The Loudoun Board of Supervisors exercised fiscal prudence this week in declining a marketing partnership with the Washington Redskins. In a time of revenue weakness for the county, the Board declined to spend up to $250,000 to partner with the Redskin…

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(The short-lived Diamond Lake stadium site in Loudoun.)Folks who have been around for the past decade will remember the great debates over bringing baseball to the DC area. One of the proposals was to move the Expos to northern Virginia, instead of DC….

Continue reading " Baseball Coming To Loudoun? "

If you are only a casual visitor to the Virginia blogosphere, you may not yet know that one of the two pillars of the Virginia blogosphere, Raising Kaine (”RK”) is closing down on December 31st. (The other pillar being NotLarrySabato.) RaisingKaine ha…

Continue reading " Changes in the Virginia Blogosphere "

If you’re not reading FiveThirtyEight, you should be. (The name is a reference to the number of electors in Presidential contests.) Nate Silver is probably the best and most influential new voice in the blogosphere to come out of the 2008 election cycl…

Continue reading " Heightened Discourse "

With all the discussion of bailouts and stimulus that has been going on, it may be valuable to consider alternatives for helping to power our economy that are more targeted at some of the people who could use the help most.I’m not talking about CEOs, o…

Continue reading " Getting Started Loans "

For the past couple weeks, I stepped back from being completely seeped in politics as a post-election recovery period. Here in Virginia, we don’t really get any kind of recovery period due to our election-ever-year cycle. That’s especially true here in…

Continue reading " Interregnum Since Election "

Our esteemed LCDC Chairman has the last word on yesterday’s election.Now that the election is over, I encourage you to be humble in victory. Obama said last night he aims to be the president for all of America, regardless of political preference. As we…

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Working my polling place all day yesterday, I was nervous. By the afternoon, the rush was gone, and there was not a single voter in line at 7pm when the Chief, Rich (who was the youngest member of the elections board in his hometown in Pennsylvania in …

Continue reading " My Precinct Went 2:1 "

Written by a friend in Ohio.’TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE VOTINGby Scott C.’Twas the night before voting,And here in the MidwestPeople pondered and argued,”Which one is the best?”I in my t-shirtAnd Birkenstock shoesHad just settled inTo watch CNN’s newsWhen o…

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My favorite bourbon, and the only one I keep in my UVA decanter.

Continue reading " An Interlude: Da Dip "

Yesterday, after a particularly stressful work conference call, I stepped away from my computer needing a mental break from my job. And so, I drove to the Registrars Office on Sycolin Road and voted absentee-in-person.View Larger MapThe line to vote wa…

Continue reading " I Voted Yesteday "

What follows is a letter from Dulles Supervisor Stevens Miller to his constituents, about the schools situation along the Rt. 50 Corridor.Supervisor MillerDulles DistrictOctober 29, 2008Dear Neighbors,At its October 21, 2008 meeting, the Board of Super…

Continue reading " “Regarding Lenah” "

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate’s history and a figure of enormous influence in his state, was found guilty on Monday of violating ethics laws for failing to report gifts and services that he was given by f…

Continue reading " Stevens Convicted, Idiots Arresed "

I wish the headline were a joke.On Friday, two Feder staffers approached Congressman Wolf in a public location to ask him some questions. Two different individuals who were accompanying Congressman Wolf (staffers? relatives? friends?) assaulted the Fed…

Continue reading " Wolf’s People Cane Feder’s People "

The Obama campaign has released an online calculator that will allow Americans to calculate their tax cut under his proposed tax plan.American families are in desperate need of economic relief.Barack’s plan will cut taxes for 95% of working families.Jo…

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On Larry King Live tonight Scott Freakin’ McClellan endorsed Barack Obama.With apologies to the Bard, me thinks some of these Republicans doth protest too much. They see their ship sinking, so they try to jump on Sen. Obama’s bandwagon.It’s going to be…

Continue reading " The Me Too Republicans Are Coming Out "

Because the Republicans need an enemy and a boogie man in every election, an organization dedicated for over thirty-five years to the enfranchisement of the underrepresented has been viciously slandered this cycle. Well, the good news is the actual tru…

Continue reading " The Truth About ACORN "

What if the candidates were D&D characters?If Palin played D&D, she would insist on being a paladin but would have trouble doing that because of her chaotic-neutral alignment. She would kick the beggars and orphans out of the way so that everyone had a…

Continue reading " And Interlude: Candidates as D&D Characters "

In a time when the levels of sleaze and slime suffusing American civic discourse are escalating thanks to what passes for campaigning by the Republican party, it is nice to get a reminder of what America really means.(with a tip-o-the-hat to Michael Fu…

Continue reading " What Does American Mean? "

Sen. Barack Obama is coming to Leesburg tomorrow. He’ll be giving a speech at Ida Lee Park, in the heart of Loudoun, in the heart of exurbia, in the signal swing district in America.Change We Need Rallywith Barack ObamaIda Lee ParkFestival Field50 Ida …

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