Free Republic

Faced with painful choices about who will suffer most from looming budget cuts, Alexandria officials have taken the unusual step of paying a professional ethicist to help them grapple with the moral issues involved. Just a few of the vexing decisions his advice helped Alexandria policymakers confront in recent weeks: They took apartments being built for the mentally ill and temporarily turned them into housing for the disabled. They cut a parenting counselor for jailed minors with kids but preserved aid for belligerent preschoolers. They scaled back drug prevention but kept the methadone pills available to ease the cravings of...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: For More Information, Contact: June 13, 2008 Jennifer Harris, Communications Officer, PIO#234-07/jlh 703.838.5078 or jennifer.harris@alexandriava.gov Alexandria Student Recognized for Support of Human Rights The Alexandria Human Rights Commission is pleased to announce that Debra Luecretia Mason, president of T.C. Williams High School Gay Straight Alliance (GSA), is the winner of the Commission’s seventh annual 2008 Student Human Rights Awards for her leadership role and promotion of equality for all regardless of sexuality. The Commission established the Human Rights Awards seven years ago to recognize students who have contributed significantly toward improving basic human rights and fairness for...

Rep. Vito J. Fossella (R-N.Y.) was arrested overnight in Alexandria and charged with driving while intoxicated, court records showed today. Fossella is scheduled to appear in Alexandria General District Court on May 12 for an advisement hearing, the records said. No other details were immediately available. Reached by phone, Fossella's communication director had no immediate comment on the report. Fossella was elected to Congress in a special election to represent the 13th Congressional District of New York in November 1997, according to a biography on his Web site. The district includes Staten Island and the Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, and...

A dispute over the proper valuation of 10 acres of property in Eisenhower Valley has two of the city’s oldest families and the Sanitation Authority pitted against each other, with the sellers asking for $40 million and the city holding out for $10 million less. The Hoof-Fagelson Tract, formerly a go-kart track that now serves as a maintenance parking lot for Thrifty Rent-A-Car, is landlocked on one side by Carlyle development, and on the other side by I-495. While the tract sits next to Alexandria’s Waste Treatment facility, it also adjoins a proposed $150 million office and retail development at...

Like many public school systems around the country, the school system in Alexandria, Va., where I teach has seen scores of education theories come and go like viruses. Aside from creating the illusion that school administrators have the latest secret to educating kids, the impact of these theories has been negligible and often counterproductive.

ALEXANDRIA DEMS SUPPORT GAY HIGH SCHOOL CLUB SUPPORTING T.C. WILLIAMS HIGH SCHOOL GAY SCHOLORSHIP FUND http://www.aglca.org/scholarship/HonorRoll_new.asp More than $1,000 - Rob Krupicka (Alexandria City Council) and Lisa Krupicka $250 or more, David Englin (Virginia State Delegate 45th District) and Shayna Englin $100 or more, Adam Ebbin (Virginia State Delegate 49th District) $50 or more, Redella Pepper - Alexandria Vice Mayor; S. Randolph Sengel - Alexandria Commonwealth’s Attorney. The Alexandria Gay and Lesbian Community Association (Alexandria GLCA) sponsors an annual scholarship for a graduate of Alexandria’s public high school, T.C. Williams High School. Donations to the Scholarship Fund of any amount...

A Casa Furniture and Bedding store in Alexandria has been advertising easy credit with a twist: “no gringo papers” necessary. A sign outside the store at the intersection of North Beauregard and King streets reads, “Credito sin papeles de gringo.” In English, that could be translated to say “Credit without gringo papers.” Blanca Granados, the store's assistant manager, translated the message to mean “just 'without white papers,' like Social Security or like that.” Miss Granados said the store requires customers who purchase furniture on credit to fill out an application and provide personal documentation. The store will accept a passport...

Alexandria GLCA Scholarship Dedicated to Karen Gautney & Sue Misslbeck At the Alexandria [Gay and Lesbian Community Association's] GLCA's September 4th Social, the 2007-2008 Board of Directors officially dedicated our annual scholarship award to Karen Gautney and Sue Misslbeck in a ceremony attended by approximately 70 members and guests. During her two year tenure as Alexandria GLCA President, Karen and her first-year Board of Directors founded the scholarship fund which rewards a TC Williams High School senior with a $1,500 stipend to assist with college expenses. Over the past two years, Karen, her partner Sue, and AGLCA members, friends, and...

Your Views November 8, 2007 Questions recreation’s notification policy If you live in Alexandria, have a child in the city’s after school programs run by the department of recreation, and assume you will be called in the event of an emergency — don’t hold your breath. According to Leslie Clark, a Department Division Chief, the department’s policy regarding parental notification is to guarantee that at least one person on a child’s emergency contact form will be called. In most cases, one would assume such a policy is reasonable. But, in cases where child custody is an issue, it becomes an...

Your Views November 8, 2007 Questions recreation’s notification policy If you live in Alexandria, have a child in the city’s after school programs run by the department of recreation, and assume you will be called in the event of an emergency — don’t hold your breath. According to Leslie Clark, a Department Division Chief, the department’s policy regarding parental notification is to guarantee that at least one person on a child’s emergency contact form will be called. In most cases, one would assume such a policy is reasonable. But, in cases where child custody is an issue, it becomes an...

The city of Alexandria, Va., is expected to pass a resolution tonight renewing its commitment to extend public services to illegal aliens. "We are reaffirming and recommitting our services and outreach to international citizens," Mayor William D. Euille, a Democrat, said yesterday. The seven-member City Council will vote on a two-page resolution that outlines Alexandria's intent to comply with state and federal immigration laws but not question the immigration status of people seeking public services. Mr. Euille said that the resolution should pass unanimously but that Alexandria has no figures on the cost of providing services to illegal aliens. "We...

Alexandria’s sanitation authority is trying to take more than 10 acres of property through an eminent domain seizure, offering nearly $10 million less than it bid on the land in 2005. The authority needs to expand its wastewater treatment plant, according to a condemnation petition filed in Alexandria Circuit Court in June. But it is not willing to pay the $51 million value of the property located between Eisenhower Avenue and the Beltway, said the property’s owner, Charles Hooff III. The sewer authority has made several offers on the property over more than two years, according to the authority’s petition....

The white populations of the District, Arlington and Alexandria have grown this decade even as the region's outer counties have grown more diverse, according to new census estimates to be released today that underscore how the area's soaring housing prices and job sprawl are reshaping its racial and ethnic dynamics. The city and those close-in Virginia suburbs had higher percentages of non-Hispanic white residents in 2004 than in 2000, a reversal of past trends, the estimates say. Minority groups grew more slowly than in the past, or declined. In the District, Arlington and Alexandria, whites became a larger share of...

Alexandria officials have approved adding a maximum $3-a-month tax on city residents' cell phone bills beginning this fall. The city joins a growing list of local jurisdictions and localities nationwide that are beginning to impose such a levy on their respective cell phone users. So far locally, cell phone users in Baltimore, Montgomery and Prince George's counties in Maryland, and Fairfax, Prince William and Loudoun counties in Virginia must pay up to $3 in taxes each month. "That clearly is a burden to taxpayers, on top of all the other taxes" said James Parmelee, president of Virginia-based Republicans United for...

SAUDI 'SOLDIER' BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ IN Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday, a 23-year-old Northern Virginia man of Saudi Arabian background named Ahmed Omar Abu Ali was charged with conspiring to assassinate President Bush. Abu Ali and his accomplices are accused of plotting to kill the president by gunfire or a car bomb. The indictment also spells out such criminal activities as assisting and receiving support from Osama bin Laden's band of murderers. Abu Ali was extradited to Virginia after many months in a Saudi jail. What's most remarkable about this case is the degree to which this would-be assassin is a...

WASHINGTON--Binh N. Le had not been back to the land of his birth since coming to the United States with an aunt and uncle at age 4, leaving his parents behind. So in 2002, after graduating from suburban Edison High School and before joining the Marine Corps, Le made a joyous pilgrimage to Vietnam to visit his mother and father. Recently, he told one of his aunts in the United States that when he returned from his second tour in Iraq in April, they would make the trip together. But Le, a 20-year-old corporal from suburban Alexandria, Va., was killed...

Federal agents have raided the U.S. branch of a large Saudi-based charity, founded in Northern Virginia by a nephew of Osama bin Laden, in connection with a terrorism-related investigation, law enforcement sources said yesterday. The raid Friday on the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) in Alexandria was carried out by agents of the FBI, U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the sources said. In a statement last night, WAMY said that all of the office's files and computer hard drives were seized and that a volunteer WAMY board member was arrested on...

By Paul Sperry © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com WASHINGTON -- A top textbook consultant shaping classroom education on Islam in American public schools recently worked for a school funded and controlled by the Saudi government, which propagates a rigidly anti-Western strain of Islam, a WorldNetDaily investigation reveals. The consultant, Susan L. Douglass, has also praised Pakistan's madrassa schools as "proud symbols of learning," even after the U.S. government blamed them for fueling the rise of the Taliban and al-Qaida. Douglass, routinely described as a "scholar" or "historian," has edited manuscripts of world history textbooks used by middle and high school students across...

The Alexandria school board has voted to keep Superintendent Rebecca Perry in her post. The decision came in a 7-to-1 vote this evening. The only vote to oust Perry came from the board's vice chairman, who says Perry's arrest last week on drunken driving charges sets a bad example for students. But the others voted to give Perry a second chance. The board also voted to reduce Perry's contract by a year. The agreement now ends after the 2004-2005 school year, but it can be renewed. Perry must also enroll in alcohol counseling, contribute to the T-C Williams High School...

  Navy Shows Off Next-Generation Vessel By Sgt. 1st Class Doug Sample, USAAmerican Forces Press Service Alexandria, Va., April 2, 2004 -- The huge vessel looks quite out of place among the small yachts and sailboats at a shallow pier. Neighborhood people on their morning jogs and dog walks looked amazingly at the HSV 2 Swift on its four-day port call here March 30. The HSV 2 Swift may one day become the Defense Department's transformation into the future. The Swift floats on two sleek, wave-piercing catamarans and can travel at speed of 42 knots or 85 plus kilometers...