Noting that almost 1 of every 3 members of the military who reported a sexual assault last year also said they faced retaliation, Sen. Mark Warner is introducing a bill today to provide stronger whistleblower protection for victims and others who report assaults.

The protection - similar to what is available to other federal government employees - would also cover sailors, Marines, airmen or soldiers who report nonsexual misdeeds or serious problems.

While recent reports by the Pentagon of a rise in sexual assaults have raised alarms in Congress, Warner said, he’s also concerned about repercussions faced by others in the service, including two aviators at Hampton’s Joint Base Langley who last year went public with concerns about the F-22 Raptor fighter jet. One of the pilots, who warned that the jet was dangerous because of a faulty oxygen system, has said he faced retaliation for talking about their worries.

“What we’re trying to do here is create a culture in the military where, if you see something wrong - whether it’s a sexual harassment or you’re flying an F-22 that you don’t feel is working - you can bring forward that information without fear of retaliation,” Warner said Thursday.

Source: The Virginian-Pilot

Virginia prides itself on its part-time legislature: Officeholders aren’t full-time lawmakers, but “citizen representatives” whose livelihoods are in the real world, not at the public trough. The requirements placed on them, however, mirror those of their federal comrades up the road from Richmond in Washington.

Del. Kathy Byron, R-Bedford County, accepted a trip to Taiwan in 2012, combined with three trips to American Legislative Exchange Council meetings between 2010 and 2012 easily made her the busiest traveler among the Lynchburg area’s delegation to the legislature. Unfortunately, Byron neglected to report her travel to Taiwan. Byron indicated that she didn’t report her trip to Taiwan because Virginia taxpayers didn’t pay for it. However, this is not in keeping with the Virginia disclosure laws. Laws such as financial disclosure regulations are in place to give the general public confidence their legislators have the public’s interests at heart, not those of big donors and lobbyists.

The delegate said she took the trip sponsored by Taiwan’s cultural office and didn’t report it because Virginia taxpayers didn’t pay for it. That’s not the total point of the personal financial disclosure statements required of all state lawmakers concerning items worth more than $50. The point of the law — in addition to disclosing whether taxpayers paid for the event — is for the public to know who is paying for the trip, dinner, conference and other gifts being handed out by the special interests.

The public then can make up its collective mind whether the event in which legislators participated was in the best interests of the state and its people or whether it was in the best interests of the sponsors. Those sponsors can range from a country, such as Taiwan, to golf outings sponsored by the Virginia Bankers Association to dinners sponsored by Genworth Financial or Carilion Clinic.

Source: The Lynchburg News & Advance

E.W. Jackson says he will make no apologies for past statements that might offend. Like calling gay people perverted and “very sick.” Pronouncing the Democratic Party agenda as “worthy of the Anti-Christ.” Denouncing Planned Parenthood as “far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was.”

Now that Jackson is the Republican Party candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia, he sees no reason to temper his views. They reflect religious beliefs that are dear to him. Fair enough. People can judge his candidacy accordingly.

He ought to apologize, though, to people of faith who do not share his intolerance. Even among believers who, like Jackson, call themselves Christian, there are those who do not want their beliefs to be associated with his narrow and often hurtful interpretation of the Good News.

Jackson presumes too much in his retort to critics when he asserts, “Attacking me because I hold to those principles is attacking every church-going person, every family that’s living a traditional family life, everybody who believes that we all deserve the right to live.”

Source: The Roanoke Times

Note to aspiring Republican politicians: When Ken Cuccinelli says you have gone too far, you might want to take a few steps backward.

The Virginia attorney general and GOP gubernatorial nominee has declined to stand by some of the more inflammatory comments made by his new running mate, E.W. Jackson. Over the weekend, Republican stalwarts plucked Jackson from a field of seven candidates competing for the nomination for lieutenant governor. Jackson is a dynamic speaker, and his barn-burning soliloquy at the party’s convention probably helped elevate his status among the true believers.

Most Virginia voters, however, do not share the ardent beliefs of the tea party faithful. Nor are they likely to embrace a candidate who compares Planned Parenthood to the KKK, denounces homosexuals as sick and perverted, and accuses the Democratic Party of participating in genocide. Jackson terms Barack Obama an “evil presence.” Obama has won Virginia twice.

As analyst Larry Sabato notes, Cuccinelli brought this problem on himself by maneuvering the party away from a primary and to a convention. Cuccinelli could have won a primary against Bill Bolling. Jackson came in fourth in a 2012 primary for the Senate and probably would have fared about the same this time around.

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch

Legislators appointed to a commission to make sure Medicaid reforms are moving forward should arrive for their first meeting next month with their boots pulled on tight. That horse is already out of the barn and galloping down the road.

Years of work by Bill Hazel, Virginia’s secretary of health and human resources, and his team have come to fruition this spring with initiatives offering better care at more affordable costs for the most difficult patients to serve — low-income elderly and disabled individuals as well as those with mental illnesses.

Commission members should show their appreciation for that progress by backing an expansion of the Medicaid program to cover up to 400,000 uninsured adults now without access to medical care. Legislators who attempt to delay that effort should be called out by more enlightened colleagues, as well as business leaders who support expansion as a means to get a handle on escalating insurance costs.

The headliner this week was approval by federal officials of a three-year pilot project that will improve coordination of care for individuals who are eligible for Medicare because of their age or a disability and also qualify for Medicaid because they are indigent. Participants will trade in their three ID cards for Medicaid, Medicare and prescription drugs, each with a different set of benefits, and join a program overseen by private health care plans.

Source: The Roanoke Times

As midnight approached on the eve of the Republican convention in Virginia, party loyalists were tipping beers and listening to country music at a rollicking fete hosted by Pete Snyder, a front-runner for the nomination for lieutenant governor.

Down the hall at the Marriott in Richmond, a minister also running for Virginia’s second-highest office, E.W. Jackson, was lingering at his own party, where a Bible and a cross were displayed at the entrance. The ballroom was largely empty. If the excitement at Snyder’s gathering suggested momentum, the quiet at Jackson’s spelled a looming return to obscurity.

Twenty-four hours later, after delivering a thunderous speech that seized the convention, Jackson was the Republican nominee and the party’s first black candidate for statewide office since 1988.

Jackson’s improbable rise, one that has astonished Republicans far and wide, is the latest of a number of incarnations, including foster child, Marine, Harvard law school graduate and even Democrat. But the minister who is now GOP gubernatorialnominee Ken Cuccinelli II’s running mate has long used his booming voice to endear himself to conservatives.

Source: The Washington Post

E.W. Jackson, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, is not backing down from his comments on gays and the Ku Klux Klan that have drawn fire from the GOP and Democrats.

“I do not retract anything that I said,” Jackson said in a brief interview before a fundraising lunch hosted by Virginia Senate Republicans in Richmond on Thursday. The event at the Richmond Marriott was closed to the public.

Jackson said he made the remarks as a pastor, to a Christian audience. “I was speaking … about what I think Christians ought to be doing,” he said. “I think it is important that Christians vote and stand by their biblical principles. I think everybody ought to do that.”

Jackson, a Chesapeake pastor and lawyer who secured the Republican nomination in a 10-hour balloting battle at last weekend’s GOP state convention, has previously linked homosexuality to pedophilia, called gays and lesbians “sick” and “perverted,” and has accused the Democratic Party of being “anti-God.” He has urged black Virginians to become Republicans and “not betray God.”

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch

Virginia has begun measuring how many hours state employees work each week to find out how many part-time workers should be receiving health insurance under federal law.

On May 1, the state began measuring hours and will continue through April 30, 2014, to determine an hourly average over a year and to identify how many hourly wage employees worked more than 29 hours a week.

Employees who work more than 29 hours a week must be offered health insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act, so Gov. Bob McDonnell and the General Assembly ordered state agencies this year to limit the hours of hourly wage employees who had been working up to 32 hours a week.

That wasn’t a problem for state agencies if they complied with a long-standing state rule limiting part-time hourly workers to 1,500 a year, which works out to an average of about 29 hours a week.

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch

A trial date has been set in a tax dispute that pits a controversial dietary supplement maker against the state of Virginia, the first sign of movement in the case in more than 18 months.

A judge in Mecklenburg County, near the North Carolina border, will hear arguments in December over a tax bill contested by Virginia-based Star Scientific Inc., according to lawyers representing the state.

Virginia Attorney Gen. Ken Cuccinelli IIrecused his office from the matter after it became public that he was defending the state even though he owned stock in Star Scientific and had accepted lake house vacations and private plane rides from its chief executive.

Federal and state authorities also are probing the relationship between Star Scientific chief executive Jonnie R. Williams and Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R). Williams paid $15,000 for the catering at McDonnell’s daughter’s 2011 wedding.

Source: The Washington Post

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, is reintroducing a bill to reform how federal agencies regulate business and the environment.

The bill would require agencies follow the lowest cost rulemaking alternative available and give advance notice of proposed major rulemaking efforts to increase public input. It also seeks to boost  judicial review of new regulations..

“America’s job creators are being buried under an avalanche of federal regulations … this this has a devastating impact on our national economy,” Goodlatte said. “If we are to grow our economy and get more Americans back to work, Washington must get out of the way. “

Source: The Roanoke Times

E.W. Jackson, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, is not backing down from his controversial comments on gays and the KKK that have drawn fire from the GOP and Democrats.

“I do not retract anything that I said,” Jackson said in a brief interview before a fundraising lunch hosted by Senate Republicans in Richmond today. The event at the Richmond Marriott was closed to the public.

Jackson said that he made the remarks as a pastor, to a Christian audience.  “I was speaking… about what I think Christians ought to be doing,” he said. “I think it is important that Christians vote and stand by their biblical principles. I think everybody ought to do that.”

Jackson, a Chesapeake pastor and lawyer who secured the Republican nomination in a 10-hour balloting battle at last weekend’s GOP state convention, has previously linked homosexuality to pedophilia, called gays and lesbians “sick” and “perverted” and has accused the Democratic Party of being “anti-God.” He has urged black Virginians to become Republicans and “not betray God.”

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch

Democrat Terry McAuliffe is taking heat from Republican foes over what they’ve termed his flip flopping positions on two forms of fossil fuel energy: coal and offshore drilling for oil and natural gas.

The gubernatorial candidate this week expressed support for offshore drilling, a shift coinciding with U.S. Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both Virginia Democrats, introducing legislation to lift a federal ban on offshore drilling in coastal waters, provided the state gets some profits.

Four years ago, McAuliffe favored exploratory drilling for natural gas, but not oil.

His revised position on offshore drilling, first noted by the Washington Post, has opened him to criticism that he’s inconsistent on energy policy.

“Terry McAuliffe, once again, stuck his finger in the wind to be sure he says whatever voters want to hear,” said Anna Nix, a spokeswoman for Republican gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli, contrasting McAuliffe’s 2009 views to his current stance.

“Now, in 2013, McAuliffe realized that even Democrats are for offshore drilling and he can’t wait to jump on the bandwagon,” she added, saying it follows his recent reversal on coal policy and evinces “political opportunism” rather than true conviction.

Source: The Virginian-Pilot

Birtherism is passe these days, save for a few Onoda-esque holdouts. The new conspiracy, if E.W. Jackson gets his way: Harry Reid is faking his faith.

Jackson, a highly-controversial figurethrown into the limelight after Virginia Republicans nominated him to be their Lieutenant Governor nominee this past weekend, argued that Reid was just pretending to be a Mormon during anappearance on Glenn Beck’s TV show on October 18, 2012.

After Beck said he couldn’t understand how he and Reid can share the same religion yet have such different policy views, Jackson reasoned that the Senate Majority Leader must not actually believe his faith. “I think some of the people who claim to be Mormon or claim to be this or claim to be that, that’s all they’re doing. They’re just claiming,” Jackson said. “They don’t believe it or feel it in their hearts.”

Source: ThinkProgress

News that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli appointed Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Herring to investigate Gov. Bob McDonnell’s financial disclosure statements is a gift to Virginia’s Democrats. It is the right thing to do, but it will please the Democrats on several counts.

Although an investigation could clear not only the air but also McDonnell’s reputation, situations such as these seldom redound to their subject’s benefit. They might not prove disabling, but they often leave stains. Reports of gifts from Jonnie Williams Sr. to the McDonnell family have left many heads shaking. The crucial question asks whether McDonnell disclosed all the information he should have.

We have said that the stories suggest embarrassment more than scandal. If they grow into a scandal, then they likely would rate as a relative minor one. This is not Teapot Dome or, for that matter, Benghazi. We reserve judgment.

The mess also has implications for Cuccinelli’s decision not to follow the Virginia tradition that calls for an attorney general to resign when he or she seeks the governorship. The ticklish complications allow critics to argue that Cuccinelli ought to step down. We, too, think this has reached a point that justifies his departure.

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch

Seemingly cast aside by his own party in the governor’s race and with time winding down on his term as lieutenant governor, Bill Bolling’s political career seemed to be in its twilight.

But with the ideological direction of the Virginia GOP in question and an election growing more contentious by the day, Bolling could be laying the groundwork for a powerful resurgence in Old Dominion politics.

The nomination of E.W. Jackson to succeed Bolling as the state’s No. 2 executive officer has shifted the tenor of the Republican ticket farther to the right, providing Virginians with two ideologically distinct choices for the November elections.

Jackson courted controversy almost from the moment he accepted the nomination, when controversial statements he made in about President Barack Obama, gays and other subjects surfaced online.

Bolling blasted Jackson for the remarks in a statement to Politico on Monday, saying they “feed the image of extremism, and that’s not where the Republican Party needs to be.”

“These kinds of comments are simply not appropriate, especially not from someone who wants to be a standard bearer for our party and hold the second highest elected office in our state,” he told the website.

Source: Watchdog.org