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By Frank Beamer

As many of you know, I grew up in the wonderful little community of Fancy Gap. For those of you not familiar with my hometown, it is nestled atop the Blue Ridge Mountains in rural Carroll County not too far from the North Carolina border.

Fortunately for me and my brother and sister, we grew up in a home where getting an education was not a question, but a quest. Our mother, Herma, taught for 30 years in the public school system and inspired us to read and achieve.

I was fortunate enough to receive an athletic scholarship to attend college, but I knew I had to continue my education even if I had not been a student-athlete. That was more than 50 years ago. Today, further education beyond high school is even more important. By 2020, 60 percent of all jobs in America, and in Virginia, will require education and training beyond that provided by a simple high school diploma.

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Beamer is the head coach of the Virginia Tech football team.

By Pete Hamilton

As I was driving down the interstate recently, it occurred to me that perhaps the National Rifle Association is on to something.

There I was, driving along in the right-hand lane, striving to remain within striking distance of the posted speed limit while staying at least a heartbeat in front of the continuing stream of grilles that kept looming up ominously in my rearview mirror. I tried to ignore the glares of the drivers of these vehicles when they zipped past me as soon as a brief gap in the oncoming traffic in the passing lane opened up.

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Hamilton is a retired business executive who lives in Rockbridge County.

By Caleb Simon

Virginia is at a critical juncture in setting its new building code that would dramatically boost energy efficiency in the state. Saving energy saves money and offers a variety of benefits to our communities. Sadly, an organization is attempting to prevent this adoption that could cause Virginia to miss out on this opportunity to modernize and improve our infrastructure statewide.

The Home Builders Association of Virginia has spent a great deal of time and money to prevent the adoption of the latest energy efficiency code. It is disguising its attempt as concern for the consumer; however, when we look at the facts, they reveal that the only concern they are really protecting is their own profit margin.

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Simon lives in Christiansburg and is a licensed contractor and energy auditor.

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By George Will

Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this past week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government’s large capacity for misbehavior. And, entertainingly, the answer to the question “Will Barack Obama’s scandals derail his second-term agenda?” was a question: What agenda?

The scandals are interlocking and overlapping in ways that drain his authority. Everything he advocates requires Americans to lavish on government something his administration, and big government generally, undermines — trust.

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Will is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.

By Wade Gilley

Dark clouds are forming over America’s public universities as the Wall Street mind-set spreads across more of our institutions. A decade of excessive spending based largely on unlimited student loans is looming dangerously over a major national asset.

In January, Moody’s, the nation’s premier credit rating organization, issued a report titled “U.S. Higher Education Outlook Negative in 2013.” Moody’s evaluation was based on the hundreds of billions of dollars in institutional debt incurred by America’s public universities, including exotic non-traditional financial schemes.

Moody’s evaluation did not include the trillion dollars of debt currently owed by college and university students and former students. Today, more than 35 million Americans owe an average of $24,000 in college loans and half have not earned and are not likely to earn a four-year degree.

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Gilley, a retired university president and former Virginia secretary of education, lives in Reston, Virginia. He is the author of more than a dozen books on higher education administration, including one translated into Japanese and one into Chinese.

by Glenn Rose

It’s a good thing automobiles weren’t invented when the Constitution of the United States was being written. Our Founding Fathers may have felt compelled to add an amendment outlining the horseless carriage’s place in our society. It might have read, “While recognizing these contraptions are unreliable and most likely a passing fad, the right of the people to own and operate Automobiles shall not be infringed.”

No doubt we would now have another N.R.A., the National Right to Automobiles, resisting any laws to regulate and control the use of motorized vehicles, now far more pervasive in our society, far more powerful, and far more lethal than in their infancy.

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Rose is a former educator, broadcaster, and business owner living in Rockbridge County.

by Bob Crawford

Contrary to the claims central to much of the argument of the pro-gun lobby, the right to bear arms, as provided by the Constitution’s Second Amendment, is not absolute in the sense of disallowing any regulating or limiting conditions.

With any right, limitations apply at the point where one right meets competing demands of another right.

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Crawford is an artist and writer living in Roanoke County.

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By Seth Heald

On May 3, I took a day off from work to travel to Richmond for Dominion Resources Inc.’s annual shareholders meeting. Dominion Resources owns Dominion Virginia Power, the commonwealth’s largest utility.

I went to speak in favor of a shareholder resolution asking Dominion’s management and board to set a timetable for ending the company’s purchases of coal obtained through mountaintop-removal mining.

The board recommended voting against the resolution, and so it went down to defeat, as most shareholder resolutions do. But I thought I’d share my comments at the meeting with Roanoke Times readers, who might be particularly interested in the Dominion board’s cavalier response to the resolution. The board didn’t even try to defend mountaintop removal. Instead it just passed the buck and absolved itself and the company from any responsibility for the devastation its coal purchases are causing.

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Heald, of Rixeyville in Culpeper County, is a lawyer and a Dominion Resources shareholder.

By Kathleen Parker

Breaking news: Conservative organizations suddenly have found common cause with one of their favorite objects of contempt — the benighted Mainstream Media.

Or as the tea party queen and former Alaska governor likes to put it, the “lamestream media.”

In a twist of irony, the two groups have coalesced around a common enemy: the U.S. government.

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Parker is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.

By David Banks

To hear environmental leaders tell it, the way forward on energy policy is clear. The United States should be more aggressive in moving to phase out fossil fuels and nuclear power in electricity generation and use renewable sources instead.

To do this, environmentalists say, we must challenge old ways of thinking rooted in the notion that coal, natural gas and nuclear power are needed to meet increased demand for electricity, and we must embrace new clean energy sources like solar and wind power.

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Banks, of Timberville, is a retired communicator (and now a gentleman farmer) with more than 20 years experience in the coal, natural gas and oil industries.