Virginia Legislature Gets More Strange Every Year

This came from the group that first registered the name "Virginia TEA Party." All links are to legitimate sites, and wouldn't it be cool if Second Amendment rights supporters gave our sheriffs more than Senator Saslaw admits having taken away.

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Democrats Punish Law Enforcement Officers for Supporting the 2nd Amendment

Democrats in the General Assembly refused to amend the state budget to give the Sheriff's departments a 3% raise. According to Senator Bill Stanley (R-Franklin), the Democratic Majority Leader Dick Saslaw admitted to him that their refusal was in retaliation for our Sheriff departments standing with us for our 2nd Amendment rights. You can read more about this in the links below.

https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/02/21/va-dems-deputies-gun-control/

http://thebullelephant.com/democrats-in-the-general-assembly-threaten-law-enforcement/

If you wish to thank our law enforcement officers who are standing with us for the 2nd Amendment, please show your support by generously giving at
https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-our-virginia-sheriffs"

Roe V. Wade: Can We Stop the Reruns? Please?

Here's the text of an e-mail I sent to one of the correspondents who claim to have their knickers in a twist about yet another proposed bill that has something to do with surgically induced abortions. Short version: Feh.

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Exactly at the time I became old enough to read such news, Roe v. Wade established an "unenumerated right to privacy" that banned abortion bans. This is no longer news. Pro-abortion or anti-abortion debates have been generating heat not light ever since and they are boring, boring, BORING. They go down a dead-end road to "Are you Catholic or not?" I respect people's right to be Catholic; I'm not Catholic. I believe abortion is neither morally nor medically sound, so I didn't have one. Others can make that choice for themselves too.

I'm more concerned about murders of babies or of their mothers by reluctant fathers than I am about abortions by reluctant mothers. If you assume an either-or choice, which usually does not exist in the real world, then yes, I value women higher than fetuses. I also think valuing women is a valid reason to teach girls that abortion is not an option they should consider for themselves. But pro-abortion versus anti-abortion reruns merely distract attention from that.

To interest me in anything remotely associated with abortion issues you'd have to move beyond the lame old twentieth century arguments and consider things that are at least fresh:

(1) Tweaking sex education back to its original purpose. "This is how people make babies. It is what you should NEVER do if you don't want babies. All the other ways people express affection and pleasure are 'better' when they don't start unwanted babies, including playing Scrabble if that's what comes to their minds, not even to mention all the other things that are likely to come to your minds after you've played a few rounds of Scrabble with the Significant Others you will eventually meet. When people under the age of eighteen are present we can focus on Scrabble." Seriously, I like what Joycelyn Elders said, but I agree with those who think she said it in more explicit terms than would be appropriate for a sixth grade class discussion. Teenagers should find and read her book for themselves.

(2) Encouraging more adoption and fostering of children, including older children, including singles as foster parents for teens with profiles that suggest problems for opposite-sex foster parents. Being a custodial foster sister was my big coming-of-age experience and has worked for other big sisters/brothers too. Foster care in a single-sex household, especially if that household has access to a better school environment and/or job opportunities, can prevent teen pregnancies. More social support for the reality that some people form single-sex households in order to practice abstinence, rather than homosexuality, might help both babies and teenagers grow up in supportive, ethical home environments.

(3) Recognizing that among the other harmful effects glyphosate has on all living things, it can cause abortion, problem pregnancies, and/or birth defects. For a minority of pregnant females of all species, glyphosate is an abortifacient. Instead of fretting about people who choose abortion (counsellors say it's more often the man's choice than the woman's), consider the people who really want to keep their babies and aren't able to, because someone in their neighborhood is too lazy to dig up a dandelion!

Or share your own strategies for reducing the incidence of abortion, if you really want to save the life of a fetus that might have become a baby somewhere. But, meanwhile, I delete pro-abortion and anti-abortion e-mail.
"

Morgan Griffith on the Trouble with Socialism

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9)...The various members of this web site don't agree completely on much, especially on things correspondents tell us by e-mail. I used to envision it as a forum for different voices; I seem to be the only one who actually sits down and writes. I think (without checking, I could be wrong) that this E-Newsletter may be the first of its kind with which we all completely agree:

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Friday, February 21, 2020 –                                
The Trouble With Socialism: First in an Occasional Series
Knowledge is Power
A Gallup poll released in late 2019 highlighted a disturbing trend in public opinion. It found that 39 percent of Americans view socialism positively. Of even more concern, 49 percent of Americans aged 18 to 39 view it positively.
Anyone considering socialist policies in our country today would do well to look at what happened where and when they were tried.
The great British statesman Winston Churchill observed, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
He said that to the House of Commons in 1945 as his country embarked on its own socialist experiment. Churchill’s Conservative Party had lost the parliamentary election earlier that year to the Labour Party, which promised to look after Britons “from the cradle to the grave.”
Its tools for doing so included nationalizing important sectors of the economy including coal mining and the steel industry. The National Health Service (NHS) was established. Local councils were given the power to buy housing.
Exorbitant tax rates were needed to support these initiatives, and the food rationing implemented during World War II was maintained for years after the war had been won.
The rationing particularly irked C.S. Lewis, the great author and apologist, but he benefited from his American fans, who shipped him simple comforts and food across the Atlantic. In response to the gift of a ham, he wrote back, “Such a thing could’nt [sic] be got on this side unless one was very deep in the Black Market.”
Food was not socialism’s only failure. Government control over housing meant that by 1951, Britain had 750,000 fewer houses than required. NHS prescriptions skyrocketed, as did its costs.
C.S. Lewis recognized that socialism’s grandiose promises failed to meet even basic needs and welcomed Churchill’s return to power. But when Churchill resumed office in 1951, although he ended the food rationing that had so irked Lewis, many socialist policies were entrenched. Unfortunately for Britain, this meant decades of sluggish economic performance, high unemployment, and labor unrest.
In the 1970s, this combination even took on the nickname “the British disease.” In 1976, the British economy suffered from inflation of almost 17 percent and unemployment of 5 percent.
The “winter of discontent” of 1978-79 seemed to bring the country to another low. As the government struggled to cope with inflation, it imposed wage controls on public sector workers. Union strikes in protest led to garbage piling up in the streets and many hospitals providing only emergency treatment.
When the general election campaign began in 1979, the Leader of the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher, vowed, “The slither and slide to the socialist state is going to be stopped.”
When her party won the election and she became Prime Minister, Thatcher introduced major reforms to the British economy. She rolled back tax rates, returned many nationalized entities to the private sector, and reduced the power of union leaders who had previously shut down the entire country.
Throughout the 1980s, inflation plunged, millions of new jobs were created, and the economy grew.
As Thatcher said, “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money.” She had seen this in Britain’s post-World War II experience. There is no need for the United States to discover this truth for ourselves.
Britain suffered economically from the implementation of socialism, but it should be said that at least it remained a largely free country politically. That cannot be said about other countries, and there is no guarantee that our country would be so lucky.
In the United States, where we treasure the freedom to speak and believe according to our conscience as well as keep what we earn to use as we see fit, we should be on guard against the restriction of these rights.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405, my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671, or my Washington office at 202-225-3861. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also, on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.
"

Morgan Griffith on the Equal Rights Amendment

Comment below this message from U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-9):

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Friday, February 14, 2020 –                                
No Road Back for the ERA   
There are few things from 1972 that you could just pick up and dust off for use today. Clothes would be out of fashion if they even fit, cars would need plenty of maintenance and care to be driven, and disco music had not even made its way onto the music charts.
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) passed Congress in that year! It proposes a solution to a problem that existed prior to 1972 and was being resolved with good legislation at the federal and state levels.
For an amendment to pass, the United States Constitution requires the approval of two-thirds of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, followed by ratification in three-fourths of the states. It is not supposed to be an easy process, and only 27 amendments have been added since the Constitution’s adoption.
The ERA included a seven-year deadline for ratification. By the time it arrived in 1979, 31 states had ratified the ERA. Four others had ratified it but rescinded their ratifications by the deadline. By no measure had the required 38 states ratified the ERA.
Congress then passed an extension to 1982, although the extension only passed by a simple majority rather than the two-thirds vote required for constitutional amendments, rendering the extension legally very suspect. A federal district court in Idaho found the extension invalid in 1981.
In any event, no more states ratified the ERA by the 1982 deadline. The Supreme Court that year declared a lawsuit about the extension moot because the amendment had failed. The House of Representatives in 1983 tried to pass a new Equal Rights Amendment, another concession that the ratification process begun in 1972 was dead, but that new ERA did not attain the required two-thirds vote.
You don’t have to go back almost four decades to find Supreme Court justices who think the ERA is dead. Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an ERA supporter, said on February 10, 2020, “I’d like it to start over,” noting the controversy with states adopting it late and others rescinding it before ratification.
Nevertheless, supporters of the ERA are plowing ahead. Virginia’s new Democrat majority in the General Assembly spent valuable legislative time on ratification, and the Democrat majority in the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution by simple majority to remove the deadline.
ERA proponents cite the 27^th Amendment, which prohibited congressional pay raises from taking effect before an election of representatives had intervened. This amendment was proposed as part of the original Bill of Rights in 1789 and only ratified in 1992, but unlike the ERA, it never had a deadline.
Other amendments, such as the Eighteenth Amendment imposing Prohibition, did include a deadline but were ratified in time.
In light of these facts, the recent activity regarding the ERA is little more than a sideshow.
But what of Justice Ginsburg’s suggestion that supporters of the amendment start over?
The country is in a different place than it was in 1972, when the ERA passed Congress. It is certainly in a different place than it was in 1943, when the text was first introduced, or 1923, when the original ERA was proposed.
I am sympathetic to those who advocated the amendment prior to 1972. In the 1960s, my mother sought a loan for our house on Broad Street in Salem. The house I grew up in was at risk of being lost. At the time, she was ineligible because she was a divorced woman. A divorced man earning the same would have had no problem. That was wrong. Fortunately, a sympathetic loan officer checked the box that she was widowed, thus making her eligible.
By the 1970s, when she applied for a loan for a house on Main Street, that legal barrier had been eliminated by good legislation without the need for a constitutional amendment.
In just a few years, the situation had changed and my mother was treated more fairly. ERA supporters overlook our ability to make progress, whether by specific legal changes, cultural shifts, or other means apart from the drastic step of amending the Constitution.
Any injustices that exist today should be remedied by legislation. The ERA is a blunt instrument. Its very broadness could lead to applications that are far from promoting “equality.” For instance, some states that have included ERAs in their constitutions have been forced to support abortion. Courts could very well force the same outcome at the federal level.
Legally, the ERA has been long dead, and it should not be resurrected.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405, my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671, or my Washington office at 202-225-3861. To reach my office via email, please visit www.morgangriffith.house.gov.
"

Editorial comment: I personally think the right to privacy should be enumerated in the Constitution, anti-abortion activity should focus on the men who cause abortions, and the problem with the E.R.A. back in its day was the military draft...but there is a certain bottom-line agreement here. I agree that constitutional amendments should be difficult to add. In the absence of an overwhelming popular demand, they are a boondoggle.

Book Review: Hiding Ezra and Wayland

Sad news, Gentle Readers. Goodreads is now hiding real individual book reviews just like Amazon. Amazon can get away with a little discrimination, because it's huge and commercial. Goodreads is neither.

Underwhelmed, to say the least, by typing in mini-reviews of these two novels-from-family-history, hitting "Post," and having the book's home page pop back onto the screen with a smarmy little message saying "Priscilla King, write a review of [the book I just did]!"--I don't like web sites that bark orders at readers, in any case...I'm going back to my own blog. Which Google, of course, will try to hide from people, and Goodsearch will try so hard to hide that it'll even redirect readers back to cached copies of the posts for which Blogjob paid. Goodheavens, the corporate would-be rulers of the world cried, we mustn't let people discover a blog that blows the whistle on sneaky corporate censorship on the Internet!

If the Internet doesn't pull a U-turn and require human review before even the ugliest porn images and hatespews can be censored, how long do you think it can last? Two years? Three? It's been fun, and I look forward to getting paid again for my special talent for creating decent-looking documents on manual typewriters...

Here, while it lasts, are full-length reviews of two short paperback novels. They can be read independently; they're best read together.

Author: Rita Sims Quillen

Title: Hiding Ezra

Amazon details:

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Little Creek Books (February 18, 2014)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1939289351

And the sequel: Wayland 

Amazon details:

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Iris Press (September 16, 2019)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1604542543

I'm late to the Internet today, Gentle Readers, because I started reading Wayland and couldn't put it down. I already knew from Hiding Ezra that this author is not averse to making readers cry, so I had to find out what she was going to do with this study in Human Evil...

Rita Sims Quillen is best known as a poet. No worries for those who don't like poetry; these stories are not told in the sort of lush  prose that tends to be described as "poetic." Landscape descriptions like "She also loved to go to a cool, shady bend in the little branch [creek] below the church where the trees created a canopy like walls" are as "poetic" as it gets. These novels get full marks for clear, straightforward prose that's not wordy, sentimental, or difficult to read. In fact one reviewer has quoted the first sentence of Hiding Ezra as an example of a good opening line for a novel.

They read like family history. Hiding Ezra is in fact based on family history--an old journal kept by a soldier who deserted from the Army in order to help his last few friends and relative survive a set of epidemic diseases that swept our part of the world in the 1910s and 1920s. Wayland might easily be based on another old journal.

Hiding Ezra is about the oddly enjoyable summer Ezra Teague spends hiding in a cave, leaving game near the homes of people who leave bread and ammunition near the cave. It's also about his grieving sister Eva, his faithful sweetheart Alma, and all the other friends and relatives they lose to the epidemics. It's also about Lieutenant Nettles, a nettlesome outsider from Big Stone Gap who connects with his inner decent human being after exposure to the grieving and loving people of Wayland, Gate City, and Fort Blackmore.

Wayland was the real name of one of the little rural settlements outside Gate City up to the 1940s, when it changed its name to Midway. Gate City had changed its name a bit earlier--in the nineteenth century it was called Estillville. Moccasin Gap, on the other side of the gap in the mountains formed by the Big Moccasin Creek, also changed its name, in the 1950s, to Weber City--spelled Weber, as in German, but pronounced Webber, as in English--after a radio comedy about a new subdivision: "The characters were having so much fun with their Weber City, we thought we'd have one too." In these novels place names are used as they were at the time.

When I read this novel, I enjoyed its dramatic climax, but wondered why the denouement was so long and so sad. A more tactful reviewer posted online that she wanted the story to be even longer, to resolve the new issues the denouement raises for the characters. Readers be warned. The last few chapters of Hiding Ezra are the trailer for Wayland.

In between reading the two stories, I cried. I won't spoil the denouement, I think, by explaining that I don't cry about fictional characters. No, but once when the words "rock hall" triggered a memory an 85-year-old great-uncle said, "My sister and sister-in-law used to take bread to the fellows that hid in the rock house." (Actually he used their given names, and one of them was still alive to confirm his claim.) My mother wondered if he was remembering the story she'd heard about my great-grandfather leading a party of soldiers to the nearby "rock house," a cave big enough for people to camp in. No, he said, this was in his lifetime...but he was weak and never had much to say at one time, and never mentioned the cave story again.

In my family the young spoke more frankly to the old, and asked more questions, than in some neighboring families. Still, I never asked for more details about feeding the deserters in 1918. I knew the cave was real; my brother and I had been shown how to find it on condition that we not try to get inside it. I knew Great-Aunt belonged to a pacifist church, and her sons were conscientious objectors, but her husband, Grandfather's brother, was exempt from military service because he was a minister. The great-uncle who first mentioned the story had one of those given names that commemorate a family friend's given and family names: Otto Quillen.That's all I can add to the facts behind Hiding Ezra.


What made me cry was that this story made me realize how lucky the elders were. My grandfather and eight of his younger siblings lived to ages between 75 and 99. Many of their generation did not. Physically and emotionally my elders survived by keeping a healthy distance between themselves and any friends they'd had as children...and even in the 1960s I still grew up hearing "Don't get closer to town children than you can help, don't go into town unless it's necessary, don't EVER go into a swimming pool, don't go to other people's houses and if you do don't eat or take off your shoes..." Two generations later, my extended family are still known as a stand-offish bunch. Possibly the elders' losses of friends to the epidemics had something to do with that. I've heard a lot of rot about possible kinds of "hurt" might have caused our family subculture to be so clannish, but this insight rang true. And it did hurt, briefly, wondering how many school friends my elders had buried...Grandfather was one of fifteen children, eight of whom lived to ages between 75 and 99. In another family of fourteen, six children born before 1940 were still alive in 1970.

Anyway: Ezra Teague survives his adventure, but the epidemic diseases and early deaths aren't over. In Wayland Ezra has left his daughter for his sister to raise. Eva has indeed married Lieutenant Nettles, who is now a nice guy but still insecure enough to be impressed by a stranger's show of respect. That insecurity places the Nettles family at risk when the lieutenant offers a job to a "hobo" who calls himself Buddy Newman. Newman's real name is Deel, as in Scottish "de'il," and his character is a study in Human Evil. He wants to set people against each other, ruin the reputation of a pious but sex-starved old lady, and do even worse things to little Katie Teague.

The suspense of the story is finding out whether Newman's schemes will be foiled, and how, and by which of the decent local folk. There is an interesting and thoroughly local delineation of the relative vileness of Newman, an otherwise likable hobo who has an icky relationship with a teenaged boy, a rude drunk, and a murderer. Newman is a bigot, a pedophile, and also a murderer, but his evil runs deeper than that. (The narration of his evil won't embarrass readers in front of their children but the single telling details, when they emerge, may upset children.)

Did an ancestor really keep a diary that narrated such events? At least they're not the local pedophile story I always heard: it would have been fifteen or twenty years later when the man I heard described as "an escaped mental patient" did some physical damage to a local primary school girl. And I was glad. I did not want that girl, who survived but never married, to have been the real model for Katie. (Katie is characterized as pretty much the perfect niece in Eva's diary, but aunts know to allow for another aunt's auntly perspective. I think each of The Nephews is pretty much a perfect child, too, in his or her own way.)

Once again, after the main plot has resolved itself, the last two chapters go on. I didn't cry while reading Wayland but I found the denouement somewhat sad. Others may like it but I think they'll agree that, once again, the last chapters of Wayland are a trailer for another story.

I gave both books five stars on Goodreads for Keeping It Real. These are not just another stereotype of "Appalachia," the whole mountain range, from Georgia to Nova Scotia and possibly also Britain, confused with old pictures of the coal-mining town. Anything looks grim in a black-and-white photograph. In these books we see Scott County much closer to the way it must have been, between 1917 and 1930, to have become what it's been in Quillen's and my lifetime. I'm delighted.