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xxxx, Our Deeds-Wagner-Shannon ticket will continue a 4-day, 20-stop "All in for Virginia" tour on Sunday in Norfolk. During the tour, the 2009 Democratic ticket will criss-cross Virginia, joined by Gov. Tim Kaine, Sen. Jim Webb, Sen. Mark Warner, and members of the Democratic Congressional delegation. Please come out and join them to help Keep Virginia Blue. All events are open to the public. Please RSVP by clicking the links below. Sunday, November 1, 2009 1:15 PM Norfolk GOTV Lunch No Frill Bar and Grill 806 Spotswood Avenue Norfolk, VA 2:00 PM Norfolk GOTV Canvass Kickoff Norfolk Coordinated Campaign Office...

A poll released Friday by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research confirms the Republican ticket’s lead in the statewide Virginia races. Focusing on the two down-ticket slots -- Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General -- Mason-Dixon found the GOP candidates leading in almost all areas of the state

On Friday’s Situation Room, CNN forwarded an idea proposed by The New Republic’s Peter Beinart- that Democratic losses in the gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey this year would result in the reelection of President Obama in 2012. An on-screen graphic during a discussion of Beinart’s hypothesis read, “If The Dems Lose Next Week: How it might help them in the long run.” Anchor Wolf Blitzer read the New Republic contributor’s idea during a “Strategy Session” panel discussion with Republican Mary Matalin and Democrat Paul Begala 53 minutes into the 4 pm Eastern hour: “Peter Beinart, writing in The...

Note: The following text is a quote: MS-13 Gunman Sentenced 80 Years for Attempted Murder ALEXANDRIA, VA—Dennis L. Gil Bernardez, 33, of Landover, Md., the gunman in an MS-13 shooting, was sentenced to 80 years in prison today for attempting to murder rival gang members on Oct. 6, 2008, at a park near homes in Reston, Va. His accomplice, Jose M. Aguilar Orantes, 18, of Reston, Va., who provided the firearm, was sentenced to 55 years in prison for his role in the attempted murders. A third member, Carlos B. Guzman Cruz, 25, of Richmond, Va., was sentenced to 144...

The Republican party has no national leaders. Its standing with voters is at an all-time low. It battens itself on an ideological purity that turns off the center and can’t appeal to an increasingly suburban and diverse electorate. If it is not fated to go the way of the Federalists or the Whigs, it is certainly a spent force. This is the rote obituary for the GOP that the Left can’t resist. It is all the more alluring for its elements of truth. A party that holds neither the presidency, the House, nor the Senate won’t be stacked with national...

As Virginia's off-year election nears the finish, the statewide Republican ticket has jumped out to a huge lead in the final week of the contest. What is remarkable about this contest is the hammer-and-tongs finishing push by the Republicans, which may signify the return of the Republican killer instinct -- the will to win overcoming the internecine bickering that has marked the GOP's poor performances in recent years.

A day after President Barack Obama rallied Democrats in Norfolk for gubernatorial nominee R. Creigh Deeds, national Republican headliners hopscotched Virginia for front-runner Bob McDonnell. Former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, a once and future presidential prospect, appeared with McDonnell, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and attorney general hopeful Ken Cuccinelli, stopping in Henrico County to echo the campaign’s jobs-and-economy theme and help pad campaign coffers.

Maybe Freepers need a forum devoted to movies, stage, acting, and the arts.

There’s been a lot of focus on NY-23, for understandable reasons—it’s a great fight in a year with only a few races to pay attention to. But there’s a lot of wild over-interpretation going on. Among more excitable folks on both the left and the right, there’s a tendency to think this heralds some broader GOP civil war. Not likely. The circumstances of the race are entirely unique. In most districts of the country, the Republican nominee is going to be acceptable to conservatives (most Republican primary voters are conservative, after all), and certainly almost never as noxious as Dede...

The latest Rasmussen poll shows Chris Christie, the Republican nominee for Governor in New Jersey, beating the incumbent Democrat John Corzine by 4 points, even with a third party conservative in the race drawing over 10 percent of the vote. In Virginia, Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob McDonnell is so far ahead of his Democratic rival Creigh Deeds that Democrats have already begun to argue on the front page of The Washington Post who is at fault for blowing that race.

President Obama traveled to Norfolk, Virginia, yesterday to appear on behalf of the Democratic candidates for statewide office. The location very likely was chosen because the Democrats had been polling better in the Virginia "Tidewater" than in the rest of the state -- but polling information released by Republican Attorney General candidate Ken Cuccinelli indicates that the tide already had turned in the Tidewater and the the effort came too late.

Two new polls released this morning show Republican gubernatorial nominee Bob McDonnell with a double-digit lead over his Democratic rival R. Creigh Deeds. A Virginia Commonwealth University survey shows McDonnell with an 18-point margin over Deeds among likely voters, while a Rasmussen poll conducted yesterday after President Barack Obama's visit to Norfolk puts McDonnell up 13 points.

In 2003, several counties in Northern Virginia banded together to form a joint task force to crack down on illegals and gangs. Then in March of last year, Prince William County made national headlines by upping the ante even further. They passed an ordinance that required County police to verify the immigration status of any criminal or traffic suspects when there was probable cause to think they were in the country illegally. The suspects were held and transferred to ICE, irrespective of the disposition of the underlying charge.

Amid tumbling poll numbers and signs of major money problems, Democratic strategists have begun privately grousing that state Sen. Creigh Deeds could prove a significant drag on critical downballot races in Virginia next Tuesday. One senior Democratic strategist who has closely followed the contest in Virginia said that the "chances are somewhere between solid and definite" that Deeds declining performance would hamper the party's chances of winning LG and AG races. Of those downballot contests, the source added: "They pretty much live in the shadow of the top of the ticket."

Jayson Blair, who was at the center of a major journalism scandal as a New York Times reporter in 2003, will be the featured speaker at Washington and Lee University’s 48th Journalism Ethics Institute on Friday, Nov. 6. The title of Blair’s talk is “Lessons Learned.” The public is invited to the presentation at 5:30 p.m. in Stackhouse Theater, Elrod Commons. Blair resigned from the Times after an investigation found that he had plagiarized and fabricated major portions of stories that he had written during four years with the Times. Some of the stories that he covered in this manner...

The mastermind of the sniper attacks that terrorized Washington-area residents in October 2002 will die by lethal injection next month, a Virginia corrections official said Tuesday. The state will give convicted killer John Allen Muhammad a lethal injection because he declined to choose between that and electrocution. "So under the Code of Virginia it defaults to lethal injection," said state Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor. A prisoner has until 15 days before the execution to decide on which method, according to Virginia law.

Crackdowns on illegal immigrants and other law enforcement efforts are driving gangs out of Northern Virginia and into Maryland and the District, a report released Monday concluded. "Many gang members from Northern Virginia are moving or driving to Prince George's and other Maryland counties, into the District of Columbia or further south and west into Virginia to avoid dealing with police departments that are unrelenting in their efforts to keep gangs under control," authorities wrote in the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force report. The report said the task force's success is the result of Virginia law enforcement's use of...

Soon after polls closed on November 4 last year, officials announced the most momentous state result of the night. Barack Obama had become the first Democrat in 40 years to win Virginia. The race for the White House was effectively over. Next Tuesday, barring an electoral earthquake, the Democratic candidate for Governor of Virginia will lose to a Republican, possibly by a double-digit margin. In the Democrats’ first big test at the polls since Mr Obama swept to power, his aides have been reduced to spreading the blame for Creigh Deeds’s presumed defeat in private briefings. Despite the bad blood,...

No sooner was the ink dry on this morning’s article, In Virginia Dems Dis Deeds As Republicans Roll, than there were two new polls confirming double-digit leads for the Republican slate. The stage has been set for a conservative landslide in the statewide races.

McDonnell expands lead again Raleigh, N.C. – Bob McDonnell now leads the race to be Virginia’s next Governor 55- 40, up from 52-40 a week ago. Democratic voters have been showing gradually less interest in the election over the last month as it has becoming increasingly clearer McDonnell is the likely winner. A month ago 37% of likely voters were Democrats. That declined to 33% a week ago and now to 31%. McDonnell is winning 94% of the Republican vote while Deeds is at only 84% of the Democratic vote. McDonnell also has a 59-34 lead with independents. Deeds’ favorability...

ARLINGTON, Va. - With one week until Virginia's gubernatorial election, an exclusive poll for WJLA-TV shows Republican Bob McDonnell retaining his commanding lead. The SurveyUSA poll dated Oct. 27 shows McDonnell with a 17-point lead over Democrat Creigh Deeds, 58-41. McDonnell maintains his lead across most demographics, including age, sex and income. Independents are breaking 2-1 for McDonnell, 60-38. Thirty-eight percent of abortion rights supporters say they will vote for McDonnell, twice the percentage, 19, of anti-abortion voters who say they will vote for Deeds. The poll also shows McDonnell with a 58-41 lead across Northern Virginia, where Democrats have...

This is one Mr. Deeds who apparently isn't going to town. The collapse of the Democratic campaign for governor of Virginia speaks volumes about what the body politic is trying to tell Obama's Democrats. They're learning, painfully, that campaigning without George Bush is baffling, frustrating and scary. Worse, it offers a preview of what the congressional campaigning will be like next year. For weeks, The Washington Post, house organ of the national Democratic Party, pounded away at McDonnell, the Republican nominee, for having written politically incorrect term papers in graduate school, as proof that he doesn't like women very much....

Memo to the White House political smart guys: It’s not that the body isn’t cold yet; it’s that the body is not even dead yet. There will be plenty of time after the election for you to explain that Creigh Deeds’s loss in Virginia had nothing to do with the president’s 25-point drop in job approval. It had nothing to do with the fact that a majority of Americans in every survey disapprove of the policies the president is advocating. Nothing to do with the 4.2 million jobs lost since Inauguration Day. Nothing to do with the 36 percent rise...

With only a week to go before we vote in Virginia’s odd-year election, the outcome looks good for the Republican statewide slate. The Democrats, optimistic a month ago, have taken to blaming their candidate, Creigh Deeds, for the loss to come — although Deeds has run exactly the race the national Democrats wanted him to run, trying to use a "wedge" issue to mislead voters.

American heavy metal band Metallica has stumped up 50,000 dollars in reward money for a fan who disappeared at one of their concerts, a campaign website said Monday. Police have been searching for blond-haired, blue-eyed Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington, 20, since she went missing from a Metallica concert in Charlottesville, Virginia on the evening of Saturday, October 17.... "The Band Metallica is also adding an additional 50,000 dollars to the reward bringing it to 150,000 dollars for Morgan's safe return or information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for Morgan's disappearance," it said....

This is new video of a Tea Party Protester asking Newt Gingrich at a book signing why he is supporting Scozzafava, the so called Republican in NY's 23 district, Newt's reasons are lame, (Video with Transcript)

NORFOLK Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell brought his campaign to Hampton Roads on Saturday, shaking hands and making hand-rolled waffle cones at Doumar’s Cones & Barbecue in Norfolk. “That’s a great American story,” McDonnell said after talking with Al Doumar, the owner, and his son Thad Doumar. “What a great piece of history.” McDonnell shook hands with customers inside and at the drive-in and ate a chocolate ice-cream cone. He faces Democratic state Sen. Creigh Deeds in the Nov. 3 election; Deeds will be campaigning in Hampton Roads on Sunday. In an interview with The Virginian-Pilot, McDonnell said his top...

Deeds says he was unaware of conflicts over race strategy

BRISTOL, Va. – A woman accused of skipping bond was handcuffed, sexually assaulted during a strip search and hauled off to jail Oct. 9. But the three who arrested her were only masquerading as drug task force agents. On top of that, police said, the fake agents nabbed the wrong woman and passed her to a bail bondsman in the hopes of receiving a reward. The bondsman then took the woman to the Bristol Virginia Jail, where she was immediately freed because jailers quickly discerned her true identity. “She clearly had identification to clearly show she wasn’t the person in...

Video on site An American woman is convinced that a flu shot given to her has lead to a rare disorder which means she can only walk backwards. Even more strangely, she has lost the ability to talk at all - unless she is running. The woman, Desiree Jennings, took a flu jab but just ten days later, she started shaking and struggled to walk in a straight line. She can't stay still without having a spasm, but incredibly when she either walks backwards or runs forwards, she is normal again.Just two years ago, she married her childhood sweetheart Brandon,...

The tactic of bashing Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk show hosts to score political points is apparently no longer the exclusive realm of national-level Democrats and moderate Republicans. Now, even local politicians are adopting this political maneuver in their local campaigns. Democrat David Englin, member of the Virginia House of Delegates for the 45th District (and currently my own delegate), sent out a direct mail piece which I received on Thursday where Englin boldly proclaimed his opposition to the top conservative talk show host: “If Rush Limbaugh is for it, I’m probably against it.” (image at right).Englin’s mail piece, paid...

An American man who made coffee in his own home while nude is facing charges of indecent exposure. Eric Williamson, from Springfield, Virginia, was brewing coffee in his kitchen when a woman and a seven-year-old boy walked past the window and saw him. The woman complained to police who arrested Williamson shortly after the incident on Monday morning. Williamson, 29, insisted he did nothing wrong and that any exposure of his private parts were accidental. "Yes I wasn't wearing any clothes but I was alone, in my own home and just got out of bed. It was dark and I...

October 22, 2009 Note: The following text is a quote: Investigation Nets Alleged Cocaine Traffickers in Springfield, Virginia ALEXANDRIA, VA—Nine individuals were arrested this morning on cocaine trafficking charges as part of an ongoing investigation of cocaine dealers working in and around Springfield, Va. Two subjects were already in custody for unrelated state charges. Neil H. MacBride, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Joseph Persichini Jr., Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office; and Colonel David Rohrer, Fairfax County Chief of Police, made the announcement after the criminal complaint was unsealed and the defendants...

There are a lot of ugly statistics for the Democrats in this little number. McDonnell leads by 24 points among the vaunted youth voters, by 28 in the under $50,000 income group and 15 points in the over $50,000 group. He leads by 55-45 in Northern Virginia, the Democrats' base camp. Another one that should keep the Dems up at night is that fully 19% of the people who voted for Obama last year will be pulling the lever for the Republican this year. Finally, independents have essentially given up on the Democrats, favoring McDonnell by a margin of 71-27,...

Who Won Last Night's Debate? Bob McDonnell Creigh Deeds It Was A Draw

In Virginia, New High For McDonnell, Comfortable Leads for Other Republicans in VA Statewide Contests: Two weeks until votes are counted in the election for Virginia Governor, Republican Bob McDonnell continues to dominate Democrat Creigh Deeds, according to a SurveyUSA poll for WJLA-TV Washington DC and WDBJ-TV Roanoke. Compared to an identical SurveyUSA poll released two weeks ago, McDonnell is up 5 points; Deeds is down 3. Today, it's McDonnell 59%, Deeds 40%. McDonnell leads among both men and women, young and old, rich and poor, educated and less-educated, and in all regions of the state. In the contest for...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Police searched Tuesday for a Virginia Tech student who hasn't been seen since she was separated from her friends at a Metallica concert Saturday. Morgan Dana Harrington, 20, was last seen near the John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville. Her parents said they talk to her every day and her disappearance is very out of character.

Just a year after this one-time Confederate state helped elect a black man president, Democrats are desperately trying to hang onto the governorship. A lot has changed: Loyal Democrats are more subdued than last fall. Republicans are energized. Independents are proving to be ... independent. Voters of all kinds seem disenchanted. Just like Americans nationwide. The contest between Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat R. Creigh Deeds provides a snapshot of sorts — 12 months after America elected Barack Obama as president and expanded Democratic majorities in Congress, and one year before midterm elections in every state. And the picture, in...

When Barack Obama left Hawaii to go to college at Occidental College, he quickly abandoned Hawaii's broadly favorable cultural attitude toward 'mixed' marriages in order to embrace "authentic black experience" and "provide the distance I wanted from Joyce, or my past." (Dreams p101) Who "Joyce" is and why she is relevant will soon become apparent. But first let's meet the newly minted beauty queen, Nikole Churchill who, like Obama, grew up in Hawaii and upon leaving for college for the first time encounters racial attitudes on the Mainland. She was so surprised that she wrote to Obama:

With just over two weeks left until Virginia’s gubernatorial election, Democrat Creigh Deeds is left with a narrow path to victory, one that hinges on energizing key demographic groups and the durability of the Old Dominion’s new politics. Even as Deeds trails Republican Bob McDonnell by eight and nine points in two of the most recent polls, his campaign and other analysts can still envision a comeback made possible in no small part because of the state’s political turn leftward. Virginia’s Washington, D.C. suburbs, where one-third of voters reside, have gone from being a battleground region to a Democratic bulwark...

The answer appears to be "no" according to her fellow students. Who's the racist? (click on the link for the video) We report, you decide.

Virginian Pilot Strikes Out This story is a perfect example of the media’s ability to create an alternate reality universe. To read the VIRGINIAN PILOT, one would assume that the answer to Virginian’s transportation bottlenecks in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads is “more taxes.” No one disputes the fact that it costs money to build highways. But the one-note debate in the media centers on the issue of which taxes to raise to pay for roads. All of the “respectable” voices quoted by the VIRGINIAN PILOT voice their opinions, and their opinions are unanimous: Virginians must pay more taxes to...

By his own estimation, the Rev. Mark Batterson has preached about 1,000 sermons in his makeshift sanctuary at Union Station's Phoenix Theatres, where his congregation has met for the past 13 years. Last week's was one of the most difficult: In his remarks he told his congregation it would be the final service at their unconventional church. The train station's movie theater closed abruptly last week. Mr. Batterson said that for the past two years he had been hearing rumors the theater would close, but he had been assured they were not true. So it came as a shock when...

Lynchburg, VA - Supporters of the Second Amendment gathered Friday afternoon at the Liberty University (web) School of Law for a gun rights symposium. The discussion of current legal cases turned into a cry for help from students at Virginia Tech. Some Virginia Tech students even skipped class to do it. Alyson Boyce with VT Students for Concealed Carry President said, "Two and a half years ago, if you would have asked me anything about gun rights, I would not have been able to tell you a thing. Now, Boyce is the president of the Hokie Chapter of Students for...

RICHMOND, Va. – A federal judge has ruled that Virginia violated the voting rights of military service members and other Americans overseas when officials failed to mail more than 2,100 absentee ballots in time for last year's presidential election. U.S. District Judge Richard Williams also ordered Friday that the Virginia Board of Elections count and certify the absentee ballots. The ballots from military service members and others living outside the state were the focus of a lawsuit filed by Republican candidate John McCain's campaign, which alleged that they weren't mailed in time for overseas voters to return them before the...

ASHBURN, Va. -- Desiree Jennings thought it would be a good idea to get the seasonal flu shot. Her job offered incentives for it, and she didn't want to get sick. Ten days after she got the shot at a Reston Safeway, she did get sick. "I got flu-like symptoms -- nausea, vomiting, body aches, fever -- then was lethargic for a week and started blacking out," said Jennings, an AOL employee and Washington Redskins ambassador hoping to one day be a cheerleader for the team, the Loudoun Times-Mirror reported. Doctors couldn't figure out why her ability to speak and...

Hampton University in Virginia made a huge mistake. They took Barack Obama's post racial world idea and, thinking it was already here, anointed a white chick as its "Miss Hampton University" pageant winner. Now some of the black students are mad that the traditionally black university named a white girl as "Miss Hampton U." Ooopsie. I guess we aren't in that era of Obama like we thought we were. I guess we aren't quite done with all that racial strife that we keep hearing about on the news, eh? I hate it when the man... er, the bro... is always...

Dear Diocesan Family, A panel of the Virginia Supreme Court will hear our petition for appeal on October 21 and, while it is unfortunate that these legal proceedings were necessary, I trust that this hearing will bring us one step closer to resolution. I am proud that the Diocese of Virginia and the Episcopal Church have chosen the path consistently to defend loyal Episcopalians, and to safeguard and to protect the Church's legacy and the Church from unwarranted governmental and legislative interference. It is with the same determination to stand by the people, traditions and legacy of our diocese that...

The body is not even cool yet. Hell, the election hasn't even happened yet, and the Democrats are already trying to figure what went is going to go wrong. Now this is my kind of campaign. Some may remember that Clinton White House Hotelier and Barista Terry McAuliffe ran for Virginia governor this year and lost in the primary to Creigh Deeds. Deeds had 50% of the vote with McAuliffe at 26% and Brian Moran at 24%. The New York Times thinks that maybe the Virginia Democrats drew the short straw with Deeds.

The top of the frozen apple juice can was stamped with the date, then the word "China." I could not believe it. China? I live in the Shenandoah Valley, at one time the biggest apple producer in the world, and my apple juice comes from China? Maybe it's just this store brand, I thought. But a visit to another grocery store confirmed it. They stocked a name brand, the top of it stamped with the date and the words "from China." I googled "China and apples." Stories and reports came up confirming my ... yes, fear. I hadn't been paying...