MINNEAPOLIS—CC Sabathia was superb, A.J. Burnett followed suit and Andy Pettitte added to his résuméof postseason success. While everyone was talking about Alex Rodriguez’s breakthrough playoff performance, the New York Yankees got three strong starts in a row during their first-round sweep of Minnesota. And that sort of pitching is probably the key to building a run through October.

The seamier side of the story often gets left on the cutting-room floor. So the eminent-domain case related here a few days ago—involving Roanoke’s attempt to seize a building owned by a cou A. BARTON
HINKLE
ple of small business owners—merits revisiting, in order to give a fuller picture. The case, which looks remarkably like the Kelo v. New London case that united the political left and right in outrage four years ago, pits Roanoke authorities against Jay and Stephanie Burkholder, who own a building in part of the city targeted for redevelopment by Carilion Health Clinic. A lawyer for the city’s housing authority says the city wants to condemn the building in order to eradicate blight. This despite the fact that the Burkholders’ building was not found to be blighted itself; it merely sat in an area that was called blighted.

I hope you will not think me a presumptuous goldbricker for taking a few moments away from washing the team’s practice socks—they are drying on the line as I pen these words—to convey to you my solemn concern about the discussions regarding the new team name.

In a 2003 piece for The New York Times, Booker Prize-winning author A.S. Byatt questioned the merit of the Harry Potter series. Her basic argument: Young-adult novels like these are safe, comfortable, and lacking in what she refers to as “a compensating seriousness . . . a real sense of mystery, powerful forces, dangerous creatures in dark forests.“

When the Supreme Court handed down its disastrous 2005 ruling on eminent domain in Kelo v. New London, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor made a prediction. “Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party,“ she lamented, “but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.“ Kelo, in effect, took away David’s slingshot and gave Goliath a bigger club.

Republicans, says Mitt Romney, “believe in allowing people to have a choice in their health care.“ Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell concurred a few days ago, when he said “Americans have A. BARTON
HINKLE
been . . . clear: People want more choice.“ Virginia’s Eric Cantor agrees that choice is good. The House minority whip says the GOP’s health care plans “are designed to . . . protect Americans from being forced into a new government-run health care plan that would . . . limit your choice of doctors and medical treatment options.“

As historians begin to sift through papers from the Bush administration, the extent of its nefariousness is slowly but surely coming to light. We already knew U.S. attorneys were sacked for holding the “wrong” types of political views. We knew the EPA censored technical papers on climate change. We knew, from Imperial Life in the Emerald City, that job applicants seeking work in the Iraq-reconstruction effort were asked for their views on Roe v. Wade.

Last weekend tens of thousands of fired-up Americans gathered in Washington to protest the most rapid inflation of government since WWII. Meanwhile, in a hotel conference room in Old Town Alexandria, a group of journalists and academics wrestled with a related question: Why does government grow? The discussions were sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University in partnership with the Liberty Fund. Here are some questions and insights that emerged from the weekend.

Last week a group of retired military leaders held a press conference to make a novel pitch for a surprising cause: early childhood education. Noting that roughly 70 percent of military-age young people are ineligible for enlistment, the warriors warned (as a retired Air Force general put it) that “we cannot allow today’s dropout crisis to become a national-security crisis.“ Virginia Attorney General Bill Mims, who joined the press conference, called “dollars spent on early-childhood education” a “force multiplier.“

• Editor’s note: The following excerpt from ‘Dyspeptic Dominion: A Political History of Virginia’ (Copyright 2024) is reprinted by permission.

Word is going around Washington that the president might not be able to keep his promise not to raise your taxes, much as he would like to be able to do so. News reports say his economic advis ers have “refused to rule out” a tax increase. But take heart: “Democrats say Obama is highly unlikely to break the pledge before next year’s congressional election, and observe that it would be safer to wait until his second term if a tax increase becomes unavoidable.“

Never waste a good crisis,“ said Hillary Clinton back in March. Virginia’s political leaders should keep the advice in mind as they wrestle with yet another round of budget cuts. The current fiscal dilem mas present them with an opportunity to reposition the state for more prudent governance in the years ahead. Take forecasting, which seems to need an overhaul. Republicans have lambasted the Kaine administration for overly optimistic revenue projections, and rightly so. As far back as 2005, when the state ended the fiscal year with a half-billion-dollar surplus, House Appropriations Chairman Vince Callahan warned: “I think the consensus is to not have new programs that we might not be able to pay for in six years. I’ve been through too many of these cycles, and I’ve seen the bubble burst before.“

Del. Chris Saxman has been championing school choice for years, so he answers the standard criticisms of choice proposals with the celerity of a chess grandmaster going through the motions of the Ruy Lopez. Don’t vouchers and tuition tax credits drain money from the public schools? No—carefully constructed, they would actually increase per-pupil funding for public K-12, he explains.

Given the recent contretemps surrounding Northrop Grumman’s information-technology contract with the commonwealth, this might not be the most auspicious hour for Bob McDonnell to propose privatizing the state’s liquor stores. But the GOP candidate is not the first to raise the idea. It has become a hardy perennial, chiefly because its merits are not subject to the changing political climate.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell deserves credit for rolling out a transportation policy package chock-full of ideas—some of which are new, most of which are sensible. Most. Virginia probably could do without yet another blue-ribbon task force, for instance. And a VDOT audit—while not objectionable—is not going to solve the state’s road-money woes no matter how much waste it uncovers. (It might not uncover much; the recession likely has done as much as any audit could to squeeze inefficiency out of the system.)