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The federal Environmental Protection Agency, accused of a years-long coverup of failed efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, can turn things around with the help of Virginia and other key bay-region states. But it will take tough enforcement of stronger regulations. In an editorial scheduled to run Friday, we'll urge the new Obama administration to put "Save the Bay" on its list of urgent environmental priorities. You can read the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's grim report on the bay's dwindling blue crab population here.

As conservative wits like to say, abstinence works every time it's tried. The problem is how often it isn't tried.

A new study joins the avalanche of research demonstrating that abstinence pledges are ineffective. Teens who pledge to abstain until they're married are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who don't take a pledge. But they are less likely to use condoms or other contraceptives.

The lesson, as always, is that sex education should encourage abstinence but also give accurate information about birth control and protection from sexually transmitted diseases.

Not the way to go on funding roads

Tying transportation money to economic growth around the state's ports would hurt core services -- and do nothing for much of the state.

How much debt can the U.S. afford?

Zachary Courser
Courser is a visiting assistant professor of politics in the Williams School of Commerce, Economics and Politics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington.

In his 1790 message to Congress on the public debt, Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the Treasury, solemnly referred to the nation's financial obligations as "the price of liberty." The finances of the newly established nation were in chaos, and Hamilton understood that establishing the credit-worthiness of the new nation was as much an economic necessity as a moral one. "Not worth a Continental," a popular phrase of the day referring to the money issued by the Continental Congress, was a baleful reminder of how the nation had failed to meet its obligations.
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Read Tuesday's letters here.

What do you want to talk about today?

On New Year's Eve, don't be surprised if the ball on Times Square stutters on its way down. The overseers of time at the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service have decided there will be a leap second this year. At the end of 2008, there will be an extra second before the start of 2009. So the ball will really need to count down 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 0.

Leap seconds are sometimes necessary because the the rotational speed of the Earth varies by tiny amounts. (Overall it is slowing.) The last one was on Dec. 31, 2005.

Technically the leap second will come at midnight GMT, so at 7 p.m. here in Virginia. Feel free to pop a bottle of bubbly then, too.

"I think you can be a law-and-order leader and still understand that the criminal justice system as we understand it today is broken, unfair, locking up the wrong people in many cases and not locking up the right person in many cases." That's Sen. Jim Webb in The Washington Post,  making the case for prison reform.

Virginia's soon-to-be senior senator plans on introducing legislation this spring. For an editorial later in the week, we'll back his call for changes to a system that badly needs them.

The Virginia General Assembly is still in search of new transportation revenue that doesn't involve new taxes: Republican Del. Glenn Oder of Newport News has introduced a bill for the 2009 session that would skim a portion of state revenues generated by economic growth attributable to Virginia's ports and dedicate the money to road improvements around those facilities. In an editorial Tuesday, we'll object to the plan as a back-door raid on the state's general fund.

We're writing an unscheduled editorial about Del. Clifford L. "Clay" Athey's plans to require Virginia's public universities to give enrollment priority to Virginians. The Front Royal Republican plans to introduce two bills that would require 70 percent of a school's students to be Virginians if the school wants to continue receiving state funding. (The second bill would make transfer students from other state colleges a priority.)

Athey figures if the state is footing part of the bill, William and Mary, the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech (the three schools that would be most affected by this change) should have more students from the commonwealth. What he forgets is that out-of-state students pay higher tuition to offset the tax contribution. Besides, it's not like the General Assembly has been particularly forthcoming with cash for higher education lately.

Localities must pay for regional jail

The state doesn't have enough money to split the costs of construction overruns.