While Mark Warner hides out on card-check, Jim Webb plunges into prison reform. These issues, conventional wisdom has it, are career killers. One Democrat shudders. The other says big deal. This tale of two senators spotlights their different temperaments and very different approaches to politics. On card-check—the new bloody shirt of business and labor—Warner is learning the hard way that being a “radical centrist” means you’re a target for people on both sides of a tough issue.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., is taking his push for prison reform on the road, visiting Richmond’s overcrowded jail and a South Richmond shelter for recovering addicts and alcoholics. “We have opened up the debate across the country,“ he said after a tour yesterday of The Healing Place, where he was met by a standing ovation from an Alcoholics Anonymous session for about 100 men.

Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner have submitted the names of several individuals to the White House for possible appointment as U.S. attorneys in Virginia. One has attracted special attention. The Webb-Warner recommendations include Dwight Holton for the Alexandria-based Eastern District of Virginia. Holton is the brother-in-law of Gov. Tim Kaine.

Virginia’s U.S. senators are recommending to the White House seven prospects for high-profile prosecutor jobs, including Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s brother-in-law and his homeland security adviser. In letters Monday to President Barack Obama, who will select the state’s two federal prosecutors, Democrats Jim Webb and Mark R. Warner said, “Each of these candidates possesses the qualifications needed to serve as United States attorney.“

A new study shows that the nation’s rate of prison population growth slowed by half—from 1.6 to 0.8 percent—in the first six months of last year compared with the same period in 2007. But in Virginia the growth in prison population dipped only slightly, from 3.1 percent to 3 percent, according to a report released yesterday by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Virginia will receive $60 million for energy-efficiency improvements and $51 million to aid public housing under the latest releases of federal stimulus funds. The energy-efficiency money is in addition to $164 million in weatherization and energy funding for Virginia that President Barack Obama’s administration announced earlier this month.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., wants Congress to find ways to cut the prison population—a sharply divisive issue that has shaped his home state’s politics for more than a decade. Backed by the White House and key Senate Republicans, Webb yesterday called for a national commission to conduct a 1½-year review of the criminal-justice system.

Many Virginians seeking jobs in the Obama White House are starting their quest at the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Dozens of applicants have approached the office of Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., for help.

Virginia is fighting a looming decision by the Navy to move an aircraft carrier from Norfolk to Mayport Naval Air Station near Jacksonville, Fla.