"It will become a little bit easier for citizens to keep an eye on what their government and their elected officials are doing."
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Beginning with the 2018 Assembly session that kicks off Wednesday, it will become a little bit easier for citizens to keep an eye on what their government and their elected officials are doing: The commonwealth finally will begin live streaming of all floor sessions of the state Senate and the House of Delegates and all committee meetings, in addition to archiving the video for posterity. But there’s a catch: Neither chamber will film, broadcast or archive the proceedings of the various committee’s subcommittees. And it’s at the subcommittee level, on unrecorded votes on the House side, that hundreds of bills are killed. ProgressVA, though, will be broadcasting subcommittee hearings, a move we hope will spur the Assembly to film, broadcast and archive those meetings in the future.
The News & Advance
Jack Eugene Turner got angry with some black neighbors in Franklin County, so he tied a noose and hung an effigy of a black man from a tree in his front yard. Virginia law prohibits displaying a noose in a public place to intimidate others. Turner was convicted of doing so. He is now appealing to the Virginia Supreme Court, arguing that his right to free speech was violated — and that anyway the law doesn’t apply to him because his yard is private property, not public property. Note what he does not argue: that the noose was not meant to intimidate. He plainly meant it as a threat. And that’s about all that matters here. If Turner had displayed some other alarming symbol, such as a swastika or the flag of ISIS, he could argue that he was simply expressing his political preferences. That’s protected speech. If he tied a noose to show to students in a class he was teaching on civil rights, that also would be protected speech. But in the context of his personal dispute — not to mention a couple of centuries of stomach-turning racial violence — the noose was a clear and unambiguous threat against easily identifiable individuals. And the First Amendment doesn’t protect violent threats.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
The decision to elect Gerald Garber of the Augusta County Board of Supervisors' Middle River District as chairman and Carolyn Bragg of the South River District as vice chairwoman broke with the ill-serving custom of blindly rotating board leadership. The old system, which likened the chairmanship to a participation trophy earned through longevity, didn't serve the county well. It forced the board to veer from one supervisor's pet issues one year to a different supervisor's the next. And it ignored whether a supervisor was capable of leading anything more complex and consequential than a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday." Damage by commission and omission resulted. Now, if this change sticks, the county board leadership will be something closer to a meritocracy. If supervisors ever again give the reins to someone ill-suited to the task, they'll not be able to blame a lame rotation scheme. They'll have themselves to blame and should be held accountable by voters for the gaffe.
News Leader
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