• By essays from the entry 'McDonnell urges a fast-track to the U.S. Supreme Court, Democrats blast Cuccinelli'
• By Nealo from the entry 'McDonnell to call for hushed rhetoric'
• By Jon Wong from the entry 'Reax to Governor's Proposed Budget Amendments'
• By Stafford from the entry 'Radtke: Reject debt ceiling increase'
• By OldCavalier from the entry 'Hurt, Griffith considering debt limit vote'
• By Varun Choudhary from the entry 'Young Dems take aim at Cuccinelli'
• By Steve Shepard from the entry 'Young Dems take aim at Cuccinelli'
• By Dean from the entry 'Cuccinelli Supports Repeal Amendment'
• By mojoguzzi from the entry 'Cuccinelli Supports Repeal Amendment'
• By Barney Reilly from the entry 'Griffith gets energy committee assignment'

Freshman Rep. Robert Hurt, R-5th, is supporting the House’s bill to repeal the Obama administration’s health-care overhaul, and wants to cosponsor a balanced budget amendment. He appears to be leaning against voting for an increase in the nation’s debt limit.

You can hear more about his considerations in the video above.

Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-9th, also supports a full repeal of the health-care law. On the debt limit, Griffith says he will “thoughtfully consider the specifics of the proposed legislation.”

“My instinct tells me that the most surefire way to stop spending is to cap our national debt,” he said in a statement to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “However, we must consider both the short and long term ramifications for the United States.” 

Hopefully, the House will not raise the debt of the US. Force administrators, the pentagon, etc. to live within the current debt ceiling. Maybe silly programs like the Nat. Endow of Arts and countless others will be forced to stop.

Virginia’s Tea Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2012 is calling on Congress to reject an increase in the debt ceiling.

“President Obama’s Chief Economic Advisor said this week that a failure to raise the national debt ceiling would be ‘a sign of insanity and ‘catastrophic.’ To the contrary, it would be a sure sign of insanity for Congress to repeat its past mistakes of simply raising the debt ceiling instead of making the hard decision to cut spending,” Radtke said in a release Thursday.

Radtke recently announced her intent to challenge Sen. Jim Webb for his Senate seat in 2012 should he decide to run for re-election. Webb has said he will decide in April. Former Sen. George Allen may also enter the fray, seeking to regain the seat that Webb narrowly stole in 2006.

In her release, Radtke called for “a straightforward vote on whether to cut spending or to continue becoming more and more dependent on foreign governments to lend us more and more money at great risk to our national security by voting for an increase to the debt ceiling.”

She added: “In 2006, then Senator Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling, calling the practice of routinely doing so ‘a failure of leadership.’ He was correct. Congress should refuse to raise the debt ceiling this time, which would force the spending cuts that are essential to restore fiscal sanity.”

Ahhhh, yes.  These are the same accountants that permitted the Bush administration and Congress controlled by Republicans to sale billions and billions of dollars for two wars and one very, very deep recession to China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, etc.  Expanded the government by 20%.  While America sold its independence to any buyer, these clowns were whining about healthcare and unemployment benefits—and the Constitution?  Please stay outside with your bullhorns..stay there!

Vera Hodges Webb, mother of U.S. Senator Jim Webb, died Jan. 3 in Jacksonville, North Carolina after a long illness. She was 85. 

Vera Lorraine Hodges was born in Kensett, Arkansas, on June 24, 1925, to Birch Hays Hodges and Georgia Frankie Doyle. One of eight children, by the time Mrs. Webb was ten years old the hardships of rural Arkansas had caused two of her sisters and one brother, as well as her father, to die of illnesses that would be preventable or treatable in today’s America. From an early age, Mrs. Webb and her siblings worked year-round by chopping and picking cotton, picking strawberries, cutting and ricking wood, and through other agricultural pursuits. 

When World War II began, Mrs. Webb’s mother found work helping to build bomber aircraft as a “Rosie the Riveter,” and was forced to leave Mrs. Webb in the care of an older sister who later moved to Monahans, Texas.  There, at the age of seventeen, Mrs. Webb met her future husband James Henry Webb, Sr., who was stationed in Monahans as an Army Air Corps pilot. Then-Captain Webb offered her his seat on a bus, followed her home, and convinced her to marry him three months later. 

Mrs. Webb spent most of the following years as an Air Force spouse, bearing four children and accompanying Col. Webb on his military assignments throughout the United States and also in England.  An avid gardener and student of American history, she was a devoted mother, grandmother, and proud member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She is survived by children Patricia Lorraine Myers of Marietta, Georgia, son James Henry Webb, Jr., of Falls Church, Virginia, daughter Tama Sue McKee of Jacksonville, North Carolina, son Gary Lee Webb of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as well as 18 grandchildren and 23 great-grandchildren. 

She will be interred alongside Col. Webb, who died in 1997, in Arlington National Cemetery following a graveside ceremony Wednesday, Jan. 19.

While not all Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives backed former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to serve as minority leader, she had support from Virginia’s members.
Reps. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, D-3rd, Gerald E. Connolly, D-11th, and James P. Moran, D-8th, all supported Pelosi, who received 173 votes for leader. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-NC, won 11 votes, and six other Democrats received one or two votes.
All of Virginia’s Republican Congressmen supported John Boehner, R-Ohio, for speaker.

Check out the full vote list here.

State Senator Yvonne B. Miller, D-Norfolk, will have surgery next week and miss the opening of the 2011 General Assembly session in Richmond, the Virginia Senate Democratic Caucus announced today.

There is no timetable for the return of Miller, the first African-American woman to serve in the Virginia Senate. A release from the caucus said Miller will return to Richmond “as soon as her recovery permits.”

Miller’s departure will leave Democrats with an even slimmer margin in the senate, which currently stands at 21-19. It also creates a vacancy on the Senate Transportation Committee, which Miller chairs. State Sen. Phillip P. Puckett, D-Russell, is slated to assume the chairmanship in her place.

“I regret my necessary absence at the beginning of session. I have asked Senator Phillip Puckett to chair the transportation committee and appreciate his willingness to take on this task,” Miller said in a statement released by the caucus.