Below The Beltway

After yet another driving tour of Virginia, Kellie and I came home on Saturday and watched a few movies. Needless to say, the pickings at the video store this weekend were incredibly thin, so cut me some slack as I review what we actually ended up watching.
First up was The Wedding Date with Debra Messing [...]

I’ve never been to Winchester, Virginia before, so, yesterday, Kellie and I decided to take another one of our scenic tours of Virginia and drove out to see what was there. As usual, we took the scenic route; driving first south to Warrenton, and then taking Route 17 north toward Winchester.
I’ve said this many times, [...]

There was a time when the world was different from the way it is today. When it was Christian Europe that was the backwater and Dar-al-Islam that was the ascendent power in the world. Then over the course of a few centuries or less, the world was turned upside down. The previously dominant and vibrant [...]

The site was down for several hours today due to a server move and DNS problems. In the process, anything that I’ve posted after midnight Thursday morning has been lost. With one or two exceptions, I am not going to try to restore those posts. So, if you’ve come here through a link that’s not [...]

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll seems to indicate an attitude among the American public that is so negative that it could a a threat to any incumbent running for re-election this year:
WASHINGTON - With congressional midterm elections less than four months away, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that candidates will [...]

There are several stories in the news today which provide further evidence in support of the idea that the days of rapidly rising real estate prices are gone.
First, the Washington Post reports that sales of existing homes fell again in June:
In Loudoun County, for example, 515 existing single-family homes and condominiums were sold last month, [...]

The Washington Supreme Court has upheld that state’s Defense of Marriage Act, dealing yet another setback to the effort to legalize same-sex marriage.
OLYMPIA, Wash. — The state Supreme Court upheld a ban on gay marriage Wednesday, saying lawmakers have the power to restrict marriage to unions between a man and woman.
The 5-4 decision disappointed gay-marriage [...]

Elisha Cuthbert, 24’s Kim Bauer, says that she doesn’t plan on posing nude anytime soon.
Sexy movie star ELISHA CUTHBERT has laughed off reports she?s being courted to pose nude in Playboy, insisting she is too modest to bare all. The actress states she?ll only strip on camera if it?s absolutely necessary, admitting she currently calls [...]

Condi Rice has a headache, and this is the reason why:
ROME, July 26 — As the fighting and bombing intensified in Lebanon and Israel, an urgently convened, high-level international conference in Rome concluded in open disagreement, failing to reach accord on a plan to bring a halt to the strife.
A formal statement from the 18 [...]

In January, I wrote about a case being argued before the Ohio Supreme Court that was, without question the first major test of local government eminent doman powers since the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision. The case involved the city of Norwood, near Cincinnati, and its attempt to use eminent domain to take the propety of [...]