Delegate Chris Peace is an embarrasment to Caroline County and Virginia.

Delegate Chris Peace (R-97th), who represents the southern portions of Caroline County, including Ladysmith, has a brilliant idea: he’s going to run those damn Hispanics illegals out of state colleges and universities.

When did he turn to promote his bill to keep Hispanics illegals out of college? “World Net Daily” (WND).

What is “World Net Daily”, you may be asking? Well, it is the clearing house of hundreds of different crazy conspiracy theories, including being one of the main sites responsible for the “Birthers” who allege, despite the voluminous evidence to the contrary, that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In all, it is a bunch of crazies that write a bunch of nonsensical drivel.

Did he solicit an interview from WND or did they contact him? In any case, why did he agree to have an interview with them? Is he a Birther? If I was a politician and WND contacted me to do a story about a bill that I had sponsored, it was force me to do a little rethinking about my position. But for Chris Peace? He is more than glad to do an interview with a bunch of nuts.

Illegal aliens are already not eligible for in-state tuition (see Va. Code § 23-7.4), but now Chris Peace wants colleges and universities to conduct full background checks on applicants to see if they are in the country legally.

How about we just call this the “Bureaucrat Full Employment Act”? I thought Republicans were supposed to be for limited government or something?

Here is to hoping that someone runs against him this year. Chris Peace should not be in any position of elected office in this state.

General Assembly gives a big middle-finger to Caroline County.

How? By refusing to fill the judicial vacancy created by the retirement of Circuit Court Judge Horace Revercomb on March 1st.

The General Assembly decided that instead of funding essential services like judges, they could save a few bucks by using substitute judges. They don’t care if that causes problems with continuity of leadership, if it makes it more difficult for the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office to prosecute cases, or for defense attorneys to represent their clients.

Even more insulting that the General Assembly voted to increase fees for deed recordation (something done by the Circuit Court Clerk’s Office) and court fees. But did they decide to use that money to pay for judges? Of course not.

But what did the General Assembly have money for? The “Wine Promotion Fund” ($745,000), the “Motion Picture Opportunity Fund” ($1,000,000), and the “Governor’s Opportunity Fund” ($12,100,000). So, they have money for corporate welfare but not for essential services. They also refused to completely cut government funding for “arts” and “public broadcasting”.

The worst part? Three of the four people in the General Assembly that are supposed to be representing Caroline County and its citizens voted for this budget: Delegates Bobby Orrock, who lives in the county, and Chris Peace, and Senator Ryan McDougle. Hopefully the citizens of Caroline County remember this during the next election.

In the mean time, maybe us citizens should send a copy of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to our elected representatives.

And an aside, was Delegate Bobby Orrock busy chasing down the dreaded puppy mills while not giving two hoots about acquiring full-time funding for the Caroline County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office like in 2008?

Cross-posted at On The Right and Virginia Virtucon.

FYI: I fully support Aqua Virginia’s proposed rate increase.

Why? Because I love a profitable company. I really love companies that make obscene profits.

In fact, if I had a single spare cent to my name, I would be inquiring about buying some stock in Aqua Virginia (assuming that they provide a regular cash dividend).

But do not fret Aqua Virginia customers, in a year or two President Obama and his newly founded Unification Board will ensure that those evil owners of Aqua are not making any profit. And I am sure folks like Delegate Chris Peace, Supervisors Wayne Acors and Floyd Thomas, and The Caroline Progress will be celebrating.

But — hopefully — by that time, the people at Aqua will have gone on strike and the customers of Aqua will be dying of thirst, unable to take a shower, and their lawns will be dead.

Oh-so-sincerely,
Midas Watson

Best use of WordPress for a political campaign site ever?

You should really check out Delegate Chris Peace’s (R-97th) campaign website.

I swear that has to be one of the best designed and laid out campaign sites I’ve ever seen. The colors are great too. Ditto for the slideshow, it gets your attention but doesn’t overwhelm you when you’re trying to find something else on the site. It’s one of those things that you look at and say, “Dammit! I wish I could make something like that!”

And when you look at it you don’t realize that it actually uses a self-hosted WordPress installation. I didn’t realize that it did until I saw the standardized URLs for the news updates and I checked out the HTML code and saw the references to WordPress directories. WordPress is great for blogs if you want your site to look like a blog but you usually don’t want your campaign site to look like one. Convenience of WordPress plus a professional design that doesn’t look like a blog? Win.

It’s certainly a far cry from Catherine Crabill’s campaign website which uses a TypePad blog setup. It’s also a far cry from Bobby Orrock’s website that hasn’t been updated in two years. Albert Pollard’s site is okay but noticeably light on content, especially on the “Views” page. Of course, with the person that he’s running against, what does it matter?

And for what someone has told me and what I can find on Peace’s campaign finance disclosures, it didn’t come cheap either. $4,356 for the web hosting and design being paid to PharrOut according to VPAP. It looks like the single most expensive item he’s bought this campaign cycle in fact. Definitely money well spent even though Peace doesn’t have an opponent this year.

Thank you! Delegates Chris Peace and Albert Pollard vote against smoking ban!

Chief Local Idiot Politician Bobby Orrock voted for it.

It’s kinda of sad to see Bob Marshall support the ban, especially given his conservative credentials.

And former Attorney General and current candidate for Governor, Bob McDonnell, released a press statement a couple days stating that he did not support the ban (WTOP). Hey, he might actually get my support this year. Wonders will never cease. :)