Each year over 2,500 commercial vessels enter the Port of Hampton Roads alone, so adequate funding for port security is a significant issue for those of us who live in Richmond and Hampton Roads.
Giving a 10-year mandatory minimum for a second offense fist fight is not going to reduce the chance that someone will be stabbed 16 times when you are not funding any of the programs that are desperately needed to actually reduce juvenile crime.
Obviously, there has to be a profound change in direction. Otherwise, interest on the national debt will start eating up virtually every penny that we have.
The death penalty is discriminatory and does not do anything about crime.
While there are many obstacles that deter students from going to college, finances by no means should be the deciding factor.
No one should be denied the opportunity to get an education and increase their earning potential based solely on their inability to pay for a college education.
Studies have shown that inmate participation in education, vocational and job training, prison work skills development, drug abuse, mental health and other treatment programs, all reduce recidivism, significantly.
Unfortunately, the elimination of incentives such as parole, good time credits and funding for college courses, means that fewer inmates participate in and excel in literacy, education, treatment and other development programs.
Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments.
In the Brown decision, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down the legal and moral footing of racially segregated public education in this country.
It is virtually impossible to compete in today's global economy without a college degree.
The destinies of the two races in this country are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law.
There is nothing Federal about local volunteer fire departments.
We live in an information and knowledge-based economy.
Present law has a process to ascertain whether or not a patient is in a persistent vegetative state, and it should not matter what politicians think.
The first year of the Bush administration we used up all of the surplus and ended up just with the Social Security and Medicare surplus, and each year worse than the year before.
The Federal prison population has increased more than 7-fold over the past 20 years.
I think we should worry about Social Security first and then tax cuts second.
One of the problems with even suggesting that purpose of a Federal law is for law enforcement officers to assist in protecting the public outside their jurisdictions is that it may give them encouragement or even a sense of obligation to do so.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Civil Rights Act.
