Free Republic

A Democratic candidate for the Virginia legislature who was caught performing sex acts with her husband for “tips” during online webcam shows is down more than 10 percentage points among likely voters in her district, according to a poll conducted after the scandal surfaced. Susanna Gibson, who is running to represent the 57th district in the Old Dominion’s House of Delegates, trails Republican David Owen by 49.5% to 38.9%, a Cygnal poll exclusively obtained by The Post shows. Owen, a businessman, held a 4% lead among those voters when Cygnal conducted a previous survey of the race in August —...

Today is the anniversary of the birth of John Lennon. Murdered at the age of 40, he should be here to celebrate his 82nd birthday today. What a loss. His work has always struck a chord with me. Now that so much of the Beatles’ work is available on YouTube, I thought I would take the occasion to adapt comments I have made previously and note some of his less famous songs. I am a Lennonist at heart; I identify with his idealistic streak and his cynicism. I admired his wit as well. In the jaunty rockabilly number “I’ll Cry...

It started with soprano Anna Netrebko. In March, the superstar failed to condemn the war in Ukraine in terms explicit enough to satisfy Metropolitan Opera General Manager Peter Gelb. It did not matter that reciting the Met’s required denunciation in coercive conditions would likely be false and worthless. It did not matter that critics within Russia, where Ms. Netrebko remains a citizen, can now be punished with up to 15 years imprisonment for criticizing the government. It did not matter that her family members in Russia could be made to suffer if she complied with the Met’s diktat. It did...

Over this past year, we’ve seen a completely false narrative being sold to the American public about “voting rights” — that somehow the Republicans are trying to deny people the right to vote. Democrats can’t point to how any of these bills or laws do that. But that hasn’t stopped the Democrats from pushing the claim without evidence and shouting “racist” about laws such as the one in Georgia under which people have more opportunities to vote than in Joe Biden’s own state of Delaware. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) even went so far as to claim on Stephen Colbert’s show...

James Levine, the guiding maestro of the Metropolitan Opera for more than 40 years and one of the world’s most influential and admired conductors until allegations of sexual abuse and harassment ended his career, died on March 9 in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 77. His death was confirmed on Wednesday morning by Dr. Len Horovitz, his physician. He did not specify the cause, and it was unclear why the death had not been announced earlier. Mr. Levine had been living in Palm Springs. After investigating accounts of sexual improprieties by Mr. Levine with younger men stretching over decades, the...

Richmond Circuit Court Judge Bradley Cavedo and former GOP U.S. Senate candidate Daniel Gade have reached a settlement in Cavedo's defamation suit over Gade's assertion in a debate with Sen. Mark Warner that Cavedo was a "racist judge." Gade has retracted the statements he made about Cavedo during a debate with Warner at Norfolk State University. “During the second of our three debates, I criticized Mark Warner for appointing Judge Bradley Cavedo to the bench in 2002," Gade said in a statement. "In this exchange, I attacked Judge Cavedo based on incorrect information. I retract my statements about Judge Cavedo,...

Richmond Circuit Court Judge Bradley B. Cavedo has filed a defamation suit against GOP U.S. Senate candidate Daniel Gade, asserting that during an Oct. 3 debate at Norfolk State University Gade falsely accused him of being "a known segregationist" and a "racist judge." The suit asserts: "Gade also stated that Cavedo had written that 'Black people are parasites' who would suck billions of dollars out of our economy.' None of these statements are true." Cavedo, citing damage to his personal and professional reputation, seeks $2 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages. Gade's campaign has said his assertions...

Virginia Military Institute's top official resigned Monday, a week after Gov. Ralph Northam announced an investigation into the school's culture and policies following reports of racism that received national attention. Retired Army Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III submitted his resignation letter as superintendent, which the board of visitors accepted "with deep regret," board President John Boland said in a statement. In his resignation letter to the president of the board of visitors, Peay wrote that Gov. Northam’s chief of staff, Clark Mercer, informed him on Friday that “the governor and certain legislative leaders had lost confidence in my leadership as...

Four people were charged with rioting after windows were broken and property was defaced in several neighborhoods overnight in Richmond, causing the shutdown of the John Marshall courthouse downtown. Mayor Levar Stoney and Commonwealth's Attorney Colette McEachin both noted that all of Wednesday's court cases were delayed at the John Marshall Courts Building, including a sentencing hearing for a man convicted of the second-degree murder of Markiya Dickson, the 9-year-old killed while playing in Carter Jones Park. "We can't go about bringing justice to her because of your selfishness," Stoney said at a regularly-scheduled coronavirus news conference Wednesday afternoon, referring...

he incident in Karla Dominguez’s apartment last October was violent, and it was not consensual, she testified in Alexandria District Court in December. The man she accused was indicted on charges including rape, strangulation and abduction and jailed without bond in Alexandria. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. Ibrahim E. Bouaichi’s lawyers argued that the virus was a danger to both inmates and their attorneys, and that Bouaichi should be freed awaiting trial. On April 9, over the objections of an Alexandria prosecutor, Circuit Court Judge Nolan Dawkins released Bouaichi on $25,000 bond, with the condition that he only leave his...

The Richmond judge who blocked Virginia from removing the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue has granted an injunction that bars the city from continuing to remove Confederate iconography. Richmond Circuit Court Judge Bradley C. Cavedo ordered Thursday a 60-day injunction halting further removal of Confederate monuments, which the city has been taking down since last week. The decision came after an anonymous plaintiff sued Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney earlier this week over his order to remove the symbols.

Virginia will have to continue to hold off on taking down the Robert E. Lee statue on Richmond's Monument Avenue. A Richmond judge on Thursday extended indefinitely an injunction barring the state from removing the statue, the most well-known Confederate symbol in the former capital of the Confederacy. The statue has received increased scrutiny in the three weeks of protests in Richmond over police brutality and racial injustice. The statue "belongs to the people," said Richmond Circuit Court Judge Bradley B. Cavedo, who has set another hearing in the case for July 23.

The deed signed in 1890 giving Virginia control of the Robert E. Lee statue on Richmond’s Monument Avenue prevents its removal, a lawsuit filed Monday that led to a pause on the state’s plans for taking it down claims. In an 18-page complaint filed Monday, William C. Gregory, the great-grandson of two signatories of the deed, argues that under the terms of the 1890 agreement and a legislature-approved resolution, the state is supposed to consider the monument and the area around it "perpetually sacred" and "faithfully guard it and affectionately protect it."

A Richmond judge has issued a temporary injunction barring the state from taking down the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue for 10 days. The injunction, issued Monday afternoon, came after a complaint was filed earlier in the day objecting to the monument’s removal. Gov. Ralph Northam announced last week that the state would take down the 130-year-old statue, which it owns and maintains, after a week of protests against police brutality and racism. Earlier Monday, state workers inspected the monument before its planned removal. The Department of General Services said in a statement that a date for the...

Republicans in the Richmond area will have a month and a half longer to pick a nominee to run against Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th, in November. The coronavirus pandemic also is pushing the Virginia Democratic Convention into the virtual realm. A Richmond judge on Tuesday granted a request from the Republican Party of Virginia to push the deadline for nominating a challenger from June 9 to July 28. The party had been scheduled to hold a convention April 25 at the Arthur Ashe Center in Richmond, but is looking into other options with executive orders from Gov. Ralph Northam limiting...

Placido Domingo and his family are isolating in self-quarantine after the opera singer tested positive for Coronavirus. On Sunday (March 22), Domingo shared that he had suffered from a fever and coughing -- two symptoms of COVID-19 -- before he receiving his test results. He encouraged his followers to keep their distance, wash their hands and observe best practices set by healthcare professionals before ending his note with a word of solidarity and encouragement. "Together we can fight this virus and stop the current worldwide crisis, so we can hopefully return to our normal daily lives very soon," he writes....

The daughter of Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office Cpl. Eric Sutphin, shot to death in 2006 by William C. Morva, urged lawmakers Thursday to end capital punishment in Virginia. “It is time for the death penalty to be abolished in order to better care for the victim’s family members, to better serve the public good and to protect human life,” said Rachel Sutphin, now a student at Columbia Theological Seminary. Sutphin was 9 when her father was shot to death during a manhunt for Morva, who also fatally shot an unarmed hospital security guard while escaping custody. Morva was executed in...

Whiteside’s life came to an abrupt end on March 5, three days after Ruben Adolfo De Leon Valenzuela, who was driving drunk and in the wrong lanes of West Broad Street, slammed into Whiteside’s Lexus RX head-on. Whiteside and his wife, who had been married 47 years, were driving to dinner about 9:15 p.m. after watching an early evening show at a local cinema. Whiteside, who was driving, suffered blunt-force trauma to his head, torso and lower extremities. His wife suffered a broken sternum and vertebra. Physicians did what they could for Whiteside but his injuries were too severe, and...

Jose A. Gonzalez-Flores contritely told a Chesterfield County judge on Thursday that he felt sad “in every way you can imagine” for taking the life of a 4-year-old boy, and acknowledged that he was “100 percent selfish” for fleeing the crash scene after plowing into the back of the family’s car on Belmont Road. “If I could give my life for his I would,” he said in court before he was sentenced to serve four years in prison. “I made a huge mistake. I know I should have stayed” at the scene to help the child. “I pray that you...

House Speaker Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, said in a statement that Democratic leader Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, has repeatedly spurned offers by House Courts Committee Chairman Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, to hold a bipartisan hearing that would allow the two women to testify. “There should be no mistake about what has happened here: the alleged victims are seeking a bipartisan hearing; Republicans are seeking a bipartisan hearing; Democrats in the House of Delegates are refusing to allow that to happen,” Cox said.