Digital RSS feed from the Roanoke Times The Roanoke Times en_us Sat, 18 May 2013 17:29:20 http://www.roanoke.com/csp/cms/sites/dt.cms.rss.XMLServer.cls ellen.mosely@roanoke.com A county’s official faith Washington County’s supervisors voted this week — unanimously — to hang the Ten Commandments in the Government Center Building in Abingdon. They also voted to form a committee “to look into the legal implications of such a move,... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1938045-10/short-takes.html opinion 31575911@rss.roanoke.com Sat, 18 May 2013 17:29:20 Making a bad bottleneck worse Where do Roanoke’s traffic engineers get their degrees and ideas? The roughly three-block area of Elm Avenue in front of the old Community Hospital is the city’s largest traffic bottleneck. In their infinite wisdom (or igno... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1940510-10/making-a-bad-bottleneck-worse.html opinion 31584337@rss.roanoke.com Sat, 18 May 2013 17:29:20 As a Franklin County resident who has to pay the “small price” in higher taxes that the editors seem so concerned about (“Shame on Franklin County supervisors,” April 28): Forthwith, print a chart of school salaries plus benefits and real estate taxes w... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1937648-10/franklin-county-supervisors-got-it-right.html opinion 31574626@rss.roanoke.com Sat, 18 May 2013 17:29:20 It’s a good thing automobiles weren’t invented when the Constitution of the United States was being written. Our Founding Fathers may have felt compelled to add an amendment outlining the horseless carriage’s place in our society. It might have read, “Whi... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1895118-10/shoot-at-will-which-ones-will.html opinion 31435686@rss.roanoke.com Sat, 18 May 2013 17:29:20 Dr. Kermit Gosnell delivered live babies and killed them. These were not legal abortions. They were infanticides, no question. A Philadelphia jury convicted Gosnell this week of first-degree murder, infanticide and racketeering, among other charges. It wa... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1932034-10/the-real-lesson-of-dr-gosnell.html opinion 31555563@rss.roanoke.com Fri, 17 May 2013 17:29:19 Paying council what it’s worth Mayor David Bowers and Councilman Bill Bestpitch of Roanoke City Council, who are pushing for a huge raise in their pay, remind me of an old story. This man applies for a job and asks his prospective employer what the pay i... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1937783-10/paying-council-what-its-worth.html opinion 31575038@rss.roanoke.com Fri, 17 May 2013 17:29:19 Martinsville City Council has decided to carry on as if the whole patchwork quilt controversy never flared. Too bad. A group of fine students will lose an opportunity to broaden their minds by seeing their world through different eyes. And, at best, the c... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1934988-10/city-pulls-covers-over-its-head.html opinion 31565771@rss.roanoke.com Fri, 17 May 2013 17:29:19 Bob Crawford Crawford is an artist and writer  living in Roanoke County. Contrary to the claims central to much of the argument of the pro-gun lobby, the right to bear arms, as provided by the Constitution’s Second Amendment, is not absolute in the sens... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1934696-10/disconnect-on-gun-rights.html opinion 31564816@rss.roanoke.com Fri, 17 May 2013 17:29:19 It was so much fun to read the respectful yet hilarious tribute to Mom in The Roanoke Times for Mother’s Day (“They became their mom when . . . ,” May 11); I could relate to every word. I chuckled as I was taken down memory lane and could hear Mom callin... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1937530-10/on-becoming-mom.html opinion 31574295@rss.roanoke.com Fri, 17 May 2013 17:29:19 I would like to register my dismay at your editorial cartoon for Saturday, May 11. Your artist uses the image of a speeding hipster cyclist blithely bumping what appears to be a pedestrian in order to make the point about the inequity of city council pay ... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1934526-10/the-unkindest-bump-of-all.html opinion 31564301@rss.roanoke.com Fri, 17 May 2013 17:29:19 ... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1703978-10/headline-goes-right-here.html opinion 30850231@rss.roanoke.com Thu, 16 May 2013 17:29:18 ... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1777489-10/headline-goes-right-here.html opinion 31071436@rss.roanoke.com Thu, 16 May 2013 17:29:18 These are cartoons from 2013. Links to Chris' archives are coming soon.... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1640011-10/2013-editorial-cartoons-from-the-roanoke-times-by.html opinion 30660546@rss.roanoke.com Thu, 16 May 2013 17:29:18 To hear environmental leaders tell it, the way forward on energy policy is clear. The United States should be more aggressive in moving to phase out fossil fuels and nuclear power in electricity generation and use renewable sources instead. To do this, en... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1934259-10/coal-is-more-than-yesterdays-fuel.html opinion 31563552@rss.roanoke.com Thu, 16 May 2013 17:29:18 On May 3, I took a day off from work to travel to Richmond for Dominion Resources Inc.’s annual shareholders meeting. Dominion Resources owns Dominion Virginia Power, the commonwealth’s largest utility. I went to speak in favor of a shareholder resolution... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1917659-10/no-defense-for-mountaintop-removal.html opinion 31508673@rss.roanoke.com Thu, 16 May 2013 17:29:18 Breaking news: Conservative organizations suddenly have found common cause with one of their favorite objects of contempt — the benighted Mainstream Media. Or as the tea party queen and former Alaska governor likes to put it, the “lamestream media.” In a ... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1934251-10/not-such-strange-bedfellows.html opinion 31563532@rss.roanoke.com Thu, 16 May 2013 17:29:18 Norwich, one of Roanoke’s oldest industrial neighborhoods, might have remained forgotten to all but the families who have lived there for generations had not the Roanoke River Greenway bridged a connection. Until the greenway jumped Memorial Avenue last M... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1928834-10/the-norwich-connection.html opinion 31545209@rss.roanoke.com Thu, 16 May 2013 17:29:18 Charles Steger earned three degrees from Virginia Tech and devoted most of his professional life to his alma mater, working tirelessly to push it into the top tier of the nation’s elite universities. When he steps down in the next year as Tech’s 15th pres... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1935075-10/stegers-legacy.html opinion 31566048@rss.roanoke.com Thu, 16 May 2013 17:29:18 What is art’s real bottom-line value? I just got around to reading the article about art in the May 5 Roanoke Times (“The art of economic development”). That $11 million number looks good in print, but does that represent gross receipts of venues, and do... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1934787-10/what-is-arts-real-bottom-line-value.html opinion 31565142@rss.roanoke.com Thu, 16 May 2013 17:29:18 The clothing factory collapse in Bangladesh killing hundreds — another in a string of such tragedies in the past year — is a reminder of the high cost of our cheap clothes. Not only are the mostly female workers in these factories paid pitiful wages (in ... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1897730-10/consumers-can-take-action.html opinion 31443469@rss.roanoke.com Thu, 16 May 2013 17:29:18 Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s office is proving that there’s nothing free about Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, certainly not when it comes to requests about communications with Star Scientific and its embattled but generous CEO, Jonnie William... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1931992-10/open-records-for-a-price.html opinion 31555442@rss.roanoke.com Wed, 15 May 2013 17:29:17 Climate warnings are needlessly alarming Re: Sarah Bucci’s and John Edwards’ commentary “Act on global warming to prevent extreme weather” (May 5): Once again, climate activists are reminding us of recent weather events, which we cannot link to global wa... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1931733-10/climate-warnings-are-needlessly-alarming.html opinion 31554589@rss.roanoke.com Wed, 15 May 2013 17:29:17 I was highly disappointed in the one-sided May 3 editorial on closing the virtual school in Carroll County (“A raw deal on virtual schools”). The real raw deal here is the more than 400 children (including my son) who just found out they have no school to... http://www.roanoke.com//opinion/1928827-10/virtual-schools-students-got-the-raw-deal.html opinion 31545195@rss.roanoke.com Wed, 15 May 2013 17:29:17