Today's Top Stories - May 24, 2013

Kenneth White, President
Virginia Taxpayers Association

While high tax-paid officials in Gov. McDonnell's administration and his active tax-paid propaganda machine have gone overboard in quickly praising McDonnell's alleged 'statesmanship' in getting his transportation package and Medicaid passed by a reluctant General Assembly --- accomplished by abandoning long-cherished Republican principles and reversing himself also on Medicaid to flood commonwealth nursing homes with more illegal aliens --- the fact is, the total refusal by him and his Task Force on School Safety to support the Second Amendment guarantees a hard-fought primary campaign for U. S. Senate between McDonnell and Del. Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, in 2016, which Marshall ought to win," the Virginia Taxpayers Association predicted today.

Particularly disgusting was the official statement by Speaker Howell with its fulsome praise of state actions entirely contrary to those our children are taught in school and in Sunday School. Howell praised abandonment of conservative Republican principles to get money for solving traffic congestion in northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

If anyone believes a few billion here and a few billion there for construction will eliminate traffic congestion in crowded northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, we have a bridge going half way to Brooklyn we'd like to sell them.

And the plan offers Hampton Roads the 'option' of locally choosing unconstitutional regional government to help them solve their problem, a solution they have previously rejected.

Jeff Schapiro, ace reporter and columnist on the Richmond Times-Dispatch, speared McDonnell masterfully in his Feb. 24 column, 'McDonnell gets his legacy', pointing out where McDonnell reversed himself too many times.

Editor:

(A response to Gov. McDonnell's  "Roads = Jobs")

Even if this Biggest Tax Increase In Virginia History is a good idea, where and how will these roads be built?

VDOT is presumably in charge. The same VDOT, just the other day was replacing railings on the Clarksville causeway over Buggs Island Lake, that looked to me to be just fine, while the very pavement they stood on was cracked and potholed. Other useless, even dangerous projects abound.

Recently I've read of a huge project to extend the four-laning of 460 in Southside towards the Tidewater area, an area that is lightly traveled.

by Tom McElvy
Special to VNS


Since the horribly tragic Connecticut school shootings last Friday, liberals across the country have been busy proving beyond any doubt that theirs is an ideology of hate and rage. Instead of blaming the person who pulled the trigger, liberals have blamed the NRA [National Rifle Association], the Second Amendment and gun owners in general.

Many have called for the deaths of NRA members and other supporters of the Second Amendment, in response to the shootings.

The loss of those little angels was tragic, to say the very least. However, it was not the fault of the gun, nor the NRA, nor the Second Amendment. It was the fault of a madman. Nothing more, nothing less.

However, with all of the death threats being made against NRA members and people supporting our RIGHT to weapons, etc, perhaps we need to take a more proactive stance against violence.