A general rule: the more draconian a bill, the more it puts ideology ahead of common sense, the more likelihood it will pass.

There are many places in the world where laws pertaining to health care and privacy rights treat women and men equally. The Commonwealth of Virginia does not seem to want to be one of them.

Starting in December, anyone within walking distance of a Tide station will be able to journey all up and down the Eastern Seaboard by public transit, without need of a car, bus, or taxi, changing trains exactly once: at Harbor Park.

“Neutrality and objective distance are places I’ve never been able to find.” –Saviano, Gomorrah.

Obama’s marginalization of gays as “the crazy left,” and his turning his back on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

In today’s If You Read the Paper.

You’re maybe wondering why I traveled to South Africa in the first place. The answer is simple: to escape Christmas music.

Mama said the way to keep a diary was to write down the opposite of everything that happened, so she gave Jason a blank book so each night he could tell how all the boys played kick the cans until the boogeyman came.

Cuccinelli plays paintball, runs for Governor, possibly has triskaidekaphobia and more in today’s paper.

The job I was coveting was Delgaudio’s chief of staff, whose only rewarding task is writing suggestive idioms using ram, such as “dangerously close to ramming their perversity into law” and “ram through their entire perverted vision for a homosexual America.”

If new taxes seem unfeasible ideologically, it’s because the billionaires among us have spent more on propaganda to convince us of it than they’ll ever pay in progressive taxation.

With a Republican-controlled state government–from the Governor to state house to Le Cooch–get ready to learn what “family values” really means.

This election–recently marred by anti-Northam propaganda including images of aborted fetuses and vile homophobia–is undeniably *important* to Virginia and Hampton Roads.

Bob McDonnell is chief executive of the state whose demonstrably anti-gay climate I’ve just described. And more in John McManus’ If You Read the Paper.

The goal of the Occupy movement, as I see it, would be devising a system to encourage right behavior, where there’s no disincentive to do good. Where fair is fair and foul is foul.

Dougherty speaks of “the rudimentary mastery of English that’s necessary to negotiate a ballot.” Call me lazy, or stupid, but somehow in three semesters of college Spanish I never learned how to say ‘maximum aggregate principal amount.’

“Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.” – Picasso

The Lie That Tells the Truth Top story: I’m co-directing the 34th Annual Old Dominion University Literary Festival, which runs throughout next week. We’re bringing 17 world-class poets, fiction writers, playwrights, photographers, scholars, and musicians to Old Dominion to read and discuss their work. The events are all free, except for a concert on Monday [...]

“You need to be able to explain why you believe what you believe. Just ask Rick Perry.”

Plus the possibility of tolls on I-95; Bobby Scott is a good, non-gay hating dude; Gov. McDonnell acting like a vice-presidential candidate; the VA Tea Party Alliance taking aim at state Dems; and more in today’s If You Read the Paper.

Rick Perry at Liberty U, funding for local Amtrak routes cut, Pat Robertson opens his mouth (you know what happens next), a plan for Wards Corner, and more in John McManus’ If You Read the Paper for Friday, Sept 16.

“In response Cuccinelli’s face developed a glitch, going intermittently pixilated for a few nanoseconds in a manner undetectable on TV.” And more gems from celebrated novelist/AltDaily columnist John McManus.

If you aren’t reading John McManus’ column you are missing out on some of the best political and social commentary you will find anywhere. And that’s the truth, Ruth.

That’s all. Now please get off the internet and go someplace safe.

Plus Seville’s bicycling explosion, your weekly dose of COOCH!, casual encounter between undead Falwell and Bachmann, and more in John McManus’ If You Read the Paper for Friday, Aug 19.

John McManus tells the truth about local mountain ranges, the Ames GOP debate, Ken Cuccinelli, Adam Ebbin, and more in today’s Paper.

John McManus uses his big old brain to break the news down for all us sinners here in Hampton Roads.

Want to understand the debt crisis? Read this. And more in John McManus’ If You Read the Paper.

John McManus spends most of this column praising Ken Cuccinelli. Honestly, he does.

And more fact based opinions in John McManus’ If You Read the Paper for Friday, July 15th.

And more from John McManus in today’s If You Read the Paper.

John McManus takes on both bed bugs and comma splices, he does it in one shot.

Ron Paul would end federal war on marijuana! And other top headlines in IYRTP.

All too often cyclists encounter drivers who never learned how to share the road with cyclists or else resent having to do so

If Virginia offers no parole, then for what reason beyond posturing do we issue sentences of up to 300 years? Are we afraid Ray Kurzweil’s predictions of the imminent discovery of methods toward sustainable immortality will bear out?

John McManus tells it how it is, or at least how he sees it.

Florida opinion writers attack!, How to sue The Pilot without really trying, and more from wet and wild Virginia, in John McManus’ Paper.

And more in John McManus’ If You Read the Paper.

Norfolk Bike Month; Gay Marriage pays; Oh, Rand!; New ticks in HR; Capital punishment makes us all murderers; and a poem from Stanley Kunitz.

“I feel nothing but unease, however, toward the notion that financial help indentures the less fortunate to the more fortunate.” – John McManus

Cuccinelli, Thomas E. Haynesworth, alligator army attacks, royal wedding goes horribly wrong (maybe, okay no), and more in today’s If You Read the Paper, by John McManus.

Earth Day, Clean Air Act, $1.1B for transportation in Hampton Roads, and much more in If You Read the Paper for Friday, April 22nd.

Cuccinelli, gay adoption, no new taxes, Virginia health care law, gambling raids, and more in today’s Paper by John McManus.

Good morning, all, and greetings on this brink of federal shutdown.

A timely conversation with Norfolk poet and iconoclast Olaf Rislop.

And more in today’s If You Read the Paper, by John McManus.

Transportation, In God We Trust, congestion pricing, oregano, and John’s favorite video music video.

And more in today’s If You Read the Paper, by John McManus.

I’m misguided and flat-out wrong to say that Cuccinelli called for discrimination against gays and lesbians? No.

And more in today’s If You Read the Paper.

With apologies to Stephen Colbert, this has been Part One of my new sixty thousand-part series called Better Know an Insanity at the Basis of Local Urban Planning.

The Cooch, Social Security, war on women’s reproductive rights, the VA General Assembly, and much more to make you a better citizen and more well-rounded human.

If you support your local Republican Congressman then it’s also what you yourself are supporting. A vote for Scott Rigell in VA-02 has turned out to be a vote for redefining rape by dividing it into two categories. Forcible rape? Still wrong. Mere rape? Not so wrong.

And some good news in today’s If You Read the Paper.

Public broadcasting, changing climates, and exploding suns in today’s If You Read the Paper.

Today’s top headlines, after the jump.

New bridge-tunnel: The Patriots’ Crossing, Virginia to make its own money? and more of what John sees into the future in today’s If You Read the Paper.

John’s top books, music, TV, blogs, and local news stories. And a bunch more in today’s If You Read the Paper.

It seems hypocritical, if not downright morally depraved, for lawmakers to preside over a justice system that imprisons people for harmlessly breaking laws that the politicians themselves have flouted with impunity. And more in today’s If You Read the Paper.

PBS costs one one-thousandth of what we’ll pay for roads next year, and more in today’s If You Read the Paper.

“Imagine an alternate-history version of Watergate in which Woodward and Bernstein advocated for the government assassination of Deep Throat, and you’ll have the Wikileaks story.” That and more in today’s If You Read the Paper.

And more in today’s If You Read the Paper.

I’ve seen more than a few smoothly functioning countries where casinos exist all over the place because their governments don’t legislate morality.

If Tea Party aficionados expressed a desire to opt out of highway funding the way they hope to say “no thanks” to Medicare, I might consider their overall platform to be a coherent system.

That’s right: all 95 candidates for the House who signed a statement by Net Neutrality Protectors in support of Net Neutrality lost their elections.

Clint McCance, President Obama, and the long wait for equality in the gay civil rights movement.

And more in If You Read the Paper for Fri Oct 29, 2010.

In today’s If You Read the Paper for Friday, Oct 22nd.

Lots of Cooch today. Read on.

The Pilot article doesn’t challenge Koch’s idea that light rail will never grow beyond a single seven-mile line. Perhaps it won’t. But that doesn’t mean there’s any intelligent city planner around who thinks it shouldn’t.

Hello, and welcome to October, my favorite month. The heat has subsided, the leaves will soon turn, and I’m receiving twelve letters per hour about the election.

The first woman to be put to death by the commonwealth in a century has died for a crime committed by men who will never suffer for it at that level, men who admittedly recognized Lewis as someone who could be easily manipulated.

In six days “insurance companies will no longer be able to take away your coverage if you get sick while under their insurance.” This might sound propagandistic, but it’s true!

It’s long been a tenet of Dougherty’s brand of right-wing pseudo-populism that the poor are criminals and the well-to-do are victims.

McManus is back with nine headlines and, of course, lots to say about each.

What Virginia’s doing with its extra cash.

Republicans love calling themselves “strict constitutional constructionists” except when the Constitution reveals itself as insufficiently xenophobic or authoritarian, as in the case of the Fourteenth Amendment.

It reminds me of when John McCain argued for better border security because Mexicans are intentionally causing wrecks on the highways. He never said why. My best guess is that they’re doing it because it’s fun, but I’m white and so I can only speculate.

John challenges Wonder Ken to a karaoke contest. If Cooch wins, John won’t make fun of him for a year. If John wins, Cooch can’t run for president. Cruzer’s applause-o-meter is the judge.

Also I mustn’t leave out the song where Cooch is on the phone pretending to talk to world leaders after he’s elected president, but this song is as yet untitled.

Tidewater Virginia is in tears today as Barefoot Bandit Colton Harris-Moore remains in federal custody.

Exciting Announcement! John McManus has been commissioned to write “Cuccinelli the Musical.” (Think Les Mis meets La Cage.)

I’m no huge fan of Glenn Nye in the wake of his cynical, self-serving vote against the Affordable Care Act, but at least he doesn’t seem to be a virulent racist.

It is irrational, unwise, and even immoral to keep devoting so many billions of dollars to new roads.

Josephine Demmons McBride, age 101, has graduated from the Norfolk Citizens’ Police Academy, having completed twelve weeks of classes during which she fired a submachine gun and successfully hit the dummy’s shoulder. I’ve canceled my plans to break into her house.

Eventually we’ll all be parroting the brainwashed populace in 1984: “We have always been at war with Eastasia.”
How depraved, then, to adopt policies that might cause kids to hear the word gay.

To get from Norfolk to Newport News, I usually just fly out of Norfolk and into Newport News-Williamsburg. Sure I have to connect via Dulles or Charlotte, but it’s still faster.

In anticipation of being fired from ODU when Attorney General Cuccinelli hears that I believe dinosaurs existed, I’m engaged in a full-scale attempt to get Virginia Senator Jim Webb to hire me as a publicist.

Last month this space covered the City of Virginia Beach’s order to demolish the historic “Alamo-style” Roland Court Theater, which was in blatant violation of a Virginia Beach code stating that buildings must be no more than 40 years old.

If you’ve read my blog in this space before, you know I care about exactly two things: public transportation and gay rights. Today I’ve prepared no fewer than five posts about each. Go pop some popcorn.

Cantor says Americans are ‘better than’ everyone else, Antanas Mockus, Deepwater Horizon, Formspring, schools caught cheating.

Gulf oil spill, Arizona’s immigration law, state police prayer policy, the Battle of Hampton Roads, and more.

The May4thCounts.com controversy, Pat Robertson, new W. Va. casino, women on subs, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, zoning, demolition of VB’s historic theater and more.

I wish some ardent birther would speak up in the comments and explain to me how it is that the Obama family knew in 1961 that their secret nefarious plan to sneak a socialist Kenyan baby into the American presidency forty-seven years in the future would succeed.

“This plan will eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this State in less than 5 years, so that in no single county… will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government.”

I’m sure that Barack Obama receives some truly terrifying daily reports from the CIA. I doubt, however, that had Patrick Henry foreseen those same reports he’d have rescinded his famous words on liberty and death.

Z104 vs VB on April Fools, being “Norfolkian”, tanning salon tax, priests, pirates, gay QBs, Easter egg hunts.

Regent and slavery, Cuccinelli and gay sex, taxes, taxes and taxes.

The McDonnell/Cuccinelli crazy party, Monarchs’ win, monkey bites and more.

John McManus writes this week from Berlin, covering headlines on Muslim prayers in the General Assembly, senators’ salaries and light rail costs.