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Gov. Tim Kaine is inviting an unnecessary argument with the General Assembly with his vow to appoint a replacement for Virginia Supreme Court Justice Barbara Keenan if she is confirmed to the federal bench before he leaves office.

As reported in the Virginia Politics Blog on The Washington Post Web site, House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, didn’t take kindly to Kaine’s pledge, noting that it is the General Assembly’s responsibility to appoint judges.

In an editorial for next week, we'll tell Kaine that he would be wasting time to make this appointment on his way out the door.

How hard is it to buy a gun from a private seller at a gun show?  Can you buy it without an ID to prove your age or residence?  Can you front money for a friend standing right next to you?  Can you avoid any background check at all?

You betcha.

At least that's what Colin Goddard, who was shot four times on April 16, 2007 at Virginia Tech, found when he visited gun shows in several states.

Former Del. Phil Hamilton resigned after being defeated for re-election, apparently cutting short a state ethics investigation into his securing a job at an Old Dominion University teaching center at the same time he was securing state funding for it as one of the General Assembly's senior budget negotiators. Sunday, we'll urge the assembly to change the state ethics law that appears to limit investigations to sitting lawmakers, and we'll ask legislators to investigate ODU's role in the scandal. Lawmakers need to find some route to determine all the facts behind events as they unrolled so the assembly can act to avoid a repeat. And they need to make their findings public, to bolster its frayed confidence in the integrity of their elected leaders.

We're working on an editorial about the latest $851 million cuts to VDOT's six-year plan. Take a look here at the projects that won't be completed in our area.

While the recession has worsened VDOT's problems, a rebounding economy won't fix the structural problem that will soon leave Virginia with money only to maintain existing infrastructure.

Virginia Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell will need more solutions than the pixie dust he sprinkled during the campaign to solve this.

Del. Phillip A. Hamilton resigned his House of Delegates seat effective midnight Sunday. Hamilton, who is embroiled in a controversy over allegations he used his clout in the House to funnel money to Old Dominion University in exchange for a job, lost his re-election bid.

The Daily Press story speculates that his early resignation could halt an ethics investigation. Another interesting loophole from which to escape.

Virginia schoolchildren can reach high academically and make great grades, do well on their SATs, show leadership and commitment to their schools and communities with extracurricular activities and volunteer work -- and still not get into one of the state's premier public universities. The recession has forced states, including Virginia, to cut deeper into already reduced public support for higher education, and schools that can are making up some of the lost revenue by accepting more out-of-state students, who pay much more to attend. The resulting shattered dreams of some of Virginia's finest young adults make for a tempting target for legislative intervention. Tuesday, we'll write that when lawmakers convene in January, they should resist the urge to ride to the rescue.

In an editorial we are writing for Tuesday, we will urge Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell to disavow comments made by Pat Robertson about Islam.  Robertson said,

Islam is a violent--I was going to say religion--but it's not a religion. It's a political system. It's a violent political system bent on the overthrow of governments of the world and world domination.

They talk about infidels and all this. But the truth is, that's what the game is. You're dealing with not a religion. You're dealing with a political system. And I think you should treat it as such and treat it's adherents as such. As we would members of the Communist party and members of some Fascist group.

Those remarks came in the wake of the tragic shootings at Fort Hood, Texas. This is not the first time Robertson has said something utterly stupid in the wake of tragedy.  It is, however, the first time he has done so since McDonnell was elected governor. McDonnell closely aligned himself with Robertson and will not easily distance himself now. He can, however, pass this first test of leadership by calling for cooler heads and fulfilling his campaign promise to be a governor for all Virginians.

Short takes

Quick views on some of the week's news.

The winter forecast: clear roads

The revenue-starved Virginia Department of Transportation took a lot of heat this summer when it cut costs in part by closing almost a score of rest stops along interstates in the Old Dominion. The uproar would be but trifling, though, compared to the cold fury of a public immobilized by snow and ice this winter. ...

New Horizons, indeed

The Rev. Bill Lee's dream of bringing health care access to medically underserved Northwest Roanoke has been a steadily growing reality for more than 10 years.

The Kuumba Community Health & Wellness Center, incorporated in 1999 and run briefly out of the basement of his Loudon Avenue Christian Church, became a full-blown medical facility the next year when it moved into a warren of trailers on Melrose Avenue. In 2007, the federally subsidized community health center, renamed New Horizons Healthcare, moved into the Valley View Medical Center. ...

The Tea Partying GOP loathes compromise

Sen. Lindsey Graham finds himself on the wrong side of the Tea Partyers. In his home state of South Carolina, the Charleston County Republican Party this week approved a stinging rebuke of their senator. ...

Read more.

Virginia Republicans (and a dismaying number of Virginia Democrats) have made it abundantly clear that they has no interest in protecting gays from discrimination. Perhaps it's time for a new motto in the commonwealth -- Virginia: More repressive than Mormons.

From the AP:

The Mormon church for the first time has announced its support of gay rights legislation, an endorsement that helped gain unanimous approval for Salt Lake city laws banning discrimination against gays in housing and employment.

They still haven't come around on gay marriage, but this is a huge step forward for the Mormons. Kudos.

John Allen Muhammad, the D.C. Sniper, will die tonight as scheduled for one of the 10 murders he and a young accomplice committed during a killing spree that terrorized the Washington area for three weeks in October 2002. Gov. Tim Kaine declined to intervene today, one day after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from Muhammad's lawyers that their client is severely mentally ill and suffers from brain damage caused, in part, by childhood beatings.

Kaine opposes capital punishment, but pledged when he ran for governor that should he be elected, he would uphold Virginia's death penalty law. He stood by his promise.

Kaine allowed at least five other executions besides the one scheduled for tonight. He did commute a death sentence in 2008, that of Percy Walton of Danville, to comply with a Supreme Court ruling that forbids executing inmates too mentally incompetent to understand that they are to die as punishment for crimes they committed. The governor didn't accept a similar plea on behalf of Muhammad.

Put this in the political spin machine, and some might say it comes out as a political calculation: The D.C. Sniper is widely known and just as widely despised. Commuting his sentence would be politically unpopular.

Kaine isn't running for anything, though. I think, as an honorable and very thoughtful man, he weighed each appeal on its own merit, and in each case hewed to the law.