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Isn’t it funny how you used to be in the nut house and now I’m in jail?

Where are you headed this weekend?

The long-time debate over broadcasting Supreme Court hearings reared up again this week at the annual House hearing to consider the Supreme Court Budget. Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer represented the court before the subcommittee.

Once all of the niceties were out of the way, the representatives rightly laid into the Justices about their lack of transparency in the digital age. Conservative Texas Rep. John Culbertson went so far as to whip out his a video recorder and streamed straight to the Internet.

So that’s what it looks like from the other side of the hearing room. The guy who self-effacingly said Culbertson could let his constituents “see what a liberal looks like” is New York Rep. Jose Serrano, the chairman of the subcommittee.

The justices, as usual, were reluctant to join the 20th Century, let alone the 21st.

C-SPAN recorded the entire hearing.

The State Board of Elections this week announced the formation of a task force to study Virginia’s voter residency requirements. This comes in response to issues surrounding how some local registrars dealt with college students. It’s a problem that needs to be fixed, and the task force is a welcome change, even if it includes Radford Registrar Tracy Howard, one of the worst offenders.

We’re writing an editorial to run next week about the panel, and we’re focusing on two other seats on it. The Democratic and Republican parties each get a seat.  They don’t deserve them.

For one, upholding the rights of voters is not a partisan issue. Their inclusion can only hurt the process. Heck, student voters run across the political spectrum.

If there will be part representation, though, it shouldn’t be restricted to just these two parties. Where are representatives for the Libertarians, the Greens, the Constitution Party and so on? They, more than the two parties that have firm strangleholds on elections now, need protection when the State Board studies the rules.

Press release with more details below.

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Much ado in the mayor’s office

It’s a good thing the other 17 city workers facing reassignment have opted out of the mayoral drama.

Every worker likes to think that what she does for her employer is most vital and of grave importance. While employers can appreciate the worker’s dedication, no job is or can be considered sacred — even government jobs.

Roanoke’s department heads were under orders. Each, no matter how small the department, was required to eliminate at least one position in order to help reduce spending by $7.5 million.

Read more.

$100 million is chump change

President Obama asked his Cabinet to find budget cuts. It’s just a start.

President Obama held his first Cabinet meeting on Monday and asked his team to cut $100 million from their agencies’ budgets. That’s a good sign from an administration that has been all about spending so far, but no one should think Washington would, could or should balance the federal budget quickly.

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A time for remaking homes, lives

Devan Malore

Malore is a carpenter, contractor, naturalist and writer living on the edge of Lexington.

Working in and around the home construction industry for years, I’ve watched the big, many-roomed houses of my youth give way to open, colorful apartments, condos and dream country homes. For a few years as a carpenter I also worked on new home construction. That’s when insulation became standard and doors and windows started to have energy ratings. But my most interesting work over the years has been working with renovations.

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Read today’s letters to the editor.

How do you fight such a savage?

With heart, faith and steel. In the end there can be only one.

What’s on your mind today?

For Friday: Joyce Johnson currently employed as the assistant to Roanoke’s mayor is upset that her position is being eliminated as part of $7.5 million in cuts. Johnson is not out of a job, just a position that she believes is vital to running the city. Mayor David Bowers has added fuel to the drama.

Johnson has publically trashed her supervisor, City Clerk Stephanie Moon, her coworkers and has claimed council members interferred with management to have her position eliminated. (Read her partial statement to council at a Web site, whose sponsor is unknown, created to save Joyce.) Johnson and Bowers, who thinks he’s a full-time mayor in need of an employee dedicated solely to his needs, need to either present proof or move along.

A lot of teabaggers out there worry that America is on the road to socialism, heck maybe we’re even already there. We’re supposedly becoming Sweden.

The Daily Show sent Wyatt Cenac to Sweden to find out what’s so wrong with the socialist nightmare. Check out his delightful two-part report.

Part 1

Part 2

We’re writing an editorial for Sunday’s NRV Current about the Radford University Board of Visitors. When the board meets, members receive a packet of documents that contains all of the information they need to make informed decisions about what’s on the agenda. That’s how most government bodies work.

The difference with the BoV is that whereas a typical board of supervisors or town council gets its packets in advance of the meeting so that members have time to read them, the Radford BoV gets its packet at the meeting. In other words, it dives into discussions and voting without having had time to read up on the issues.

That, we’ll argue, is a terrible way to run a university and it keeps the public needlessly in the dark.

(Read the agenda for the meeting this week.)

The curious case of Jane Harman

A congresswoman is wiretapped. The FBI starts an investigation, only to drop it at the attorney general’s insistence. What happened?

A controversial report in Congressional Quarterly provides new details about accusations that, in exchange for help securing the chairmanship of a powerful House Committee, Democratic Rep. Nancy Harman of California offered in 2005 to intervene with the Justice Department in a spying case involving Israeli lobbyists.

But the report, which Harman angrily denies, raises more questions than answers.

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Enough already

Contracts are meaningless if Roanoke keeps granting extensions to Ivy Market.

With its vote to extend performance agreement deadlines for the fourth time to the developer of the Ivy Market retail center, Roanoke City Council set a bad precedent.

The Ivy Market, home to Ukrop’s, was supposed to also be home to a Walgreens drug store by now.

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