surprise, apparently, many on Loudon’s BOCS are standing strong against a massive housing rezoning effort by Developers. You know, those who are frothing at the mouth of the possibility of a bi county parkway opening up rural and transitional areas. You can read the full article here.
Members of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors frowned Wednesday night at a developer’s request to more than triple the number of houses it could build on land west of Dulles Airport, a potentially ominous sign for home builders hoping to reenter the suburban market.
Under existing zoning, Corbelis Development NoVa LLC of Ashburn can build 245 single-family detached homes on 737 acres it owns south of Route 50, part of a more than 4,000-acre community it is building called the Greens at Willowsford on what is now rolling farmland.
Yes, every vote does count, especially in Virginia
But senators were also bracing for a potential power struggle. The chamber has been evenly split since 2012 but under GOP control because the lieutenant governor, who presides over the chamber and decides most tie votes, was a Republican. On Saturday, that tiebreaking authority shifts from Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R) to Lt. Gov.-elect Ralph S. Northam (D).
Northam’s new office, however, gives Republicans a chance to take his seat, and with it outright control of the chamber. After a special election Tuesday, Del. Lynwood W. Lewis Jr. (D-Accomack) led Wayne Coleman (R), the owner of a Norfolk shipping company, by the slimmest of margins: 10 votes out of more than 20,000 cast, according to the State Board of Elections.
That narrow margin — 0.04 percent — entitles Coleman to a recount if the numbers hold. Local election boards began canvassing Wednesday to make sure their results were correct, a process that will continue into Thursday. The elections board is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Friday to certify the results, after which the loser could request a recount.
