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Michael Vick, former Virginia Tech standout who was convicted of organizing a dogfighting ring, has signed with the Philadelphia Eagles.

I for one am disappointed in the team from Philadelphia. Yes, Vick did his time, but he also demonstrated that he is a reprehensible human being.  The Eagles, by signing him, demonstrate a disregard for the character of the people in their organization and who they elevate to be a role model. They have admitted that a sense of ethics and personal responsibility are not important in their players, in the people they elevate to be role models.

Zach Leibowitz at the Washington Post puts it very well:

There comes a point where character shouldn't be just an afterthought. It should matter. It should be ranked at the top of your list, like Brian Westbrook on your fantasy football draft board. These are the intangibles that matter in football. They matter in the locker room and in the community.

Over at The Shad Plank, a Daily Press blog, they picked up on Tweet Congress, a site that monitors who in Congress uses twitter. They checked on Virginia's delegation and found out that several of our representatives and one of our senators remain blissfully unaware.

Most surprising (read distrubing), Southwest Virginia's own Rep. Rick Boucher does not twitter. He recently took over the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, and he is a co-chair of the House Internet Caucus.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte also does not twitter. He too is a co-chair of the Internet Caucus.

What gives, guys? If you're going to play overseers of the Internet, maybe you should be involved in what's going on on the Internet. When lawmakers don't know what their dealing with, bad policy often results.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has a story about Republicans playing catchup when it comes to the Internet.

And of course, you can follow the RT twitter.

The editorial writers over at The (Fredericksburg) Free Lance-Star have a great suggestion for Virginia gas stations. Drop the .9 cents on the price of a gallon of gas. They argue it doesn't make sense when a gallon costs more than $4.

Maybe the General Assembly could pass a bill requiring whole-cent pricing when they meet next week. It's not like they're going to do anything about transportation.

Carol Lindstrom over at DepotDazed suggests Christiansburg move its council elections to November. Blacksburg decided to do so recently.  Lindstrom's argument for the change is primarily fiscal. It would cost less to run the actual election and there would be aggregate fuel savings for citizens. Stop by her site to see to the full argument. Personally, I think it's a good idea if handled right.

Over at Bacon's Rebellion, Jim Bacon muses about the opposition to Dominion's proposed coal-burning power plant in Wise County, and wonders why Dominion's customers aren't upset about the higher rates the plant will cost them:

"Dominion plans to spend $1.8 billion on construction, and the SCC is granting the utility a 12.12 percent return on equity. As I observed last year, the project was far more expensive on a cost-per-KW-hour basis than other clean-coal facilities on the drawing boards around the country. Among the more obvious inefficiencies is the legislative requirement to buy expensive Virginia coal, and the necessity of wheeling the electric power across the entire state, suffering transmission losses along the way.

"I estimated last year that Dominion rate payers could wind up paying $650 million more than they would otherwise -- and that was based on a $1.6 billion cost figure, which has somehow moved up to $1.8 billion. I am stupefied that not a single public figure in Virginia has raised a fuss. Are there no populists among us anymore?"

I find it interesting that he complains about the location of the plant. The location - very near two other major polluting power plants - is the main reason we oppose it.

But what do you think would happen if Dominion proposed plopping those big, belching smokestacks in NoVa - or near enough to pollute Richmond, for that matter?

Something tells me the plant would face somewhat higher regulatory hurdles.

In case you wondered, Jerry Fuhrman at From On High doesn't always disagree with us Not always, but usually.

Hank Bostwick, an 11th grade English teacher at Patrick Henry High, launched a blog for his class, "English Eleven Online." The blog scored a bit of a coup recently when it got Gov. Tim Kaine to post a comment after his recent town hall meeting at PH.

You can read about it here.

Godwin's law states:

As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

The law has been extended to blogs, and rightfully so as Jerry Fuhrman shows at From On High. He manages to compare Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama to both Adolf Hitler and Chairman Mao.

So you're a McCain man, then, Jerry? Or are you on the Hillary bandwagon?

I'm all for a little rhetorical flourish now and then, but sheesh.

I was struck by an insightful comment to an interesting post over at TPM Cafe. The post was discussing the impact of the collapse of the $8 trillion housing bubble on the economy. The commenter laid out a vicious cycle: A debt-supported spending frenzy by consumers led to inflated prices for certain goods, including homes. Inflated home prices allowed homeowners to borrow more against equity, given them more borrowed money to spend.

As the poster summed it up: "The financial services and consumer products industries both encouraged this bad behavior and many economists and government officials blessed it. But still, at the heart of the problem, are ordinary Americans who, in large numbers, demonstrated remarkable ignorance of basic finance and also a surprising lack of self-control. Ultimately, I think the best thing that could come out of this recession is a new push to educate Americans about the basics of finance. The collapse of the housing bubble is bad, but there are looming crises in retirement savings and health care that will be much worse than our current problem if Americans don't start making better financial decisions." (emphasis mine)

I think the poster, a self-described "fiscally conservative liberal" who goes by Purple State, makes an excellent point. American consumers desperately need an education in basic finance. But even those who are supposed to be experts help make the housing fiasco worse.

Jerry Fuhrman over at From on High, responded to this morning's transportation editorial with this post that included a pie chart showing where state money goes.

As I told Jerry in a comment on his blog, something seems off with that chart. As the text on the page he linked to says, "Looking at total operating funds from all sources, the majority of the money goes to education (39 percent), health and human resources (26 percent), and transportation (13 percent)."

Subsequent charts show transportation getting 13 percent of general revenue and 23 percent of nongeneral revenue.

I can's see how that could possibly average out to less than 3 percent of total funds.