Much has been made of the lack of transportation funding in Virginia and how it is the top priority of Virginia businesses. But I wonder if the business community will allow lawmakers like Dick Black get away with this.

As the last legislative session closed, Del. Richard H. “Dick” Black (R-Loudoun) told legislators that he had informed residents that transportation was a priority but that the new budget contained no significant funding for roads and transit.

“The public can take a cynical view and ask, ‘Can we really believe these guys ever?’ I think it’s a betrayal of the people of the state of Virginia,” he said.

In the upcoming session, Black said, he was optimistic about transportation funding in part because of the pressures lawmakers are feeling. He said he would introduce a bill to protect money designated for transportation.

Everyone knows that “protecting” the Highway Trust fund won’t do much to address the underlying problem. But Black runs on his record of opposing any and all new taxes. Will the Va. business community allow Black and others to get away with their fraudulent stand?

For the life of me I can’t understand lawmakers like Sen. Bill Bolling, R-Hanover, who insist on coddling red light runners.

“I do not support the use of cameras at intersections,” he said.

“In my judgment, this is an inappropriate infringement on individual civil liberty.”

Well, in that case, let’s take cameras out of bank lobbies. After all, they’re an infringement of the right to rob, I guess. Or how about searches at airports. Don’t hijackers have some rights, too?

Del. L. Preston Bryant (R-Lynchburg) is losing his seat on the House Appropriations Committee, according to the Washington Post. Some see it as House Speaker Bill Howell’s revenge for Bryant’s ;leadership of “the gang of 17” Republicans who supported the tax hikes last year.

Howell might want to consider who’s ox he’s goring.

“It is a move reflective of a man who is worried about holding on to his position of power and has to make a move to satisfy the far right,” said James Hazel, co-chairman of a political action committee whose mission is to support the Republican moderates.

“The speaker must think that the business community is naive in the extreme to believe that this is not a move based on retribution,” said Hazel, a Republican business executive and former Warner policy adviser.

The Leadership for Virginia PAC was formed to support delegates like Bryant. He’ll undoubtedly get their dollars if the GOP presents a primary competitor. The more interesting question will be the PAC’s role in elections pitting a Democrat against an incumbent anti-tax Republican.

And it’s not the first vengeful move by the speaker; nor is Bryant the only victim.

Shortly after the assembly finished its bitter 115-day session in May, Howell kicked Bryant off the Joint Commission on Health Care. Dumped from the same commission was Del. S. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, who also was a leader in the revolt against the House leadership.

Del. G. Glenn Oder, R-Newport News, lost his seat on the Virginia Housing Commission. Oder too voted for the tax-increase compromise and had written a newspaper column promoting higher taxes Gov. Mark R. Warner, a Democrat, sought to meet needs in education, health care and law enforcement.

And you’ve got to wonder what respect is given the chairman of the Appropriations committee.

The dropping of Bryant had been rumored for weeks, but some delegates seemed surprised. Del. Vincent F. Callahan Jr., R-Fairfax, chairman of the budget panel, apparently learned of the Bryant departure yesterday after being called by a reporter.

“Preston is a very valuable member of the Appropriations Committee and I’d like him to stay,” he said.

“You need a certain amount of discipline, but in this case the Speaker has made a public statement that there would be no recrimination,” Callahan said. “That’s always the best policy, conciliation rather than recrimination.”

Howell told delegates in the spring that he would not punish them for supporting the tax increase. Later, after he booted Bryant and Jones from a health-care commission, the Speaker clarified that he was not punishing them for their tax vote but for “other things,” which he declined to enunciate.

Bryant’s departure chagrined senior members of the budget committee.

Del. J. Paul Councill Jr., D-Southampton, described Bryant as “a moderate, middle-of-the-road member.”

“I hate to see him slapped around like that,” Councill said. “I hate to see some of these people who try to use good common sense and act with something other than politics in mind get treated like this. It’s part of the problem we have up there.”

The Staunton News-Leader asks if we are really as Christian nation as we purport to be.

Here in the Commonwealth, Attorney General Jerry Kilgore is already running for governor on a platform that would “enhance” the death penalty and extend the reach of state-sanctioned murder to people who did not even participate in a killing. Kilgore also wants to treat gang crime as terrorism. The logic is that since the public is terrified by gangs, gang crime constitutes terrorism. Ergo, the anti-terrorism laws passed by 33 states in the wake of 9/11 – Virginia among them – are ripe for the picking to prosecute street thugs.

Wrong. All good people are terrified of crime – even small crimes – all crime terrorizes. That does not mean we should mete out the death penalty to shoplifters and burglars.

Vengeance is not a Christian value. Hate is not a Christian value. Justice, applied fairly, is.

There are adequate statutes on the books that can be used to sentence murderers, gangsters and rapists to hard time – even death, should their crimes call for it under state law – without “enhancement.”

Forgiveness and a belief that others might find the light and see the errors of their ways – those are Christian values. We are mightily sick of perversion of the law in the name of politics and vote-winning. Turning our laws into vote-winning machines is a sin of pride and a manifestation of the egotism of politicians. We must do better than that.

Margaret Edds sets the record straight.

The Hampton Roads Daily Press thinks we’re endanger of becoming a citizenry that worries about “me, myself and I.”

Nearly a half-century ago John F. Kennedy spoke of the social contract: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Such language is not especially fashionable in civic life today. The talk is of tax breaks, of the threat to individual privacy if cameras are used to catch people running red lights, of the “burden” that government imposes on citizens. As a society, we are hardly inclined to ask government to look after the other fellow. In fact, at times we even seem to resent giving government the resources to look out for me, myself and I. Hence the insufficiency of funds for public safety and transportation, never mind how stingy Virginia is when it comes to providing medical care for the poor.

Perhaps the winds are shifting. The slight increase in the state sales tax, agreed to by the General Assembly last year, is evidence of such change. 2005 will offer ample opportunity to weigh whether that action was a fluke or a trend. When issues are weighed – transportation, Medicaid, education and many others – will the rhetoric that prevails in the legislature this winter and on the campaign trail in the fall be the rhetoric of crass self-interest? Let’s hope for – let’s insist upon – something broader, something more ennobling.

…You are doing something right.

Though the numbers of teenagers engaging in risky behavior remains alarmingly high, public health officials are increasingly cheered by the trend.

They cite a variety of reasons for it, including slick commercials that educate teens on the consequences of drugs and cigarettes and sex.

There’s also the possibility that today’s hyper-busy children – raised by peripatetic parents – have no time to waste.

Perhaps the most hopeful reason is one embedded in the generation gap between today’s teens and today’s parents, those party-children of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.

When they were young, today’s parents engaged in precisely the same kinds of risky behavior available to their children, to the dismay of their own parents, and despite plenty of unheeded calls to reform.

Perhaps because of their own hard, dangerous lessons, and because of their exposure to all the messages that didn’t work, today’s parents have an easier time doing something their folks found difficult: getting their children to listen.

The number of male elementary school teachers is at a 40-year low.

“With an absence of male elementary teachers, children are missing the experience of an alternative authority figure, a healthy male role model and, in the case of minority men, a valuable cultural connection that could inspire kids to learn more and better,” said NEA spokeswoman Melinda Anderson.

Have they made their mark and helped kids achieve theirs?

Allen will be up for re-election next year, and Warner has been mentioned as his likely opponent. But Warner associates are urging him to forgo a Senate race that he might not win and begin running for the Democratic presidential nomination as soon as he leaves office in January 2006. A Senate race against Allen would take up too much time, these associates say.

“If Warner wants to run for president, he should run for president. If he wants to run for the Senate, he should run for the Senate. He shouldn’t try to do both,” said political consultant Steve Jarding, who managed Warner’s gubernatorial campaign in 2001 and worked for Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina and Bob Graham of Florida when they sought the Democratic presidential nomination early last year.

And will Warner run on his education record?