The final sticking points in a $77 billion, two-year spending deal ironed out between the House and Senate on Wednesday included a $6 million drug court budget item, which was kept, and a new $2 million program to help inmates re-enter society, which largely was jettisoned. House budget negotiators for days told their Senate counterparts that the senators could keep drug court spending or the re-entry funding, but not both, said sources in the negotiations. Finally, the House and Senate agreed to keep the drug courts and scale back the inmate re-entry offering, said Sen. Walter A. Stosch, R-Henrico County and one of the six Senate budget negotiators. [continues 440 words]
Former attorney general Jerry W. Kilgore said Thursday that drug courts such as Charlottesville's should be expanded across Virginia. Kilgore spoke at a drug court graduation ceremony in city Circuit Court and called the program an effective way to help drug offenders. "It is about creating opportunities, opportunities to start a new life, but it is about creating opportunities with a strong sense of accountability," the Republican candidate for governor said. Circuit Judge Edward L. Hogshire said Charlottesville's eight-year-old drug court program produced its 126th graduate Thursday and has been "sort of a flagship program for drug courts around the state. [continues 379 words]
The war on terrorism and the war in Iraq are stripping Americans of their freedoms as big government gets bigger, the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate said Tuesday. "Libertarians believe that the Constitution allows us to do national defense. It does not allow us to do international offense," presidential candidate Michael Badnarik said in Charlottesville. Badnarik, a 50-year-old computer consultant currently on the Nov. 2 presidential ballot in 46 states, said troops should be brought home from Iraq. "The Sept. 11 tragedy was an international crime. It was a mass murder," he said. "We need to focus our aggression toward the people who perpetrated that atrocity, that is Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. Just because they are difficult to find does not justify sending 150,000 troops to Iraq. " [continues 726 words]
There was an abundance of thanks given to God on Thursday, and to a judge and prosecutors and counselors. Five proud drug court program graduates stood in front of the Charlottesville Circuit Court bench and spoke of how Judge Ted Hogshire's program had freed them from a modern form of slavery. Their slave master in most cases was cocaine, in some cocaine plus alcohol. For one year or more now, the five graduates of the drug court program have been free of their slave master. Their gratitude was unmistakable and moving. [continues 920 words]
CHARLOTTESVILLE - Virginia's denial of voting rights to more than 250,000 people convicted of felonies came under debate last night, with former Richmond City Councilman Chuck Richardson calling for a better restoration process. "If we are serious about forgiveness, forgive these men and women," Richardson told a Charlottesville public forum. Richardson, who served two years in prison after his arrest in a drug sting, said no one in the audience could know how low it feels to lose voting rights. [continues 136 words]
Gary A. Reams is proudly and strictly a single-issue candidate. "Marijuana prohibition has failed, has done harm and has gone too far," Reams said Friday in Charlottesville. The Libertarian Party nominee for lieutenant governor said he is running solely as a way to send a message to politicians about marijuana laws. His candidacy is what he calls a "Reams Reeferendum." "A vote for Gary Reams is not a vote for the Libertarian Party or for libertarianism or even Gary Reams," the candidate said. "It is a vote for the need to reform the marijuana laws." [continues 312 words]
