The federal government has given me 1,138 rights, benefits and protections just because I’m straight and I said, “I do.” Everyone signing up for life-long love deserves those rights.

Five years after Virginia Tech made campus safety the focus of lawmakers across the nation, the school seems to be shying away from the issue during this year’s General Assembly session.

Gov. Bob McDonnell, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and other Republican officials called for more “school choice,” including helping low-income students attend private schools, at a rally at Capitol Square on Tuesday.

It would be routine for women in Virginia to learn their breast density whenever they get a mammogram under legislation moving through the General Assembly. That information would help women with dense breasts detect and get treatment for cancer.

With unchecked power to dismiss a case or press forward with it, prosecutors — not judges — get to decide who gets convicted and who doesn’t.

After many months of conversation, HRT has agreed to extend their GoPass365 to businesses with as few as three employees at a sensible price. Score one (big one!) for Norfolk’s small businesses!

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

Rep. Scott Rigell came up with four ways to try to reform Congress, but his ideas will do more harm than good. I offer alternative solutions.

At least a half-dozen bills before the Virginia General Assembly are causing alarm among voting rights activists.

House Bill 91 would ban policies by public institutions of higher education that prohibit full-time faculty members with Virginia concealed handgun permits from packing heat.

In the interest of advancing the marijuana policy reform discussion, here are five of the most common arguments against legalizing marijuana and why they’re wrong.

If some Virginia lawmakers have their way, Virginians seeking social service benefits may have to submit to a mandatory drug test before receiving public assistance.

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.

In all their glory.

Two measures before the General Assembly would repeal the requirement that girls be vaccinated against the cancer-causing human papillomavirus before entering the sixth grade.

The longer a budget fight drags on, the less appealing McDonnell becomes on the national stage, as his carefully crafted reputation for responsible governance erodes away.

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.

“Public safety must be the primary factor in the ultimate determination as to whether to proceed with uranium mining.” – Gov. McDonnell

Now is not the time to close the doors. Now is the time to be open. If Norfolk wants to be a grown-up city, it needs to start treating its citizens like adults. Let it start here, with Waterside.

The Virginia General Assembly is now in session and considering bills that might protect your right to work, or deny you the right to be a parent.

With Republicans controlling both the House and Senate, this could be an important year for gun rights supporters.

What makes me so optimistic about this project is the way that the private sector, citizens, and government have worked together to make it happen.

“Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized” – Toronto Police officer. We politely–and quite sexily–disagree.

It is now clear that ending discrimination against GLBT Virginians is a mainstream objective. Those who continue to obstruct progress are on the wrong side of the issue politically and on the wrong side of history.

Virginia Democratic leaders are speaking out against Republican legislation that they said seeks to make abortion illegal and even might restrict access to some forms of legal birth control.

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

It’s a website and app that helps you look up everything from assessed value to code enforcement cases. Welcome to the golden age of property stalking in Norfolk.

Our Tweeterific coverage of the opening of Virginia’s first light rail system, plus some of #HRVA’s take.

We want you to dance with us, laugh and have a drink with us, because being afraid of homos is SO last century.

Plus Cooch, Sessoms’ absurd response to a tent city at the Beach, and more in Jay Ford’s powerful 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.

“The idea is to test the market to see if that’s a market we’re missing during the holiday season,” said Ray Amoruso of HRT. “If there is success identifying a market we can see about going out to the Oceanfront as well.”

Occupy Norfolk is gathering today to protest the Senate’s authorization of Bill 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act. Where the movement goes from here is anyone’s guess.

“With multiple adjacent cities in the Hampton Roads area, there are opportunities for cities to share services and avoid the costs of providing those services separately,” said Wick Moorman, CEO of Norfolk Southern.

When you get behind the wheel of a car you are arming yourself with a potentially lethal weapon. If you kill someone with that weapon, you should be held responsible. “I didn’t mean to do it,” just doesn’t cut it.

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

CYBER MONDAY ALL OVER YO FACE! Local news, digestible and fun, just for you. Also suitable for framing.

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.”

The bill passed next year will cover spending from July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2014. During this time, the language in the budget has the force of law, so even sections that don’t appropriate money can have a major impact on public policy.

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.

His name is Marcus Anthony Calabrese. Get to know him a little bit here.

Occupy Norfolk, in temporary exile, continues onward. We are energized and stronger and more united than ever. We are highly active and reactive. We are receiving increased local, regional, national and international support.

We can love Penn State and still realize the Program isn’t as important as a child’s innocence.

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

In what felt like the blink of an eye three people were arrested. Rex Bonney: “We thought the Bill of Rights was our permit.”

City leaders made the decision not to re-issue the camping permit for several reasons…

How the Northam race was won; Virginia Beach should be excited about John Moss; Beware Bill Bolling; Someone *please* challenge Barclay Winn; Norfolk whiffs on Occupy Norfolk; and more.

The Virginia Tea Party Alliance is doing nothing to help, and continues to hinder, the cause of Virginia Republicans. Strategies that have been successful in other areas are proving fruitless in Virginia and nothing in the way of change is on the horizon.

Click this and enter your address or personal information to find out.

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

Light Rail Now asked the candidates, Dennis Free, John Moss, and Prescott Sherrod, about their views on transportation in and around VB, and about the light rail in particular. Here’s what each of the candidates had to say.

OP-ED: Ralph Northam is Right for the 6th District

There’s something profoundly askew in the American perception of transportation safety, an unthinking acceptance of the risks of driving, and a blindness to the accumulation of deaths that result from our car-centric policies.

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.

If you haven’t had a good long conversation about Occupy yet, listen in on this one. It’s not easy to find solutions, even when most agree there’s a problem.

The writing is on the wall; Gov. Bob also confused about Occupy Wall St.; Here comes Romney!; and Cooch makes news, for a change. In today’s If You Read the Paper with Jay Ford.

The editorial board does not appear to take electability into consideration, so an endorsement doesn’t mean the candidate will win, just that the paper thinks s/he is the best person and should win.

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.

Will Obama lead us into yet another war in hopes of saving his Presidency? It has been done many times in the past and in most cases has worked.

If you’re unregistered and not planning to vote, you’re misguided and in need of help.

If Occupy achieves nothing else, it has proven that a group of unwashed, under-employed twenty-somethings can steal the Tea Party’s claim to represent the unrepresented. And more in If You Read the Paper.

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.’

VB trying to continue ban on uranium mining; McDonnell playing games with Obama; Dominion Power donates a pittance; Norfolk schools ain’t what they used to be, and more in Jay Ford’s Paper.

Rebuilding Wards Corner as a commercial area in which the bulk of the customers arrive via automobile is best and most appropriate use of the land.

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

“They will eventually be marching with us,” one protester said of the police. “I guarantee that.”

When using tax dollars to incentive investment, Norfolk would be wise to avoid schemes bearing duplicative retail options not unique to or appropriate for the neighborhood.

Something odd about the ODU quality of life survey; One city’s broken law is another’s innovation; For-profit colleges getting rich off the G.I. Bill, and more in Addy’s If You Read the Paper.

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 [...]

I can tell you that that those in power would much rather see rallies and riots than a serious effort to challenge them at the ballot box.

The lesson: We know you love Burt Reynolds. We all do. But don’t let that love keep you from staying safe around that rascal Tide.

Plus Cooch does a good thing, VA leaves NCLB, Virginia Uranium, and more in today’s If You Read the Paper with Jay C. Ford.

“We are certainly a city that shows restraint and we certainly believe in the First Amendment rights and to express those rights in a peaceful, lawful way,” said Chris Amos, Norfolk Police Department.

From your home computer you can help process particle physics from the LHC, or fold proteins on your PS3 to help study disease research. You can simulate models of the early universe and Big Bang events, as well as artificial intelligence constructs, gravitational wave detection, and quantum computing models…

And more in Addy Smith’s informative and fun If You Read the Paper for Monday, September 26, 2011.

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

Building just one 600-megawatt offshore wind farm off the coast of Virginia could annually avoid 2.5 billion pounds of climate-disrupting carbon dioxide. This is the equivalent of removing 220,000 cars from our highways or planting 6.3 million trees.

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.

Young, brilliant, a conservative firebrand unafraid to reach across the philosophical aisle: He is Max Shapiro, and he is here to educate you.

A swell teacher in Portsmouth, DADT repeal party fun, an Asia Minor shout out, racism alive in VA, and more in Jay C. Ford’s If You Read the Paper.

A co-worker approached me and told me that NCIS had spoken to her about me possibly being a lesbian. I was being “witch-hunted.”

One day of ceasefire in only a few provinces in Afghanistan can spell the difference between life and death for someone with family in a far part of the world, and, in a more immediate context, right here in Hampton Roads, too.

In the cycling world, the mantra is, “don’t get mad, get active.”

While 9/20/11 does not cancel out the injury done to 14,500, it resets the clock in a way that means the world to thousands more.

Plus EVMS students taking candy from Big Pharma, concealed weapons okay on ODU’s campus?, Uranium mining will have to wait, and more in Addy Smiths’s If You Read the Paper for Mon, Sept 19.

There isn’t anything else to say.

A chat about civic leagues with Downtown Norfolk Civic League president Kevin Murphy. Plus, info on when and where your neighborhood’s civic league meets.

Can they really arrest you for cursing? Is VB really bike friendly? Is segregation really being recommended in VB schools? And more.

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.

Poverty in the US soars, Gov. Bob undermines abortion rights, a soft core porn mural is approved for Downtown Norfolk, and more in If You Read the Paper from Jay C. Ford.

Urban Outfitters is on the Norfolk Design Review’s agenda for this Monday. Does it mean anything?

Jesse and I hope you are able to find some time next Wednesday to talk about the Project, offer your thoughts about the structure of the survey and meet some cool people.

“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 live in the Freemason area of Norfolk your mayor is not named Fraim. You report to Admiral Jack Kavanaugh, and in Jack we trust.

“I’d much prefer Obama charge head first down the liberal path than waddle in the middle with indecisiveness.” – young conservative firebrand Max Shapiro

Norfolk’s city manager doesn’t mind talking about cutting departments. He sees Waterside not as an independent entity, but as a key to a waterfront overhaul that *should not* be managed by government. And more…

Local bicyclists in the world amateur finals, down with the Brambleton barricades!, urban cycling tips, and more from BC Wilson.

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.

Boehner punks Obama, Bobby Scott needs to step up, record the cops and go to jail for life, Wikileaks releases… something… and more from Max Shapiro.

New free parking at Sandbridge, instant karma for a thrill-seeking boater, and the government has the right to sue on behalf of service members who had their cars towed while deployed.