Yearly Archives: 2013

Frank Wolf cosponsors Federal “Marriage” Amendment

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Frank Wolf trains Eugene Delgaudio (Sterlingfest, 2006)

Box Turtle Bulletin reports that Frank Wolf is co-sponsoring Rep Tim Huelskamp’s (R – KS) Federal Marriage [sic] Amendment. The language is:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

And that language runs afoul of the recent Supreme Court DOMA ruling. Here are excerpts from Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion:

The history of DOMA’s enactment and its own text demonstrate that interference with the equal dignity of same-sex marriages, a dignity conferred by the States in the exercise of their sovereign power, was more than an incidental effect of the federal statute. It was its essence.

…The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Continue reading →

What Inalienable Rights?

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Chloris the pig eats flowers

If you listened to the talking heads on last Sunday’s shows, you may have come away with an uneasy feeling about how the U.S. does its business, particularly in the embarrassing matter of the most famous whistle blower since Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers – we’re talking about Edward J. Snowden and his disclosures about how our government has been vacuuming up our private information at home and abroad.

We should first review the especially lawless and bellicose remarks of Republican U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham from South Carolina.

Senator Graham would rather have Hong Kong disregard the serious legal issue raised by the Virginia federal indictment charging Snowden with “espionage,” namely, that the treaty we signed states that Hong Kong need not extradite an American if the underlying indictment is deemed “political” (and espionage charges are almost always considered “political”).

Of course, given the right charges, Hong Kong might have decided to extradite Snowden.  But these charges, namely, “espionage,” appear to have been drafted by politicians who wanted a headline instead of by smart criminal lawyers who might have found criminal charges that didn’t run afoul of the extradition treaty.

Fox News Sunday Anchor Chris Wallace weakly insisted the extradition failed because Hong Kong was “legalistic” — for actually insisting the United States satisfy the terms of the extradition treaty we signed.

Graham blusters and fulminates about using our nation’s considerable raw economic force against any nation state that would “harbor” Snowden.

It’s fascinating how these guys in our government leak what they wish, but anyone who releases information revealing their lies and misconduct, triggers a manhunt to the ends of the earth to bring him down and shut him up – and we have the proof of this in the case of Snowden.

In fact, Senator Graham said, “I hope we’ll chase him (Snowden) to the ends of the earth, bring him to justice and let the Russians know there will be consequences if they harbor this guy.” Continue reading →

Prison Fellowship Ministries’ Klunder Problem

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The AP reports “Prison counselors readied PR plan after kidnapping of 2 Iowa girls.”

Days after two Iowa girls were kidnapped, a national group that provided faith-based counseling to their abductor before his release from prison was putting a public relations plan in motion and preparing to protect its image, records released Thursday show.

Michael James Klunder, was first accused of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse in 1986, when he was just fifteen years old. Five years later, he kidnapped and assaulted an twenty-one year old girl. He then kidnapped two three year old children and left them alive and abandoned in a trash bin fifty miles from where they were abducted.

Klunder graduated from the Iowa’s unconstitutional (and defunct) Innerchange Freedom Initiative faith-based counseling program. Unlike the media outlets Breakpoint and the Colson Center for “Christian” Worldview, IFI is the one program where Loudoun’s Prison Fellowship Ministries actually councils prisoners. The AP report continues.

Court records show that his Bible counselor heaped praise on Klunder when he was discharged, saying he was at the top of his class and “a very intelligent young man.”

“He is a changed individual with a good prospect of success,” the counselor wrote.

Klunder had cited his Christian-based treatment in litigation in which he was seeking parental rights for his son while behind bars, and in statements to the Iowa Bard of Parole pleading for his release.

Although he had a long history of violence, Klunder was released without supervision.

Prison Fellowship Ministries enjoys a $250K Loudoun tax exemption and is a local Republican darling. John Whitbeck, Chairman of the Republican 10th Congressional District Committee and leader of the Government Reform Commission outsourcing study suggested that Loudoun outsource social services to PFM. Congressman Frank Wolf was awarded the PFM Wilberforce award in 1990.

 

Statues for Black Union Troops and Frederick Douglass

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Frederick Douglas statue - to be unveiled in the Capitol

It’s high time that we had a statue placed on the Loudoun County Court house lawn honoring Frederick Douglas and the black Union troops from Loudoun County that fought for the union and for their freedom from slavery.

In Washington, DC, there is a statue to Black Union Troops.

Next week, there will be a statue of Frederick Douglas unveiled in the Capitol.

But we have no memorial in Loudoun.

You may not appreciate that there’s good and sufficient history to do so.

Kevin Dulany Grigsby, a Loudoun native, believes his black ancestral heritage from the Civil War has been overlooked, invisible in Loudoun County, particularly how Blacks fought for the Union. Continue reading →

Breaking and Entering

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We Dems expected President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to offend our civil liberties.

We didn’t expect President Barack Obama, the constitutional law professor, to go back on his campaign promise to make a course correction to cure the over-reaching of the Bush Administration.

We were foolish to expect better.

Without regard to partisan coloration, our public officials and our government just can’t stop poking their noses into our private papers and communications.

The Fourth Amendment, by which we are purportedly protected, guaranteed we’d be secure” in our “persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

This guarantee has been rendered almost meaningless by the actions of our government from the federal to the county level.  Applications to search and seize are routinely approved by magistrates and judges.  The basis for the government’s searches are often kept secret. Continue reading →

LaRock Wins! It’s a Landslide!

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The votes are in. Dave LaRock defeats May 57% to 43%. The  Republican establishment loses. The Christianist fringe wins. The turnout was pathetic, 5158 Republican votes.

Twenty-two hundred people voted for May. He probably spent $100K in mailers. That’s $45 per voter, and he lost. It’s not the money. It’s something else.

What is it?

What are we going to do about it?

Dave LaRock for Delegate

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The Tax Pig's Admission

We beg your pardon, Virginia.

Anytime you find someone in the middle,
Anytime you find someone who is tepid,
Anytime you find someone who is lukewarm,
Anytime you find someone who has been in Congress for 25 years and no one ever heard of him,
You’ve got Oatmeal Man
Oatmeal Man, straddling uncomfortably, yards and feet of barbed wire
It’s hard to live in the middle all the time

Oatmeal Man, the man who said you could fit all of his black friends in the trunk of his car and still have room for the Republican elephant
Oatmeal Man — Gil Scott-Heron

If you live in Virginia’s 33rd House District, tomorrow’s Republican primary is the most important political opportunity in recent history. There is only one clear choice. Vote for Dave LaRock. It’s him, or “Oatmeal Man,” Sons of Confederate Veterans, real-conservative, 199% pro-life Joe May.

This may sound counter-intuitive. It’s higher political reasoning, proof by induction. Here are the reasons. Please meditate on them, quickly, and then run to the polls tomorrow morning.

VOTE FOR DAVE LAROCK IN VA’S HOUSE 33RD!

Here’s why:

Continue reading →

Spill Baby Spill

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Oil Spill

We have these gorgeous beaches for Virginians and tourists alike.

They mean fun, income, jobs, you know, prosperity.

Who would want to mess that up?

We also have a naval military presence in Virginia concerned about using the waters off our Atlantic coast.

Would anyone want to compromise our military mission?

How about both of our United States Senators from Virginia?

Get outa here, really?  Absolutely! Continue reading →

No Finer Memorial – Peace

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Uncle Charles Flannery and the author

I remember as if it were yesterday my Mom crying, a soulful wound torn open upon hearing that my Dad’s brother, Charles, died of internal bleeding because years earlier he’d been shot in World War II.

President Woodrow Wilson’s promise that World War I was the war to end all wars didn’t prevent World War II.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in WWII, said, “There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.”

We could therefore erect no finer memorial to our war dead than to rededicate our nation to peace.

Eisenhower, in his farewell address in 1960, told the nation, “We must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”  It is past time for us to reconsider his advice.

Our wars since World War II have been about property – the differences by and between communism, socialism and capitalism.  Also about ethnicity – over nationality, color, religion and region.

The nation state now caught in the congressional and executive cross-hairs is Syria.

We insist our wars are honorable because we are fighting for individual freedom but those we would “save” all too often recoil at the definition of “freedom” we seek to impose. Continue reading →

Dave LaRock’s social media problem

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In an article published Wednesday, Times-Mirror reporter Trevor Baratko explores the “wild, wild west” of campaigning in a still emerging online social media environment. Baratko approached my husband and me for this article because we had both been removed multiple times after “liking” Dave LaRock’s campaign page on Facebook. It’s common practice on Facebook to “like” a page for the purpose of monitoring the page’s activity and engaging in dialogue, and as I note in comments at the Times-Mirror, we have at no time been enabled to participate in discussion on that page although LaRock is campaigning to be our representative in the House of Delegates.

It’s an open question how exactly candidates for public office should navigate the new environment in which they find themselves. Many public figures and businesses have discovered that blocking critical comments from their Facebook pages only makes them appear imperious and as if they have something to hide. For an example of a different way to handle criticism (or in this case, open hostility and threats) see how the group Queer at Patrick Henry College dealt with PHC Chancellor Mike Farris’ comments on their Facebook page.

Facebook management isn’t the only area in which Dave LaRock has exhibited an inability to tolerate disagreement or criticism, however. A need for control coupled with entitlement, the sense that he has a special right to operate above the law, seems to be the character trait that most animates him. His 2012 arrest (final disposition still pending) for trespassing and destruction of property has become somewhat well known, prompting a falsehood-riddled “damage control” post (authored under an unaccountable pseudonym on a Republican blog) that LaRock is now distributing as his official statement on the matter. Continue reading →