Southwest Virginia Blogs

Taking a page from the Bill Clinton playbook, Senator George Allen is calling for Congress to issue an apology for slavery. How utterly pathetic.

Here's the shameful news:

Allen to seek slavery apology by Congress
Va. senator will work with Ga. congressman to push for resolution
By Kathryn Orth, Richmond Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

FARMVILLE -- Sen. George Allen, under fire for wearing a Confederate flag pin as a teenager, said yesterday he will pursue a proposal for a congressional resolution apologizing for slavery.

"I think it is a powerful idea and I want it to be considered seriously," Allen, R-Va., said during a three-day symposium for several congressmen to examine Prince Edward County's role in Massive Resistance and its aftermath. (link)

Allen wants a meaningless apology for slavery to be "considered seriously." Fair enough.

I consider it seriously idiotic.

It's been done, George. By the best panderer ever.

If you want to be taken seriously, do something about the institution of slavery that still thrives today in sub-Saharan Africa, George. Don't waste our time and insult our intelligence by offering up a vacuous apology for acts committed by individuals nobody knows against nameless individuals who were persecuted 200 years ago.

I think you owe us an apology for thinking we're a bunch of dolts.

Waldo Jaquith is receiving well-deserved notices and tributes for his Virginia blog aggregator. Two things strike me about Waldo's creation. One, those, like me, who begin using it will likely be exposed to many more viewpoints than we previously sought out, even if we just scroll past many post titles. Second, with all the Virginia blogging in [...]

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been helping a friend of mine who is a candidate for Saltville Town Council with his campaign. His name is Stephen Brandon McAllister, or his unique nickname “Moo” as he is called. Here is his campaign web site. I have to say that might be the first ever web site for a Smyth County local election. He is not the typical candidate as he is only 21 years old and a college student.

Compared to some big towns, Saltville is quite small but it is very challenging to cover all the town with as many streets Saltville has. Still, Saltville is the largest town in Smyth County in area and 2nd largest in population. There’s no question that door-to-door and grassroots work certainly win elections. I can’t tell you how many people we’ve talked to have said we were the first people to come to their house and nobody running for an office has ever stopped by.

A couple of the other candidates are also doing some door-to-door work but I don’t think their methods are effective. All they are doing is handing out business cards with their names on them. We have actually been handing out flyers that talk about the issues and provide more information than a little business card. Some residents have even told us that one particular candidate came to their house, handed them a business card, said “vote for me,” and turned to leave. That is NOT the way to conduct a door-to-door operation. You need to actually have a converstation with people.

Election Day is Tuesday and the field for Saltville Town Council has narrowed some. 1 of the 10 original candidates, Andrew M. Bresnock, Jr. has withdrawn. However, it is too late to remove his name from the ballots. There are now 9 candidates for 3 seats.

This morning I found myself in a strange place—a Rick Boucher Town Hall Meeting. Boucher held the meeting Saturday morning at the Chilhowie Public Library/Community Center here in Smyth County. There were around 25 people there counting him and his 3 staff members. I expected a much larger turnout, but it was a Saturday morning.

I actually had never seen Boucher speak before in person. I must admit he is an excellent public speaker and is very charismatic. He showed up a little past the listed start time, but jumped right into giving his report. The report listed several things he worked to accomplish here in Smyth County. Boucher listed the completion of the re-build of Route 600, funding for the renovation and re-opening of the Lincoln Theatre in Marion, and money for the library’s computer lab in the same building we were at today. His staff distributed a 30 page booklet to all in attendance listing all the things he considered his accomplishments in the 9th District for 2005 grouped by category.

Two themes were present throughout his presentation—tourism and technology. I didn’t mind the technology part at all since I am pretty tech savvy. However, I was tired of hearing the same old tourism stuff paraded out. Tourism definitely is not going to save SWVA. We need many good quality jobs and employers who will make long term investments. Technology jobs are good, but there is so much of our population who did not grow up with technology. I did like Boucher’s goals to expand broadband and wireless Internet access. Having broadband is a vital asset and resource for rural areas and does help to lure in technology and non-tech businesses.

Boucher did take questions for the audience which ranged from immigration issues, to gas prices, health care, and broadband availability. In his responses he did take a couple swipes at President Bush on Medicare funding reduction and gas prices. He also expressed optimism that the Democrats may regain control of the House in the November elections.

I had to leave before the end of the meeting to head to another event. I spent about and hour and a half watching it and have to give him high marks at least for his presentation.

This NRO post said back then:

"According to a senior staffer in Senate leadership, the Senate will likely turn to floor action in May on the long-pending nomination of Terry Boyle to the Fourth Circuit and/or the long-pending nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the D.C. Circuit. The Kavanaugh nomination is still before the Judiciary Committee, but should be reported to the floor soon. . . .

According to a very knowledgeable non-Senate source, the news is much worse for Fourth Circuit nominee William Haynes: Senator McCain is committed to stopping Haynes's confirmation, and Senator Graham, as a favor to Senator McCain, will keep the nomination from being reported out of committee. If this news is accurate, it would appear that there is no hope for Haynes's nomination."

Time may running out on these nominations, for better or for worse.

Since yesterday's post concerned the two party's websites, it seems appropriate to keep that momentum going with a comparison of the websites for our upcoming primary candidates.

First off... Miller2006.org

Considering that Harris is a former IT lobbyist, you'd think he'd be able to find a web designer who could create a better site. Nice color theme compared to the Webb site (yay, bad pun!), and the video upload is decent but not really useful for dial-up surfers. The links on the home page are very user-friendly. The Harris Miller Agenda leaves quite a bit to be desired. As for the Get Involved menu, it seems just a little tacky to put a possible volunteer hours section on the mailing list sign-up, especially considering the volunteer link right below that leads to THE SAME PAGE! On the other hand, the Miller Web Graphics link is an excellent addition. The Blog With Harris button is a little pathetic, considering it just takes you to the blog page (hasn't been updated since April 5th) listed in another link. Miller has an extremely impressive list of articles and press releases with nearly 34 press releases and 44 articles. On the other hand, the Miller Memo leaves a bit to be desired considering it hasn't been updated since February 24th. The Contribute and Contact pages are standard.

The score breakdown... (Scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best)

Creativity: 6
Features: 9
Appearance: 8
Update Regularity: 6

Total: 29 out of 40

Look for a Webb analysis tomorrow, and a Roanoke election breakdown just in time for the May 2nd elections.

The Daily Press reports here on the guilty verdicts in the criminal case against the mother and son who made a false claim that they found a mouse in their soup at a restaurant in Virginia.

It was a beautiful clear morning here in the valley. Being encouraged by the fantastic weather, we headed out to breakfast and continued on to downtown Roanoke. I took Glenda by our new office and then we walked down to...

This Rex Bowman story reads like something that could have happened in 1935.

Instead, the case was heard last week.

Mark McConnel, one of the three endorsed candidates of the Roanoke Fire Fighters Association (RFFA) is a Republican. Recently he has gained momentum in his quest for Roanoke City Council. The article below speaks of recent endorsements including RFFA Local 1132. The other two endorsed candidates from the RFFA are David Bowers and Granger Macfarlane, both Democrats. Political stories from The

Not that I agreed with all of it, but I was delighted by this profile from the Hook in Charlottesville of lawyer Benjamin Dick, whose most famous trial lately was the defense verdict in the farmer/lawyer murder case.

One of his accomplishments he lists as this: "being the first in the Dick genealogy to be a lawyer who won arguments before the Virginia Supreme Court, U.S. District courts, and the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals."

As his most embarrassing moment, he replied: "After losing a lot of weight for health issues, my old pants dropped to my ankles while I held an arm full of groceries in a grocery store, scaring a poor old lady."

Since it seems likely that I have a remote ancestor (Maindort Doodes, whose son Doodes Minor supposedly became a citizen by an Act of Assembly in 1673) in common with many of the Virginia Minors (including perhaps that John B. Minor who referenced Maindort in his 1923 book, The Minor Family of Virginia), I doubt that I can make a similar genealogical claim. I do, however, have some old pants that are certainly capable of falling to my ankles in a grocery store.

Today, the area bloggers met up for the first time. At least some of us did. We hope to catch up to a lot more next time. Needless to say, it was a good time. The people who attended our first meeting, held at De Expresso, were Keith and his wife (Just another day in Roanoke), Elena (Ms. Elenaeous), Andrew (Technology Futures), ATL (Lotzothoughts), Pam (HallsofBlueRidge), and of course yours

Now, Waldo Jaquith has created the aggregator of Virginia Political Blogs. Check it out - 80+ "political" Virginia blogs all in one place.

Marcia Oddi's Indiana Law Blog has this interesting post on the uproar in two states over contacts between state appeals court judges and legislators.

In Minnesota, "[f]or what may be the first time in its 40-year history, the state Board on Judicial Standards has opened investigative files on all seven Minnesota Supreme Court justices, the result of a complaint that alleges that one or more of them may have had improper conversations with a legislator regarding Minnesota's marriage laws."

In Kansas, a Senate panel pondered the question of "whether a Supreme Court justice's discussion with two senators about school funding has tainted other members of the court."

I've seen a few references, including this one from Robert Ambrogi, to Ian Best's interview with a federal court judge in Nebraska about law blogs.

It reminds me of how much I enjoyed Howard Bashman's series of Twenty Questions, one of two judges the Nebraska judges reads every day, along with Professor Berman's Sentencing Law Blog. (I would read those blogs every day, too, if I was a federal judge; heck, I read them both almost daily as it is.)

Just call this the week from hell. Actually, it was the month from hell. Server crashes plus configuration problems on a new server this week brought just about everything to a halt.

The trash bin in the back of our data center is littered with the remnants of servers that didn't work as promised and hard drives corrupted by viruses and worms because a virus program also didn't work as it should have.

Part of the problem started with a planned move from our data center in Loudoun County to a new one at Virginia Tech's Corporate Research Park in Blacksburg. The idea was to have the server farm closer at hand. This meant buying new equipment and, in true Murphy's law fashion, some of the equipment didn't work like I expected new servers to perform.

Since the first of April, I've had three of Sun's new Coolthreads Sun Fire servers bite the dust, two Dells running Linux suffer kernel failures and one Windows 2003 server reset itself and destroy everything from the last 10 days.

Capitol Hill Blue, which runs on multiple servers, went offline three times in the last three weeks, crippled by a bug in a new content management system and the same bug corrupted the backups without our knowledge.

We thought we were on the homestretch Friday moving the last of our servers, the one containing blogs for Fred First, Colleen Redman and others. But Fred's blog crashed before the move and wouldn't reboot on the new server. Finally traced the bug late Friday and finished up the move at 12:50 a.m. today.

So far (fingers crossed) everything is running fine. I've suffered more hardware and software problems in the last three weeks than in the last 11-and-a-half years of running and hosting web sites.

Lessons learned:

• Sun Servers ain't what they used to be. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. David St. Lawrence, an escapee from the corporate drudge of Sun, said it ain't the company it used to be either.
• Abacus, a server co-location company located in San Diego and Germany, is a ripoff. I had hoped to locate a mirror site there but their tech people failed to respond in a timely manner when we needed assistance and it took them three days to fix a minor problem. That's a shame. Abacus used to be a good company. Now they are just sham artists in it for the quick buck.
• Backups don't work when the file corruption that brings down a server is also on the backup files.
• Linux is good for running Tivo and small web sites but it doesn't have the power for large, full-scale operations that demand multi-threading, heavy processing needs and high traffic.
• I need some sleep.