Acquainting Congress with arithmetic
Addition and subtraction aren't hard. But you could hardly tell from watching Washington. As satisfying as that insult was, it doesn't change the reality: The world's biggest math problem is playing...
View ArticleA long-awaited arrival
The memory of the trip remains surprisingly clear, given the hallucinations: A crowded Amtrak train headed from D.C. to New York two days after Christmas a quarter-century ago.
View ArticleStill explaining where we're from
Strictly speaking, I'm a native of D.C. I was born at Sibley Memorial Hospital, on Washington's west side, just up the hill from the Potomac River and the Dalecarlia Reservoir. I grew up in ever more...
View ArticleFailure for transportation - and the environment
As a nation, we decided decades ago that veterans are owed a college education. After World War II, lawmakers voted to encourage that education by paying for it, through the G.I. Bill. That national...
View ArticleBuilding bubbles
Nascent media mogul Glenn Beck wants to build Independence, USA, a self-sufficient libertarian paradise. The price tag would probably require nine zeroes.
View ArticleNot exactly a model General Assembly
The last season I coached youth baseball, our team lost every game. Every one. It was frustrating. Even heartbreaking. These kids were good ballplayers, but they were a year younger than the starters...
View ArticleHampton Roads' pi in the face
Traffic is like water around here; it's everyplace and affects life even when you can't see it. If you spend any time driving anywhere, it's impossible to avoid the daily miles of idling vehicles. Or...
View ArticleThe price Hampton Roads will pay
Chances are your life was touched when Ford closed the Norfolk truck assembly plant in 2007. More than 2,500 people ended up out of work, leaving thousands of businesses with customers who couldn't...
View ArticleA price worth paying for better roads
Every day, when I don’t turn the key in my car, when the engine doesn’t spring to life, I’m reminded that I chose a washing machine over an actual automobile. I drive a Prius.
View ArticleA price worth paying for better roads
Every day, when I don't turn the key in my car, when the engine doesn't spring to life, I'm reminded that I chose a washing machine over an actual automobile. I drive a Prius.
View ArticleCrawling out of the hifflepiffle
Like everyone else on Planet America, my world would be better if the people who disagree with me would just stop talking.
View ArticleThere's no economic Garden of Eden
The guy was tall. That was the first thing I noticed. From the back of a room filled with journalists, elected officials and academics talking about urban life, he wasn't content to simply ask...
View ArticleAnyone else want to be governor?
If Mitt Romney, in his own words, was "severely" conservative, there are no words to describe Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who loudly opposes abortion, gay rights, global warming...
View ArticleThe Tide conspiracy
First, light rail couldn't be built in Virginia Beach because of a 1999 nonbinding referendum. That vote showed conclusively and forevermore that most people didn't want it. So Norfolk did a crazy...
View ArticleThe Lester Way
There's no chance, come Monday, that 67-year-old Harry Lester is going to slip quietly into retirement. He doesn't do quiet very well. Pretty sure he doesn't do retirement, either. His name, now added...
View ArticleAmid the strange quiet of the resilient city
BOSTON I'm never going to run in this city's marathon. I'm too old and slow, and I won't get younger or faster. In the past, I have found myself lost on Cambridge Common, the equivalent of getting...
View ArticleSeeing the Gosnell case
I wish I knew why this country hasn't paid more attention to Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell since a grand jury indictment came down more than two years ago. The accusations against him are...
View ArticleIs 18 years too long to wait to vote?
If everything goes according to plan, at lunchtime today my church will vote on a new pastor. Every member of every age will fill out a paper ballot with an aye or nay. I've been one for only a dozen...
View ArticleA reality check for Hampton Roads
We tend to think of this region as unwieldy, difficult to coordinate and to govern. It is all those things - and no wonder. Hampton Roads isn't even easy to define geographically, let alone...
View ArticleRedistricting to the extreme
Rep. Scott Rigell is concerned. He's worried about the financial state of the union, principally, but also about jobs and energy production. The same stuff that drove him to the public stage. But he's...
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