Whenever a politician goes out of his way to issue a denial of something that ought to go without saying (“I am not a crook!”), it’s a good sign there’s something worth looking into there.
So when Supervisor Shawn Williams (R-Broad Run) told us “I was not trying to be ideological or capricious with any of my votes” on the 2013 county budget, it’s a good bet that there in fact was, well, plenty ideological and capricious. Continue reading
Our leading local political ambulance chaser, “Ken” Reid, the very proud (and, it turns out, very vain, but that’s another story) new Republican supervisor from Leesburg, has been trying very hard to ingratiate himself with the Christian fundamentalist wing of the local GOP. 
In addition to sprinkling off-key pieties into his official utterances (“I truly believe we’re doing God’s work”) Reid has been playing to this crowd for some time by modestly extolling himself as “The Jew Who Saved Christmas.”
This self-designation is based on Reid’s efforts while on the Leesburg Town Council to have a Christmas tree put up on public property, and more recently on his small but extremely noisy part in opposing the county policy that opened the courthouse lawn to any citizen group that wants to put up a display—as opposed to the flagrantly unconstitutional endorsement of a single religion that prevailed in the past, when a very tasteful display of the brightly colored Holy Family reigned in solitary splendor each Christmas season on the courthouse grounds. Continue reading
If there is a theme emerging in what might charitably be called the governance style of our new all-Republican board of supervisors, it is not only paying off generous campaign contributors and getting back at perceived enemies, but also a desperate desire to catch the eye of the higher GOP powers-that-be with showy displays of fealty to the party’s ideological issues du jour. Continue reading
In her latest newsletter to constituents, Supervisor Janet Clarke (R-Blue Ridge) acknowledges her egregious conflicts of interest in voting for initiatives that financially benefit campaign contributors, admits that the reason she killed the Purcellville park and ride commuter lot in the county’s capital plan was so that the county would instead lease space from the extraordinarily Republican-friendly Biblical literalists who run Patrick Henry “College,” and announces that she will immediately sign the ethics policy adopted by the previous board and urge her fellow eight Republican members to do so as well.
Just kidding! Actually, her latest newsletter is devoted to an exciting announcement about the Junior Woman’s Club collecting prom dresses. But close . . . Continue reading
I owe a deep and humble apology to “Dr.” The Rev. Michael P. Farris, esq., Chancellor of Patrick Henry “College,” for having incorrectly stated the other day that his Bible college for home-schooled Christians located in our fair county is “unaccredited.”
"Chancellor" Michael Farris plays dress-up at his barely accredited Bible college
While it is true that the “college” in 2006 abandoned efforts to gain accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the American Academy for Liberal Education, Patrick Henry was fully accredited the following year by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS), a body established in 1971 “because of the prejudice against creation-science” in the mainstream academic community, according to its founders.
TRACS requires the schools it accredits adopt a statement of faith, binding upon faculty and others, that affirms “the inerrancy and historicity of the Bible” and “the divine work of non-evolutionary creation,” specifically God’s creation of “the existing space-time universe . . . in the six literal days of the creation week.”
TRACS has also been cited for granting recognition to “blatantly fraudulent institutions.”
Glad to have that cleared up. Continue reading
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