press
Where We Go One, We Go All
Between 1925 when Adolph Hitler was first rising in politics and 1933, when he was appointed chancellor of Germany, the nation had a population of between 62-65 million people. The US has a population 5 times greater than the Third… Read More ›
Trolling Polling
By Frank Blechman A weekly column is an invitation to preach. As a former teacher, I strongly feel the pull to lecture. Yet I like to think that for the most part, I have used these columns to share my… Read More ›
Is the Virginia GOP Doomed?
Editors’ Note: Excerpted from the Roanoke Times, July 8, 2020. When state Sen. Amanda Chase announced in February that she would seek the Republican nomination for governor in 2021, a senior Republican legislator put out an unusual statement: “Amanda just… Read More ›
Falsetto Voices in Defense of History
Likely no one would accuse President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt of either anti-American or racist behavior. To do so would wreak trauma among fans of the Teddy Bear. However, it cannot be said that folks… Read More ›
Virginia’s Protest Sites
The protests across the nation in response to the deaths of Black Americans in questionable circumstances have occurred spontaneously and in remarkable sizes and geographic distribution. And all of them in just a few weeks since the murder of George… Read More ›
Being Numb, 2020
By Frank Blechman You may be familiar with an old vaudeville sketch in which a man is walking down a road when he sees another man hitting himself in the head with a hammer. The first man approaches the second,… Read More ›
Brief Cases
MERCY FOR LAMESTREAMERS IN LIBERTY U SPAT Lynchburg prosecutors last week announced their decision not to pursue criminal charges against two journalists who Liberty University police accused of trespassing on campus while covering the school’s response to the coronavirus pandemic…. Read More ›
Vacuous VPAP Visuals Vex Viewers
The business of politics is very often fraught with hurly-burly, i.e. noisy confusion, tumult. Facts are even more often elusive or, at a minimum, subject to multiple interpretations, or spin, and, even on occasion, to being declared “alternative.” The Commonwealth’s… Read More ›
VA Inmates: Engine of Prison Capitalism
Editors’ Note: Sourced in part from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, May 9, 2020. In 1871, the Virginia Supreme Court declared that prisoners were “slaves of the state.” That edict has been emulated across the nation throughout its prison systems. Recently, the… Read More ›