Tag Archives: General Assembly

Evan Mantel’s Whistleblower Letter

Posted on May 7, 2013 at 5:13 pm by Pariahdog |

Having worked for Dave LaRock’s 1789 Project, Evan Mantel, a recent graduate of Patrick Henry College, says he is now “cynical towards politics.”

I wonder if he’s also now cynical toward our local press. Mantel’s letter to the editor describing his unpleasant experience appeared in the Loudoun Times Mirror on May 2, and was removed on May 5. I’m still waiting to hear an explanation for the removal, but given other recent conduct by the LaRock campaign the application of pressure to the editor seems likely. If that turns out to be true, it’s very disappointing behavior from a candidate for public office.

Luckily, the original letter was saved in Google’s webcache. It reveals a pattern of self-indulgence, abuse, and theft of labor hours. See for yourself: The letter is reproduced here, just in case LaRock’s campaign to represent Virginia’s 33rd District is successful at bullying Google, too. Continue reading →

“Tebow Bill” passed by House Reps; Intercepted by Senate Dems

Posted on February 19, 2013 at 7:10 am by John Flannery |

Home school advocates are suffering buyer’s remorse and lately demand the right by legislation to select ala carte services from the public schools that they, by homeschooling, have pronounced unworthy to educate them.

Home school parents want the right by law for their home school students to play on the athletic teams of the schools that they have chosen to avoid.

Republican Delegate Rob Bell, from the 56^th District, Albemarle County, authored what he called the “Tebow bill” to force every public school in the Commonwealth to allow homeschoolers to compete on public school teams even though they don’t attend the school.

The first fair concern is that Bell has widely characterized his proposal as the “Tebow bill” after the home-schooled Denver Bronco’s quarterback, Tim Tebow, who struck kneeling, fisted praying poses on the playing field when he scored.

Bell plays to that large fraction of the home schooling movement therefore that schools at home to avoid being taught, among other things, modern science that contradicts their fundamentalist beliefs that the Bible is to be understood literally and not as metaphor or allegory. Bell says he is a “committed supporter of home schooling.” Continue reading →

Links for Tuesday, April 24 (aka what I’ve read since the last links).

Posted on April 24, 2012 at 11:04 am by Liz Miller |

Links from Twitter, Facebook, and my blogroll.

Shakesville‘s “Primarily Endless” is HILARIOUS. I love this series of posts, I love the artwork Liss does.
Three from Think Progress: 1) Bradlee Dean, Rachel Maddow and Conservative Entitlement 2)Cantor ‘Puzzled’ That Obama Would Threaten To Veto The Latest GOP Tax Cut For Millionaires. 3) Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) advocates boycott of Coca-Cola to punish company for leaving ALEC
Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota tweets a graphic about VAWA: The Violence Against Women Act has had bipartisan support over the years. Let’s work together to reauthorize it
From HuffPo: Planned Parenthood Worried It’s The Target Of New Undercover Sting
Another from HuffPo: Facing the facts of high premarital sex and abortion rates, Evangelicals decide to really talk about sex
From AlterNet: How Darrell Issa and the Right Are Planning to Kill the U.S. Post Office
From Truth Wins Out: Pro-equality Catholics urged to stand with American nuns, oppose Vatican bullying

“The Vatican also reprimanded Network, a Catholic social justice lobbying group founded by sisters. Both Network and the LCWR were cited for spending too much time caring for the poor and fighting economic injustice (topics that Jesus had quite a lot to say about, if my memory serves me) and not nearly enough time opposing — in fact, being “silent” on — women’s reproductive rights and LGBT equality (which, to my knowledge, Jesus never discussed at all).”

Amen.
From Mother Jones (warning, link is ad-heavy): Loudoun’s own Dominionist anti-LGBT Prison Fellowship Ministries (bleah) in the news!
From the NY Times: Lawyers Find Obstacles to the Disabled, Then Find Plaintiffs – whether or not you agree with the tactics, the truth is that enforcing the ADA is making NY City more accessible. As the population ages, the importance of this will come home to a lot more people.
Why does this matter? Landlords in Sarasota County Discriminating Against Disabled and Minorities. It’s hard to live your life if you can’t find a place to live. Sarasota’s powers-that-be are very clear that they don’t have enough staff to enforce the fair housing laws.
It’s even harder to live your life if you can’t make a living: Rising Unemployment Rate for People With Disabilities.
Access, housing, jobs: it all comes down to perception. From This Ain’t Living: Making Lives Valueless: People With Disabilities and Popular Perceptions
While we’re talking about accessibility, this comes from the University of Buffalo: Could Universal Design Be the Next Mainstream Movement in Architecture, Planning?
From the Girl With the Cane: Attn: Editor of the New York Post, re: Americans with Disabilities Act editoral.
From the Seattle Times: Designers add more personality to cutting-edge prosthetic limbs. Making prosthetics something to envy rather than pity.
And from Dave Hingsburger: The Benefits of Inclusion #116 (discussing his attendance at a performance of a mixed-mobility dance troupe)
From the National Partnership for Women and Families: Latest state to require cruel & medically unnecessary measures before an abortion: Louisiana.
From Blue Virginia: Loudoun Republicans Revealed Themselves in the 2012 General Assembly Session. Despite all their big talk about how they were going to focus on jobs and traffic, the Loudoun Republican Caucus focused mainly on guns and limiting women’s rights, and failed to bring home the transportation bacon.
From Same Facts: The Romneys “struggled” in college, living off the sale of stock! (via @dailykos). Having a reliable source of funds is not struggling.
From the Washington Post: McDonnell tries to Etch-a-Sketch his stance on abortion.
Also from the Washington Post: Loudoun is on the fringe of making a historic error. Please, BOS, vote Yes on Metro. We need it.
The Principal at PS 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn writes a letter to NY State Education Commissioner. (via @danielradosh)
From Dances With Fat: For Fat Patients and Their Doctors.
From Ms. Magazine: The UN has estimated that women do $11 trillion a year of unpaid work.
From Jezebel: For the Millionth Time: The Morning After Pill Is Not the Abortion Pill.
George Takei has a question for the Straight Folks.
And finally, a reminder to please just bookmark Jim Rigby’s blog.

Thanks, Republicans

Posted on February 28, 2012 at 7:36 pm by Epluribusunum |

And thanks to you also, Governor McDonnell, for your leadership on this. Thank you for amending the Ultrasound Rape bill to be merely an Ultrasound Battery bill. And then passing it.

This action unequivocally proves that the purpose of this bill has nothing to do with ensuring that a woman sees an ultrasound image of the embryo she has decided to abort, since in almost all cases, an external ultrasound won’t produce anything to see. No, this is just about throwing up any old pesky obstacle in her way and making it more inconvenient and expensive to exercise her legal, constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Thanks again for making that so clear. It’s way more convincing than us saying it.

Road spam and special rights: Two great tastes that taste great together?

Posted on January 16, 2012 at 8:19 pm by Epluribusunum |

Now this is really getting interesting. The new Board of Supervisors is apparently considering a motion to kill the volunteer illegal sign removal program, and it is not going over well with LI. I happen to agree; the program seems like a perfectly sensible way of dealing with the vexing problem of road spam.

“So in keeping with the overriding theme of this Board, paybacks, one of their first acts will be to kill this program as payback to those who helped fund their campaigns – the builders and developers and David Ramadan, and Godfather Dick Black as well. Here is the link to the staff report for this item, pay special attention to the motions at the end. They’re not doing this to keep things the way they are. This program costs Loudoun very little in minimal staff oversight, and provides its citizens with a great service – keeping our roadways safe and free of trash. But does that matter to this Board? Apparently not – this program ticks off their masters, so it must be done away with.”

Continue reading →

The first priority of the new School Board: sneer at human rights

Posted on January 13, 2012 at 10:06 am by Epluribusunum |

Crossposted at Equality Loudoun

The very first action taken by the newly elected Loudoun County School Board was this:

Regarding the Virginia Human Rights Act:

“I move to amend the Board’s previously adopted Legislative Program by removing the recommendation to expand the protected classifications contained in the Virginia Human Rights Act, Code of Virginia §2.2-3900 and §2.2-3901, to include gender orientation and gender identity and to further amend the Code of Virginia §22.1-78 to allow local school boards to similarly expand the protected classifications contained in local school board policies and regulations and that Staff be directed to make such other changes to the Legislative Program as to conform to the Program language of this motion.”

[from page 5 of the adopted Legislative Program]

Motion: Mr. Kuesters
Second: Mr. Fox

Vote: 6-3-0 (Mr. Reed, Mrs. Bergel, and Mrs. Sheridan opposed)

The only reason for initiating such an action is ideological, and the idea in play is that gay, lesbian, bisexual and/or transgender and gender variant youth are not deserving of having their human rights protected. The Wisconsin School District that was the subject of the film Bullied found out the hard and expensive way that this is not a good position for school boards to take. I hate to being up money when this is a fundamental moral issue, but unfortunately that’s the only language some people seem to understand.

Continue reading →

Patricia Phillips is Pro-Communist

Posted on November 4, 2011 at 8:47 am by Paradox13 |

Patricia Phillips is incensed at the treatment of Soviet communist veterans in Virginia. No, really. Here’s the picture of the veteran from her most recent, utterly misleading, mailing.

Note all the red stars on the medals? Or how about the “CCCP” on the one to the right of the coat’s button? And it’s pretty clearly a profile of Lenin on the medal in the top row. Clearly this veteran served the USSR with distinction! How horrible to have been treated so badly by Virginia!

In all seriousness, though, it would behoove a candidate for state Senate in the state with the largest U.S. Naval installation in the world to at least avoid using a picture of the enemy that Navy was built to defend against for fifty years in her political mail. This is more than just politics 101, this is a question of respect for the voting public who did serve.

What is with Loudoun Republicans and their inability to look at a picture and see what the rest of us see? From bloody doorways to Presidents with headshot wounds to, now, a picture of the wrong Naval veteran, Republican candidates and committees are incapable of actually looking at what they’re putting out there!

Continue reading →

Randy Minchew Opposes Birth Control

Posted on October 25, 2011 at 10:28 am by Paradox13 |

You might have heard about Mitt Romney’s kerfuffle with a voter in Iowa over the banning of hormonal birth control (the Pill and its successors). Essentially, policies that declare “life begins at conception” would have the practical upshot of banning the Pill, and hormonal birth control in general. It should be noted that this kind of birth control is a choice made by individuals – and couples – by the millions every day. It is safe, legal, effective and has improved the lives of innumerable people for fifty years.

So, of course, Republicans oppose it.

Here in Loudoun, the LCRC and its candidates want their radical anti-choice (and anti-women) polices declared “off limits” for public debate, or even mention. Indeed, I have no doubt this very post will result in a series of comments accusing me of being sensationalist or stirring up controversy. It is in the nature of these things. But when you ask the right questions, or read the right letters, (and I do mean right letters) you discover that the LCRC’s candidate’s positions on the fifty years of gender equality progress are, in fact, directly in line with the most radically paleolithic candidate they support. Which is why candidates that purport to be “moderate” like Randy Minchew, are in fact no better than Dick Black. They want to take away our daughters’ rights and supplant them with their own paternalistic hooey. In fact, Randy (and candidates like him) are actively campaigning on it.

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that a blastocyst is not a baby, and calling it a baby is disingenuous at best, the stridency of the language and appeal in this letter is worthy of note and consideration by Loudoun’s voters. Mr. Minchew has positioned himself as a calm, moderate voice, but it is clear from this letter that he is, in truth, anything but. He is as fringey as his Senatorial ticketmate Dick Black when it comes to advocacy on this issue.

Continue reading →

Post-primary postmodernism

Posted on August 25, 2011 at 3:27 pm by Epluribusunum |

Wherein a few loose ends are explored.
(Updated to clarify meaning of terms.)

1. The GOP has a bigotry problem. Those who are genuinely trying to combat it have my sympathy, if not my confidence. A commenter at TC who goes by Muslim Conservative has been patiently doing a lot of heavy lifting in that regard, and has managed to dislodge some damaging admissions, to wit: Former Republican candidate for Sheriff Greg Ahlemann has stated once again that he categorically does not “vote for or support candidates who support or practice Islam.” He also stated that he would never vote for or support “a homosexual.”

That statement might surprise those who read my interview with him on Equality Loudoun back in 2007, in which he talked about Muslim friends and gay friends in a way clearly intended to dispel the rumor that he harbors bigotry. What might also surprise you is that his views haven’t changed since then, and that he doesn’t see any contradiction. He genuinely believes, I think, that these statements do not constitute bigotry, and he is not alone in this view.

Continue reading →