Eugene Delgaudio Channels Stephen Glass

Eugene Delgaudio is probably Virginia's most embarrassing elected official.  The Loudoun County Supervisor is obsessed with male-male sex acts and probably should never be within 1,000 feet of a Gold's Gym.  How he won his seat on the Loudoun Board of Supervisors is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in plain brown paper.

Not since "Spring Breakdown," the notorious faked 1997 article in The New Republic by serial fabulist Stephen Glass, has a more lurid portrayal of the goings-on at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) come to light.

Until now.

Today I opened my inbox to find a fundraising email from Delgaudio's "organization," the so-called Public Advocate of the United States (a name that implies authority and perhaps even government sanction) with the sensationalistic subject line, "CPAC Enables Homosexual Predators."

It seems that Delgaudio is worried that the innocence of college students -- the same ones who played drinking games and engaged in rough sex with ugly women in the Glass article of more than a dozen years ago -- might be compromised by the presence of members of GOProud, an organization of gay conservatives that last year hosted a reception in New York featuring Ann Coulter and whose board of advisors includes such radical leftists as Andrew Breitbart and Grover Norquist. (Frank Gaffney may concede that the latter is not a leftist, though he may be, per Gaffney, a jihadist. [I think he's just a Norqu-ist.])

At the suggestion of an acquaintance of mine who saw Delgaudio's missive and said, "Fascinating reading -- please disseminate widely in the name of sunlight," I reprint the man from Loudoun County's fantasy here:

For years, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was the scene of exciting speakers throughout the day.

But at night there have always been dozens of alcohol parties.

These parties are viewed as festive opportunities to meet conservatives from all over the country in a more social atmosphere.

I try to avoid parties when attending conferences as it’s hard enough keeping a day schedule and parties can be distractions which take away from the serious fight to preserve the family.

Much more importantly, the alcohol abuse and other shenanigans that take place just aren’t my idea of a good time.

It would be better to have late evening vigils and after the dinner speeches at the nearby churches.

However, I was often outnumbered when I attended CPAC back in my days serving as a member of the national board for Young Americans for Freedom.

But knowing the problems at these CPAC parties, I took it upon myself to chaperone younger visitors from around the country who were attending their first political gathering.

And the stories I have to tell will shock you.

It was not unusual for me to have to escort adult predators, even some openly homosexual men out of these parties because they could not resist the urge to prey upon the younger teenage victims at their disposal in a vulnerable place a long distance from their home and without their parents’ presence.

On more than one occasion I had to clean out the lot of them in an upheaval or turmoil that was cast as a political purge.

These days the predator homosexuals use political cover to gain access to their intoxicated victims.

Sometimes it seems my efforts were all for naught...

As I’ve told you before, the Conservative Political Action Conference has been infiltrated by the Homosexual Lobby.

Radical Homosexual front groups like “GOProud” will be in attendance to push their perversion on young conservatives.

This sort of predator behavior was illegal and immoral back when I had to clean house and condemn them.

And it is still illegal and immoral to create an atmosphere in which those same misdeeds could occur again.

Parents should be warned and frankly the authorities at CPAC should be told that there are minor age students who need to be looked after and protected.

Have the Radical Homosexuals really infiltrated that deeply into what used to be a pro-family movement?

Has the leadership of CPAC gone so far as to actually not read anything or think it’s just “political opinion” propagated by old fashioned and outdated leaders that adult homosexual predators exist?

Well, they DO exist and they are taking advantage of the alcohol parties at CPAC to poison the minds and pollute the bodies of young conservatives who are still too naïve to know what is being done to them.

I stand with the dozens of pro-family leaders and the thousands of pro-family supporters who are boycotting this event because of what it has been turned into.

For the Family,

Eugene Delgaudio
President
Public Advocate of the U.S.
P.S. I ask you to prayerfully consider chipping in with a contribution of $10 or more to help fund the fight for traditional values.

Thank you very much for your support in advance.

If even 5 percent of what Delgaudio wrote is true, CPAC would attract several thousand more attendees each year.

In fact, according to what I hear from CPAC (where I'll be tomorrow), the number of vendors in the exhibit area is bigger than last year, and it seems there are more people in attendance than last year, as well.

So much for the "boycott" by anti-gay organizations.  Even Sarah Palin agrees that GOProud members and other gay conservatives should participate in the annual conference.

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Ronald Reagan's Centenary

You'd probably have to live under a rock to be unaware that this coming Sunday marks the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan.

The former president was born on February 6, 1911, and the centenary celebration began on his birthday last year.

An outgrowth of the Reagan Legacy Project (which gave us, for instance, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington) and of the regular programs of the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, the 100th-year commemoration will continue for as long as people have good things to say about President Reagan.

So expect it to last for a long time.

Americans of all political stripes are offering their memories and gratitude for the life and career of President Reagan.  I'll offer two examples here.

Today Governor Bob McDonnell issued a proclamation that designates February 6, 2011, as "Ronald Reagan Day" in the Commonwealth of Virginia.  Here's the text:

WHEREAS, President Ronald Wilson Reagan served with honor and distinction for two terms as the 40th President of the United States of America; winning reelection in 1984 with nearly 60% of the vote and carrying 49 states; and

WHEREAS, in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated President, he faced a disillusioned nation shackled by rampant inflation and high unemployment; and

WHEREAS, during Mr. Reagan’s presidency he worked in a bipartisan manner to enact his bold agenda of restoring accountability and common sense to government which led to unprecedented economic expansion and new opportunities for millions of Americans; and

WHEREAS, Mr. Reagan’s commitment to an active social policy agenda for the nation’s children helped lower crime and drug use in our neighborhoods; and

WHEREAS, President Reagan’s commitment to our armed forces contributed to the restoration of pride in America, her values and those cherished by the free world, and prepared America’s Armed Forces to meet 21st Century challenges; and

WHEREAS, President Reagan’s vision of “peace through strength” led to the end of the Cold War and the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union, guaranteeing basic human rights for hundreds of millions of people around the world; and

WHEREAS, Ronald Reagan’s inherent love of this country, faith in our people and confidence in freedom, renewed the confidence and vitality of our great nation; and

WHEREAS, February 6, 2011 will be the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth and the seventh since his passing;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Robert F. McDonnell, do hereby recognize February 6th, 2011, as RONALD REAGAN DAY in our COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA, and I call this observance to the attention of all our citizens.

Log Cabin Republicans have also got into the act.

In a news release dated today, the primarily-but-not-exclusively-gay GOP group (a Kinsey 5?) said:

“Log Cabin Republicans join conservatives at home and abroad in remembering President Ronald Reagan’s powerful legacy as a champion of freedom,” said Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director, R. Clarke Cooper. “As we embark on the 112th Congress and Republicans seek to continue the success of the 2010 election, it is our hope that the GOP will recall Reagan’s wisdom in calling for a big tent Republican Party. As he said, ‘my 80 percent friend is not my 20 percent enemy.’ President Reagan was able to craft a broad coalition of support around the fundamental principles of smaller government, a confident foreign policy, and an optimistic faith in American individualism. Today’s Republican leaders would be wise to follow in Ronald Reagan’s footsteps by ignoring calls for ideological purity tests that Reagan himself couldn’t pass and instead uniting around Reagan’s core principles, including that inclusion wins.”

Log Cabin Republicans traces its connection to Ronald Reagan to the 1978 Briggs Initiative, a California ballot initiative that would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in the state’s public schools. In order to combat this initiative, a group of gay Republicans reached out to then-former governor Ronald Reagan, asking him to oppose the ban. Reagan joined with Log Cabin Republicans, arguing that the ban was “not needed to protect our children” and that if it passed, “innocent lives could be ruined.” The Briggs Initiative ultimately failed.

(About this time last year, I posted video from CPAC in which Craig Shirley talked about the Briggs Initiative and how Reagan's action was motivated by his libertarian impulses as well as his fundamental sense of fairness and humanitarianism.)

For those who want to learn more, there are dozens of books about Reagan, his presidency, and his legacy.  For those with less time than they'd like, the Washington Times today published a 14-page special section that, perhaps presciently, includes a full-page ad for Senator Rand Paul's new book about the Tea Party movement.

I suggest that, if you do nothing else to celebrate Ronald Reagan this Sunday, at least raise a glass in a toast between the commercials during the Super Bowl -- unless you prefer to wait until the special zombie episode of Glee.

Recent Interviews with Virginia Policymakers

Virginia State Capitol

My last post reported on the public appearance in Charlottesville of U.S. Senator Jim Webb, who answered my question about free trade issues during a press gaggle backstage at the Dickinson Auditorium on the campus of Piedmont Virginia Community College.

This was not my only recent encounter with elected officials.  In the past two weeks or so, I have had the opportunity to conduct interviews with several other Virginia policymakers, including Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, State Senator Mark Obenshain, Delegate Harvey Morgan, and Delegate David Toscano.

My interview with Attorney General Cuccinelli resulted in at least four articles on Examiner.com.

The first addressed what, at the time, was Topic A in the national conversation, the shooting of Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords and several others in Tucson.  Six people were killed by alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner in that incident.

In "Exclusive: Va. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli reacts to tragedy in Tucson," published on January 12, the Attorney General identified some parallels that are close to home for Virginians:

Cuccinelli said that he has “been watching the information that’s rolled out about” Saturday’s events and that it is natural to ask, “What else could we have done?”

That question, he continued, “walks me right into a lot of the mental health work that I’ve done over the years. I’m still looking at Loughner’s history to see what sort of parallels there are to experiences we’ve had in Virginia, tragically” – referring to the Virginia Tech shootings of April 2007 – “and what sort of systems that, if in place, might have caught and treated this guy.”

In what turned out to be a supplement to an earlier interview I conducted with Maria Everett, executive director of the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council, Cuccinelli spoke to me about his support for a strong FOIA statute and system in Virginia. He expressed concern about proposals to eliminate the FOIA Council.

In "Va. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli talks about Freedom of Information," published on January 14, Cuccinelli responded to the recommendation of Governor Bob McDonnell's government reform commission that the FOIA Council -- which only has two staff members yet processes upwards of 1,800 inquiries each year -- be cut:

“Obviously,” he said, “I think that to have a robust FOIA you need some central clearinghouse, so if there’s going to be a substitute, which I don’t really see right now, I think their notion is that every agency will just handle its own.”

The commission suggested that the Office of the Attorney General could handle inquiries and disputes about FOIA matters, but Cuccinelli ruled that out as a realistic possibility.

“That’s a natural fallback,” he conceded, “because everybody would then turn to us and say, ‘Do I have to do a, b, or c?’ That’s got its problems.”

Cuccinelli also talked about government transparency more generally, and the need to provide access to budget information to citizens on a ready basis.

It turns out that state Senator Ralph Smith has proposed a rule to make the state budget available on line for scrutiny by both legislators and citizens for at least 72 hours before either chamber of the General Assembly may vote on it.

Cuccinelli pointed out some logistical hurdles that state agencies still face, in "State Senator Ralph Smith and Att'y Gen'l Ken Cuccinelli promote transparency," published on January 16:

“I learned doing the transparency work” in the General Assembly, Cuccinelli said, that “there’s a logistical hurdle to the kind of transparency I’d like to see, which is immediate, on-line, from your desk, in your office” access to government information.

“Half our state government,” the Attorney General explained, “is still not on what you and I would call anything approaching modern databases.”

As a consequence, he said, Virginia citizens “can’t plug into the databases and make available that information on the web, because -- I jokingly say -- they’re still using punch cards.”

Joking aside, he said, about half of state agencies are actually “just above that level. I’m sure they’re not happy about it either.”

In the final excerpt from our lengthy interview, "Va. Att'y Gen'l Ken Cuccinelli endorses curbs on eminent domain in constitution," published on January 20, Cuccinelli noted his support for an amendment that will enshrine protections for private property owners in the Virginia Constitution. (The constitutional amendment has been patroned by both Delegate Rob Bell [R-Albemarle] and Delegate Johnny Joannou [D-Portsmouth], with a bipartisan list of copatrons.)

The Virginia Attorney General addressed how the Bell-Joannou amendment -- which has to pass two sessions of the General Assembly with an intervening election before being put to the voters as a referendum for their approval -- strengthens protections against eminent domain abuse:

Cuccinelli went on to explain that he and his colleagues have “been working for months on good language that will address four different issues.”

The first issue is “proper damages to people whose property is taken.”

The second is “requiring the government entities taking property to prove that it’s going to be put to a public use.”

The third is limiting those entities “to take no more than is absolutely necessary for the achievement of the public use.”

The fourth issue is “not treating such things that we typically refer to as the ‘Kelo elements’” – such as “economic development, increasing tax base, those kinds of things" -- as rationale for a taking.

The proposed amendments, Cuccinelli said, “eliminate those constitutionally as possibilities for legitimate – by ‘legitimate.’ I mean legally allowable by a court – explanations for a taking for a public use."

Speaking of eminent domain abuse, I spoke to two members of the General Assembly about that issue: my own representative, Delegate David Toscano (D-57), and state Senator Mark Obenshain (R-Harrisonburg). Obenshain has his own proposal for a constitutional amendment, and Toscano opposes putting these protections in the constitution.

In "Delegate David Toscano discusses transparency and eminent domain reform," also published on January 20, the former Charlottesville mayor argues against putting too many things in the Commonwealth's constitution:

“We did a lot on eminent domain three or four years ago,” he said, when a bill “that ultimately I didn’t feel all that good about” was approved. Despite his own misgivings, he added, “it’s what the legislature wanted and so it got passed.”

This year, he noted, “we hear renewed efforts to make it a constitutional amendment. I’m very leery about that. I’m not going to support it.”

Not just the eminent domain proposals, he said, “I’m very leery about amending the constitution, anyway.”

In the same interview, Toscano spoke about his own efforts to improve government transparency through two bills that he has introduced.

For his part, Senator Obenshain -- whom I interviewed last year on the topic of ABC privatization -- talked about his strong support for including property rights in the Virginia Constitution.

In "State Senator Mark Obenshain discusses property rights and eminent domain reform," published on January 17 (the same day that I met with the senator with a delegation of Republican Liberty Caucus members), he argues for the inclusion:

Senator Obenshain went on the record with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner and spelled out what his constitutional amendment would do.

The resolution “basically codifies the statutory language that we adopted two years ago” in reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Kelo v. City of New London (2005). “It prevents the economic development/employment-type of eminent domain exercises that have been subject to abuse across the commonwealth of Virginia. It gives us the opportunity to memorialize that [language] in the Constitution so that it can’t just be undermined by efforts of the General Assembly in years to come.”

Finally, I should note that last Monday I spoke to the criminal law subcommittee of the House Courts of Justice Committee in favor of HB 1443, Delegate Harvey Morgan's bill to decriminalize simple possession of marijuana. Nobody spoke against the bill but the subcommittee, chaired by Delegate Rob Bell, killed it on a voice vote without raising an argument one way or the other.

After the vote, I spoke with Delegate Morgan, an elfin octogenarian, conservative Republican, and retired pharmacist who last year endured ridicule over his marijuana-reform proposals, yet persevered this year. He told me, in "Disappointment as Va. House subcommittee votes to keep pot possession a crime," also published on January 17 (which happened to be Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, a federal and state holiday):

“The bill I introduced,” Morgan explained, “would have made the simple possession of marijuana [subject to] a civil penalty and not a criminal penalty.”

Saying he was not advocating marijuana usage “at all,” Morgan went on to say ruefully that today, if a person is arrested – “even if it’s set aside” under the first offender law in Virginia -- the arrest and conviction are “always on your record as an arrest for a drug offense.”

As a result, he said, “anyone who has that on a record finds that it is an absolute barrier to employment for a commercial driver’s license, to work in a health care profession, to be a teacher.” In many jobs that require security clearances, he added, “they do a background check and up pops a drug offense and they just cannot hire you.”

Weather permitting -- forecasters indicate there may be a big storm coming up the East Coast on Tuesday and Wednesday -- I will be in Richmond next week, with opportunities to speak to other legislators. Stay tuned.

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Jim Webb Visits PVCC

Earlier today, U.S. Senator Jim Webb (D-Virginia) visited the campus of Piedmont Virginia Community College near Charlottesville.

Webb's stay was not long, perhaps 90 minutes in all, but he packed in several activities in the process. 

At about 1:00 p.m., he met with PVCC students who are utilizing the educational benefits available through the GI Bill and others who qualify for financial assistance under the "Great Expectations" program.

Those eligible for GI Bill assistance are, of course, military veterans, many of whom have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are 102 PVCC students attending under the GI Bill.  The Great Expectations program is for students who are emerging from the foster care system; there are 42 people in that category attending PVCC.  Webb spoke about his principal role in creating an upgraded and expanded version of the GI Bill to fit the circumstances of a post-9/11 environment.

At 1:30 p.m., Webb gave some brief remarks to an audience of about 160 people in the auditorium of the V. Earl Dickinson Building.  He is introduced here by the college's president, Dr. Frank Friedman.

He spoke for just over 10 minutes and then opened the floor to questions for another 10 minutes or so.  (At the end of this segment, Dr. Friedman presents Senator Webb with a "Virginia cup" and a hoodie emblazoned with the PVCC logo.)

When that session ended, Senator Webb was escorted backstage where he engaged local news media in an informal press gaggle. Reporters from the Daily Progress, WINA-AM, NBC29, and the Charlottesville Newsplex were there, as well as yours truly, representing Examiner.com and The Metro Herald in Alexandria.  (C-VILLE and The Hook were conspicuous by their absence.)

While the TV cameras were setting up, I lobbed the first question in Senator Webb's direction.  I asked him about the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, which was signed last month by both countries in an updated version.  (The Bush 43 Administration first negotiated the agreement in 2007, but it has been languishing for more than three years while both the U.S. Congress and the Korean National Assembly have delayed ratification.)  Webb indicated that he is a strong supporter of the agreement.

I reported Webb's answers to my questions on Examiner.com, as well as his replies to a related question from WINA radio's Chris Callahan. (Callahan's question and mine are not included in the press gaggle video, above, because I was operating my audio recorder at the time and picked up the video camera when the TV reporters started filming.)

Perhaps the most politically pertinent question addressed to Senator Webb -- what does he think about a rematch with former Senator George Allen in 2012? -- was answered with a curt "no comment."

Before Senator Webb arrived, I was able to interview PVCC's president, Frank Friedman, who offered his suggestion for a question that should be asked of the senator in the public forum.

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This Is Not Ironic -- Is It?

Am I wrong to think it is entirely appropriate that the Department of Homeland Security is going to be headquartered in an insane asylum?

According to an article published last October (but which just came to my attention) in The Architect's Newspaper,

In September, the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) held a ceremonial groundbreaking to celebrate the creation of a DHS headquarters on the 172-acre west campus of St. Elizabeths—a National Historic Landmark and the first federally operated hospital for the insane.

Best known as the "home" of Ronald Reagan's would-be assassin, John Hinckley, St. Elizabeths also confined fascist poet Ezra Pound and numerous other crazies during its "golden years."

Now if only the administrators of St. Elizabeths could figure out a way to put a straitjacket on the administrators of the DHS.

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Virginia's Political Blog Rankings

In what might be an interesting experiment, blogger Tom White at Virginia Right! has developed three ways of ranking the scope and influence of political blogs based in -- or focusing on -- the Old Dominion.

All such attempts at rankings must be rough around the edges.  White's three categories are (1) dollar value (a concept I'm not too clear on); (2) global ranking; and (3) local ranking.  In each category, he makes a further division between liberal blogs and conservative blogs.

White explains:

I believe the dollar ranking to be the best overall measure as to the reach of a blog. I also believe the dollar values should be taken with a grain of salt as to the actual monetary value, but if taken as “points” as opposed to dollars, it looks to be a pretty good measure.

Any Virginia blog ranking that fails show Not Larry Sabato and Bearing Drift at the top of the charts is, in my opinion, suspect, and fails the sanity check.

These rankings are not intended to offend anyone and are simply reflective of measurements and algorithms developed by someone with no interest in Virginia Politics and completely objective in their calculations.

For what it's worth, this blog (Rick Sincere News and Thoughts) has a "dollar value" of $7,665, for tenth place among all Virginia blogs, just ahead of Black Velvet Bruce Lee and just behind a six-way tie for ninth place. While my dollar value remains the same, my ranking rises to seven among conservative blogs.

Top-dollar-value political blogs in Virginia are Not Larry Sabato ($210,787), Bearing Drift ($109,500), and Vivian Paige (also $109,500).

On the measure called "global ranking," this blog places 37th overall among Virginia political blogs and 23rd among Virginia conservative blogs (global rank: 4,336,918). The top three in global rankings are Vivian Paige (global rank: 226,490), Bearing Drift (rank: 239,458), and Virginia Right! (rank: 292,312).

In terms of "local ranking," this blog is listed 22nd among all Virginia political blogs (local ranking: 712,222) and 14th among Virginia conservative blogs. The top three political blogs by this measure are, once again, Vivian Paige (local rank: 43,245), Bearing Drift (rank: 44,538), and Virginia Right! (rank: 67,745).

The full universe of blogs ranked in these three categories seems to number 73, though I might be misreading that figure.  If so, the number of conservative-leaning blogs is 51 and the number of liberal-leaning blogs is 22.

Although this is a static picture of Virginia's political blogosphere as of January 2, 2011, Tom White says he plans to rerun his survey on a weekly basis. Tune in to Virginia Right! next week and subsequently for results of future horse races.

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Legislative Redistricting Under Conditions of Divided Government

One of the unexpected things I learned about the evil that was alcohol Prohibition from Daniel Okrent's excellent 2010 book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, was that the pro-Prohibition lobby successfully prevented Congress from doing its constitutional duty of reapportionment after the 1920 census.

The Constitution requires, in Article I, Section 2, and in Amendment XIV, Section 2, that an enumeration (census) shall take place every ten years and that Congress shall apportion the number of Representatives following each enumeration.

As Okrent notes, however,

The dry refusal to allow Congress to recalculate state-by-state representation in the House during the 1920s is one of those political maneuvers in American history so audacious it's hard to believe it happened. In its disregard for constitutional principle and its blatant political intent, it would almost rank with Franklin Roosevelt's Supreme Court-packing plan of 1937 -- that is, if anyone remembered that it even happened. The episode is all the more remarkable for never having established itself in the national consciousness....

Never in American history, not even during the tumult of Civil War, had Congress disregarded the constitutional mandate, enunciated in Article I, Section 2, to reapportion itself following completion of the decennial census. In each of the three most recent opportunities -- 1890, 1900, and 1910 -- the process consumed less than nine months. As late as January 1921, [Wayne B.] Wheeler [the chief pro-Prohibition lobbyist and organizer] himself believed that reapportionment was imminent and warned the [Anti-Saloon League] faithful to "be on guard." But a threatened majority, like a threatened animal, will do what it can to preserve itself. Between 1921 and 1928, forty-two separate reapportionment bills were introduced in the House. Not one became law.

As it turned out, Congress never reapportioned the House based on the 1920 census. The next reapportionment took effect in time for the 1932 elections, after the 1930 census. Prohibition, it becomes clear, worked to undermine the Constitution in fundamental ways.

We do not live in such interesting times today. The number of representatives is set at 435, the same number as in 1920, and while a few states will lose representatives beginning after the 2012 elections and others will gain them, there is no movement afoot to prevent that from happening.

The 2010 census was just the first stage in a process that will lead to the redesign of legislative districts all across the United States over the next two years. Districts for the U.S. House of Representatives, state legislatures, city councils, county boards of supervisors, and school boards will all be affected.

In Virginia, the redistricting process is accelerated because it is one of only four states that hold their state legislative elections in odd-numbered years.

Consequently, Virginia does not have a full-year's cushion in which to consider and pass a redistricting plan before it has to be in place for the next general election. In addition, because it falls under the jurisdiction of the Voting Rights Act, every aspect of the plan must be approved by the U.S. Department of Justice before it can be implemented.


George Mason University political scientist Michael P. McDonald is an expert on reapportionment and redistricting.  He is co-editor of The Marketplace of Democracy: Electoral Competition And American Politics, published in 2006 by the Brookings Institution.

McDonald has served as a consultant on redistricting issues, sometimes “helping jurisdictions produce redistricting plans that are in conformance with federal and state criteria,” sometimes serving as an expert witness in lawsuits on behalf of either the plaintiff or the defendant, “defending or challenging whether or not a redistricting plan is legal.”

After McDonald spoke to local election officials from across the Commonwealth at the State Board of Elections’ annual Election Uniformity Workshop (translation: training conference) last August, I interviewed him about what Virginia voters can look forward to in the coming months.

For the first time in Virginia history, redistricting in 2011 will take place under conditions of divided government. For the first time, the process will be supervised by a General Assembly in which the House of Delegates is controlled by Republicans and the state Senate is controlled by Democrats.

After the 1990 census, both houses were controlled by Democrats, as was the case in every decade since Reconstruction, and after the 2000 census, both houses had Republican majorities.

Moreover, in 1991, when the post-1990 redistricting took place, Virginia had a Democratic governor, L. Douglas Wilder. In 2001, Virginia had a Republican governor, Jim Gilmore. In both instances, the legislative and executive branches were unified under one political party's control.

Michael P. McDonald

“How it’s played out in other states,” Professor McDonald explained in our interview, “is that one chamber will draw its districts, the other chamber will draw its districts, and then the two will do a logroll,” in which each chamber approves the other’s proposal. In effect, McDonald said, “you will have two different partisan gerrymanders, one for each chamber.”

Virginia differs slightly from other states, however.

“The wrinkle that we have in Virginia,” McDonald pointed out, “is that the governor can amend legislation.” As a result, “there’s a little bit of concern on the Democratic side” that “even if the House passes their version of the Senate plan” the governor might not “keep his hands off of it.”

There is some discussion, McDonald said, that “the governor may form a commission or a committee of some sort to help assist him in evaluating the redistricting plans that come out of the legislature.” Such a commission, he explained, “may play a mediating role there.”

Given how fast the state legislative elections are approaching (in November 2011, when 100 seats in the House of Delegates and 40 seats in the state Senate are up for election), there is some concern about whether the General Assembly can pass a redistricting plan in time to meet the needs of the electoral calendar -- which includes setting a date for primary elections, normally held in June, in districts that have not yet been designed.

McDonald is optimistic, however.

“Plenty of other states have done it,” McDonald said. “We’ve done it in the past in Virginia.”

Can the process be completed in time?

“Presumptively, yes, the answer should be yes, that we can do it in time,” McDonald noted, also pointing out that “if it is not done in time,” federal courts will intervene.

“That’s one thing that the voters of Virginia can know to be true,” he said, “that the federal courts will step in if the state government can’t produce a redistricting plan.”

The courts, he added, “will basically draw their own map or they will accept a map that was not considered during the legislative process.”

Whether the redistricting process will fall victim to partisan bickering, or whether conditions of divided government actually make the process fairer and more transparent, both remain to be seen.

(A shorter, slightly different version of this article appeared on Examiner.com on September 4, 2010, under the headline, "After the census: GMU political scientist Michael McDonald forecasts Virginia's 2011 redistricting.")

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Celebrating Donn B. Murphy's Career in Video

Last October, Georgetown theatre alumni from across the decades gathered on the Hilltop to celebrate the more-than-half-century-long career of Dr. Donn B. Murphy, who celebrated his 80th birthday earlier this year and is now retiring after some 35 years as president of the National Theatre in Washington.

Dr. Murphy not only taught theatre at Georgetown beginning in 1955, he was theatre at Georgetown.

When I arrived at Georgetown as a freshman in 1977, Dr. Murphy was no longer artistic director and faculty advisor to Mask & Bauble, but his influence was felt strongly in Poulton Hall and wherever Georgetown students decided to mount a performance.  Having heard all the terrific stories told about him as a teacher, I now regret not taking a theatre class as an undergraduate.

What sparked this blog post today was an article about Dr. Murphy in Wednesday's Washington Post by Jane Horwitz, which begins:

Donn B. Murphy is a man of the theater in every sense. As the National Theatre's president and executive director since the early 1980s, he has hobnobbed with such stars as Helen Hayes and Cherry Jones. Katharine Hepburn offered to paint the National's ceiling, he says.

Murphy also taught theater to five decades of Georgetown University students before retiring in 1999. Two alumni, director Jack Hofsiss and playwright John Guare, went on to win Tony Awards. At the end of the month, Murphy, who turned 80 in July, will step down from his posts at the National, though he'll remain on the theater's board.

Horwitz goes on to note:

Former students celebrated his birthday with a weekend of tributes at Georgetown in October, including panel discussions looking back his teaching career.

The tributes, viewable on YouTube, show a common thread: Murphy encouraged students to try the impossible. "Astonish me," he would say when they worried that they'd taken on too big a challenge. How to create a battering ram for a play at the last minute? Just hold three students up horizontally, and make them the battering ram.

Her mention of the videos on YouTube made me realize that, although I was behind the camera that day and posted the videos on a dedicated YouTube channel ("DBMat80video") a few weeks later, I hadn't written anything about the weekend here, nor had I posted a link to the videos or embedded them in an easy-to-find place.

Now I will.

There were three panel discussions during the afternoon of October 23. Those are currently on YouTube in several segments. That evening saw an entertaining series of tributes to Dr. Murphy, which included musical selections from various "Calliopes" -- the original, student-written musicals -- from over the years (including Senior Prom, discussed in Horwitz's article in the Post). The videos from the evening remain to be edited (my fault entirely) and will be posted on YouTube soon.

The panel discussions, which are about three hours long altogether, are very much an oral history of theatre at Georgetown since 1955.  

The first panel features several Georgetown alumni who have made a career in the performing arts: Louis Scheeder of New York University's Tisch School for the Arts moderated the panel, which included director Joe Banno; New York-based actress Victoria Bundonis; scenic designer Tony Cisek, Chicago-based director/producer Chris D'Amico; Tony Award-winning director Jack Hofsiss; Gus Kaikkonen, artistic director of the Peterborough Players; and Robert McNamara, cofounder of the Scena Theatre in Washington. This panel has four segments.

Panel I, Part 1:


Panel I, Part 2:


Panel I, Part 3:


Panel I, Part 4:

The second panel, also divided into four segments, features several Georgetown alumni who have become playwrights and writers, or who have participated in the Donn B. Murphy One-Acts Festival. It is moderated by Karen Berman and Susan Lynskey.

Participants are: Gus Kaikkonen, artistic director of the Peterborough Players; journalist and non-fiction author Robert Sabbag; children's and young adult novelist Rachel Vail; playwright Paul Notice; Georgetown senior and playwright Miranda Rose Hall; and playwright Jerry Mayer.

Panel II, Part 1:


Panel II, Part 2:


Panel II, Part 3:



Panel II, Part 4:

The third panel ran a little longer than the others and consequently is divided into six segments.

It focuses on Calliope, for the better part of two decades Georgetown's tradition of creating and producing original musical theatre. Introduced by Lynne McKay, it is moderated by Donn B. Murphy and Donna Scheeder.

Participants are alumni Bill Bremer, Tim Fischer, John Gore, Jack Hofsiss, and Bryan Williams, and current student Meghan McCormick, as well as members of the audience who shared their own reminiscences, anecdotes, and recollections.

Panel III, Part 1:


Panel III, Part 2:


Panel III, Part 3:


Panel III, Part 4:



Panel III, Part 5:


Panel III, Part 6 (Conclusion):

Watch for more videos from the DBM@80 celebration to be posted here -- soon, I hope!

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Announcing the Carnival of Live Theatre

After participating in quite a few blog carnivals over the years and hosting one or two myself, it occurred to me that there was a hole in the blog carnival universe.

There are blog carnivals about books, about money, about politics, about pets, about humor, about taxes, about Christmas, about music.

What I have not been able to find has been a blog carnival about theatre.

I hope to change that with the introduction of "The Carnival of Live Theatre," which, if all goes well, will debut here on Sunday, January 2, 2011.

What will the Carnival of Live Theatre be?  Or do?

I would like it to be a gathering place for bloggers who write theatre criticism, who review plays and musicals, who interview actors and directors and the occasional techie.  If things go well, it will collect blog posts that discuss Broadway and West End productions, regional theatre, college and high school theatre, even community theatre.

The only limitations are that submissions should be about live theatre -- not film or television, as tempting as those other art forms might be -- and that they should not be overtly self-promotional.  (In other words, no press releases, please.)

I have created a page at the Blog Carnival index, where bloggers can find a submission form.  That page is here.

My plan now is to have a monthly carnival, with the deadline on the last Friday of each month and publication on the first Sunday of the month.  (That may change.)

I will host the first Carnival of Live Theatre but I am open to letting other bloggers host subsequent editions.

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DADT in Perspective: Franklin Kameny Looks Back at the Gay Military Ban

Today's long-awaited vote in the U.S. Senate to repeal the policy known colloquially as "Don't Ask Don't Tell" was the culmination of years of effort by gay Americans and their allies who have opposed overt discrimination by the government on the basis of sexual orientation.

The vote was made sweeter by the fact that, in both the House of Representatives earlier this week and the Senate today, the vote was truly bipartisan. In the House, for instance, prominent Republicans such as the ranking member (and incoming chair) of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) voted for repeal, as did Ron Paul of Texas and Jeff Flake of Arizona. In the Senate, the newest GOP member, Mark Kirk of Illinois, joined with Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and several other Republican colleagues to overturn the ban on openly gay soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines.

Franklin Kameny in Washington on May 5, 2010

For many people, especially those born in the last decade of the 20th century, the idea of ending the ban on openly gay and lesbian Americans serving in the armed forces may seem to be a new one. Even older Americans may not have become aware of the issue any earlier than 1993, when Bill Clinton tried to end the ban but ended up signing the law that made it permanent.

The fact is, not only the ban but attempts to end it go back much farther than the early 1990s.

On May 5, I interviewed Franklin Kameny, one of the pioneers of the modern gay rights movement, at the National Press Club in Washington.

Kameny, who celebrated his 85th birthday on May 21, cautioned, first, that we must “keep in mind” that the gay ban “became statutory law in ’93 [but] has been military policy for very, very, very much longer than that. You can arguably bring it all the way back to 1778 and George Washington.”

Kameny encountered the gay ban for the first time during World War II, when he enlisted in the U.S. Army.

“I personally ran into [the ban] on May 18, 1943, when a few days before my 18th birthday, I enlisted in the Army at the height of World War II,” Kameny said. “They asked; I didn’t tell, even though as a healthy, vigorous teenager there were things to tell. (Not terribly much, it was a different era in all kinds of ways.)”

Kameny added: “I have resented for 67 years that I had to lie in order to serve in a war effort that I strongly supported. I did serve and I saw combat in Europe.”

In 1957, Kameny – a Harvard-educated physicist and astronomer – was fired from his job with the Army Mapping Service because he was gay. He spent the next several decades in temporary jobs because he was unable to get a security clearance to do what he was trained to do. In fact, he said, there were some months when had only 20 cents to spend per day on food. (The story of Kameny's life during this period is told well by historian David K. Johnson in his 2004 book, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government.)

By 1961, however, he began to get involved in the then-fledgling gay rights movement, founding the Washington chapter of the Mattachine Society and setting the stage for pre-Stonewall activism.

One of the first issues he and his colleagues tackled was the military gay ban.

“We picketed against it starting in ’65 both in front of the White House and at the Pentagon, and at the Pentagon again in ’66,” demonstrating, he said, “specifically against the exclusionary policy.”

The issue also came up in 1971, when Kameny was the first openly gay person to run for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. (He ran for position of Delegate from the District of Columbia, a slot now filled by Eleanor Holmes Norton.)

“In the course of all that, I was campaigning on two different fronts,” Kameny explained. “One was purely on District issues; if you’re going to run for Congress in the District [of Columbia] you have to be an expert on trash collection and everything else.

“But also,” he continued, he was running “as a gay activist,” so that in the later part of the campaign, he held “a press conference in or near the office of the Secretary of the Army, and I met with him or somebody in his staff ... in connection with the gay ban.”

Two decades later, “in ’93, it became law, which completely changed the politics entirely.”

Now, 17 years after the Clinton-era policy was instituted, the politics have changed again, by 180 degrees.  Bipartisan majorities in both chambers of the national legislature, following the majorities indicated by public-opinion polls among U.S. voters, have decided the anti-gay policy must be rejected.  The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have both argued in favor of repealing DADT, as the policy has come to be known.  The President has promised to sign the bill.

I am confident that the vast majority of members of our armed services are mature enough to treat this change in personnel policy with integrity and professionalism.  Defenders of DADT have for years shown a poor opinion of enlisted men and women, in particular, asserting that they would be unable to work side-by-side with openly gay comrades because of inchoate prejudice. 

A post-DADT military will prove them wrong, just as the naysayers were proven wrong after President Truman ordered the end to racial segregation in the military.

Credit is due to the many gay and lesbian veterans who worked hard to see this legislation get passed.  Not least of those are the World War II veterans like Frank Kameny who easily could have chosen to do something else with their time besides lobbying Congress.  Today is a great day for America.

(This article is adapted from an earlier piece published on Examiner.com on May 30, 2010.)

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