Laurence Verga, racist.

The Daily Progress reports on Republican candidate for congress Laurence Verga’s response to the question of what the biggest threat to U.S. national security is: Verga said the biggest threat is the Americans who voted the Obama administration into office. “That was political correctness gone awry,” Verga said. There are two gems in here. The …

National Journal Agrees: Perriello’s a centrist.

National Journal’s annual congressional vote rankings are out, and I think it’s interesting that all of their math has simply confirmed what GovTrack.us already demonstrated: that Rep. Tom Perriello is a solidly centrist member of congress. He votes more liberally 47.2% of the time, and conservatively 52.8% of the time. In fact, as it turns …

The fig leaf comes off.

The next major Virginia political event is redistricting. Officially, this will be done by the legislature next January, but in reality, incumbents are already measuring for the drapes. Although the governor talked a good game about bipartisan redistricting during the election, I’d bet dollars to donuts that he was lying. I see no way around …

Bob Marshall, alienating his base.

Well, Del. Bob Marshall is in trouble again. Media outlets across the country are covering the remarks he made at a press conference he held last Thursday about defunding Planned Parenthood: The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first …

Sen. Hurt is, in fact, the most partisan member of the senate.

I just finished adding a new feature to Richmond Sunlight—the ability to sort through legislators by a variety of attributes like location, race, sex, year they started in office, etc.—and when I was done, I found a bug. For some reason, my code was listing Sen. Robert Hurt as the most partisan Republican in the …

YA5DR declares candidacy.

Scott Schultz, of Albemarle County, is seeking the Republican nomination to run against Tom Perriello. He’s a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (Shire of Isenfir, which I gather is the local chapter), where he has the rank of Knight Marshal, and prefers to be known as “Lord Philip ap Griffith.” He’s running because …

The bill cosponsorship matrix explains the SB714 crossover vote.

The interesting thing about a few senate Democrats crossing party lines to vote for SB714 (“Individual health insurance coverage; resident of State shall not be required to obtain a policy”) is that it gave me a chance to test out the accuracy of the partisanship matrix that I use on Richmond Sunlight. The theory behind …