Va. AG Cuccinelli gets a lesson on the perils of tweeting

Greetings from Menerbes, France, where I’m removed from American media to such a degree that any joke of mine about two-day-old tweets will sound tired indeed by the time you read it. Therefore I’ll try to treat the matter seriously of Ken Cuccinelli’s already-famous tweet about Bin Laden. “How much would I give to be one of the 72 Virginans [sic] Osama is ‘hanging out’ with since Sunday?” asked the attorney general on May 4, providing a much-anticipated update to his tweet of April 8, “Still learning tweeting on the ipad…”

We got a Cooch instead of St. Peter's. (Art | Peter Paul Rubens)

I’ve never taken Ken Cuccinelli seriously before, but here goes my best effort. Commenters are angry—livid!—that the Pilot would devote a story to Cuccinelli’s spelling error. The keys on smartphones are tiny! Cooch is a busy man, what with suing Washington, suing scientists, and living righteously to boot—it takes time!—and anyway he was riffing on someone else’s joke. But these commenters don’t seem to care what it signifies for Cuccinelli to wish he were hanging out with bin Laden at the gates of heaven.

The salient point for me is the role Cuccinelli assigns himself in his own afterlife: a conflation of St. Peter and all the Founding Fathers originally named in the joke he supposedly was referencing. I realize that a bit of evidence of our attorney general’s self-righteousness is no call to stop the presses. Still, one recalls what the Messiah of Cuccinelli’s church had to say about the sin of self-righteousness: “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Then again, maybe I’m getting my religions confused; as I said above, I’m new at this, and I’d much rather simply poke fun in some unfair manner.

Portsmouth, Chesapeake to ban smoking in public housing

Another comment battle is raging below this story about a plan the Pilot claims follows a “national trend,” even though fewer than eight percent of public housing nationwide bans smoking. This battle is a proxy fight over the very concept of public housing. Its loudest army’s standard reads “If you want to smoke at home, get a job.” A frequent corollary is “They get to spend their welfare money on tobacco?”

In other words, people on government assistance are too lazy to merit privacy or freedom.

Such arguments will always be distasteful to me; however, it might be possible to treat them seriously if their proponents also believed the powerful among us should relinquish freedoms when the government helps them. If dwellers in public housing render themselves wards of the state whose privacy can be curtailed by governmental whim, then so are those who benefit from corporate welfare. How would we react to a law that recipients of Wall Street bailout funds can’t spend their “compensation” on cigarettes?

The government cuts them a deal. No more red ties for the Donald. (Pic | Boss Tweed)

That idea probably sounds downright insane to many people, by means of reasoning like this: Wall Street executives are rich! Of course they can buy cigarettes! How dare you suggest otherwise? These rhetorical questions grow out of calculation similar to that which keeps America’s war criminals from indictment for high crimes including murder: Let’s look forward; let’s not distract ourselves by looking back! If you’re poor, and charged with a felony, try telling the judge to quit distracting himself by looking back.

It’s a city’s prerogative to ban smoking in its public housing, and the Pilot makes it sound like there are both practical and altruistic reasons why Chesapeake and Portsmouth are doing so. My instinct is to oppose the plan; still, despite my arguments above, I feel a certain amount of ambivalence toward it. I feel nothing but unease, however, toward the notion that financial help indentures the less fortunate to the more fortunate.

Arctic ice melting faster than previously thought

Norfolk will be underwater by 2100.

Norfolk schools to cut 160 positions; layoffs will be necessary

If Norfolk will be underwater by 2100, we might as well begin the decline ASAP.

NC town continues case against homeowner’s sign

The town of Cary, NC, is appealing a judge’s ruling that a homeowner can keep a sign painted on his house that reads “Screwed by the town of Cary.” I’ll bet the same judge would rule in favor of Norfolk parents or school employees who paint “Screwed by the city of Norfolk” on their homes in response to the aforementioned school-division cuts.

McDonnell: America’s energy insecurity

Gov. Bob McDonnell’s editorial in yesterday’s Times-Dispatch argues for offshore drilling without once using the word drilling. That’s because he knows how poorly offshore drilling polls, at least now that 90% of life in the Gulf of Mexico has been destroyed. Note: the percentage I’ve quoted is a “fact” only in the manner in which Arizona Senator John Kyl uses “facts.”

House passes bill to jump-start drilling off Virginia’s coast

If Gov. McDonnell were writing the headlines along with the editorials, this would state that the House’s bill will improve the livelihood of every American off Virginia’s coast.

Sen. Jim Webb calls for offshore drilling in Virginia

I don’t want my scorn for offshore drilling to seem partisan. Proposals for drilling off Virginia’s coast are equally daft when they come from Democrats.

Verizon gets permission to stop delivering white pages

This is good news. Phone books are wasteful.

Va. Beach police to crack down on curfew this weekend

Here’s the most maddening local story I’ve read lately. Since my griping won’t change any minds, I’ll only say I’m glad I’m not a teenager beholden to this harmful law. Also I’ll add a note to Virginia Beach teens:

In large swaths of the world your counterparts in age aren’t treated like some sinister and disturbing underclass that should remain hidden, never to gather in numbers. The local attitude has it that kids should stay glued to TVs so the rest of us can be safe. The attitude in more cosmopolitan cities as well as most rural areas is variously different, and throughout many foreign countries civic participation is expected of adolescents. So if this law annoys you, bide your time until you’re high-school seniors, then apply to colleges in places that won’t treat you like cattle.

Of course, by then you’ll be adults, and maybe you’ll no longer care. Maybe you’ll grow enamored of the policies that once frustrated you. Authoritarianism breeds authoritarianism, and perhaps those of you not chased off by trifling pettiness will grow up to advocate for similar or even stricter laws. Why stricter? Because if there’s one rule of thumb when it comes to regulations that curtail personal freedoms, it’s that they get steadily worse in time—e.g. wouldn’t we all be even safer if we raised the curfew age to twenty-one?

The greatest two minutes in sports

Tomorrow is Kentucky Derby Day, famous primarily for its mention in the Rolling Stones’ song “Dead Flowers.” We’ve all heard Mick Jagger sing about his needle and spoon a thousand times, so here’s the late, great Townes Van Zandt covering the tune.