The Inmates Take Over Virginia's Asylum

Virginia's voters are about to get what they voted for, good and hard. Here's a sample of Democratic bills that could become law. When they tell you who they are, believe them. And they're nuts.

Social media is agog with posts about the usual flurry of bill introductions that accompany a new legislative session, in this case, the Commonwealth of Virginia. A new legislative session began this week following November’s odd-year elections.

The home state of Patrick Henry, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and four of our nation’s first five US presidents opened it’s new Democratic trifecta - nearly a 2:1 majority in the House of Delegates, with Democrats flipping 14 previous GOP seats - and it’s more tenuous 21-19 Senate majority last week, following the inauguration of our former CIA case officer Governor; our first-ever Muslim Lt. Governor; and our reckless driving Attorney General who muses about killing his GOP opponents.

We’re off to a great start.

It was quite a week, and several X accounts and GOP and conservative-leaning advocacy groups have been having a field day. It’s been very easy, as social media is wont to do, to catastrophize new bill introductions. Take Congress (please, as the late comedian Henny Youngman might say) for example. During 2025, the first year of the biennial 119th Congress, at least up until November 14th, 10,875 bills were introduced. How many might become law? Only 228 were signed into law last year. In a “typical” Congress, about seven percent of bills become law, but I seriously doubt this Congress will come close to that by the end of this election year. Perhaps we should be grateful.

As those who’ve toured the Old Senate Chamber with me in our US Capitol may remember, I love to focus on an odd piece of furniture known as “the hopper.” You can see it in this photograph off to the right between two columns, with it’s odd array of shelves that get shallower they ascend.

That’s because as a bill was “put in the hopper,” it would first start on the lowest and roomiest shelf, then “hop up” as it cleared hurdles, including passage in committee; passage by the full chamber; passage by the “other chamber;” and then passage by a joint House-Senate conference to iron our differences. Bills on the top shelf were destined for the short horse-and-buggy ride down Pennsylvania Avenue for the White House for signature or veto by the President. The hopper hasn’t been used in decades, if not a century or more, but the legislative process largely remains the same. Even the Senate filibusters, although those have evolved, too.

State legislatures are different, including Virginia’s. In their 2024 session, some 3,000 bills were introduced, and then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) signed 777 of them into law; he vetoed another 153. So in Virginia, unlike Congress, almost a third of bills introduced make their way to the Governor’s desk. That’s not uncommon among the states, especially when one party runs the show (Democrats controlled the legislature during the GOP governor’s last two years).

So, bill introductions, at least in Virginia, with good odds of reaching the Governor’s desk, have to be taken seriously. Especially when the Governor is of the same persuasion as her legislative sycophants.

The future of downtown Purcellville, Virginia? If Democrats have their way, yes. Photo created by Google Gemini.

That’s why the remarkable flurry of bills introduced this week in Richmond is noteworthy. And they’re not finished introducing bills yet - a big one yet to come would create a network of Cannabis retail outlets is being readied as I type. And if you’re not former convict, you’ll have to wait in line for a license (“equity,” they say). Former Governor Youngkin vetoed previous Cannabis bills, but Gov. Spanberger has promised to sign them. Possession and home cultivation was made legal the last time Democrats ran things, as is medicinal use. Spanberger has appointed outgoing St. Sen. Adam Ebbin, a far-left legislator from deep-blue Alexandria and the legislature’s leading proponent of legal weed as a “senior advisor” to the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority. Yay.

Localities will have no “local option” to ban the new stores (unlike Colorado, where two-thirds of the counties reject them). Local governments, however, can tax them (they will need to, if only to help pay for a spike in traffic accidents and deaths, youth overdoses, hospitalizations, and other challenges that have affected Colorado, the first state to legalize recreational weed). Already, the legislature has enacted four Constitutional amendments from codifying same-sex marriage and enshrining abortion up to and through birth, if former Gov. and pediatric neurosurgeon Ralph Northam’s (D) interpretation of the state’s already very liberal abortion law is correct.

And adding insult to injury, they’ve enacted a new congressional map to turn the state’s 6-5 current Democratic majority in to a 10-1 power grab, overturning a 2020 referendum approved 2:1 by voters to have lines drawn by a bipartisan commission.

Democrats to Virginia: F* you, voters. We’re in charge now. Bend the knee.

In November 2020, Virginians voted by a two-to-one margin to amend the state constitution to establish a commission responsible for redistricting. For the vote to take place, state legislators had to agree to surrender one of their most guarded perks: the majority party’s ability each decade to craft legislative boundaries designed to extend its hold on power.

Republicans — who saw their majority in the House of Delegates slipping away — were unanimously in support of the decisive March 2020 vote. But most House Democrats — who had supported redistricting reform for a generation — had second thoughts. After all, power seemed within their grasp. In the end, nine House Democrats agreed to put the question to the voters.

Virginia Public Access Project

Under state law, the governor doesn’t need to sign the bill - it will go straight to voters for their approval sometime later this year. We’ll see how they respond, but I’m not optimistic of defeating it, nor a court challenge regarding whether the legislature legally adopted it last year during our 45-day election (then-Attorney General Jason Miyares said it didn’t count, since initial passage had to occur prior to an election. In Virginia, proposed constitutional amendments have to be passed by two legislatures with an intervening election, followed by a public referendum). The imbecilic and reckless (literally and figuratively) new Attorney General, Jay Jones, used Miyares’ stationary to quickly reverse his predecessor’s determination.

Everybody likes to blame Texas for starting the gerrymander fire, but that’s not fair. The Biden Justice Department demanded Texas redraw their maps. And we’re all the worse for these balkanized, highly partisan congressional seats, from Texas and California to, soon, Virginia and Maryland. Only “red” Indiana has rejected these partisan power grabs thus far, but “blue” states never do. We’re getting to the tragic point that the only congressional contests that will matter will be partisan primaries. Get ready for future congresses of Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Ilhan Omars.

Remember, Spanberger campaigned last year, and spoke just this week to the legislature affirming her “affordability” agenda. Let’s see how her legislative allies are responding, shall we?

Let’s start with HB978, which would dramatically expand the state’s sales and use tax to include items that I bet you use: “charges for recreation, fitness, or sports facilities; non-medical personal services or counseling; dry cleaning and laundry services; companion animal care; residential home repair or maintenance, landscaping, or cleaning services when paid for directly by a resident or homeowner; vehicle and engine repair; repairs or alterations to tangible personal property; storage of tangible personal property; delivery or shipping services; travel, event, and aesthetic planning services; and digital services. Digital services are defined in the bill as the following: software application services, computer-related services, website hosting and design, data storage, and digital subscription services.”

Very affordable! Who knew that meant, “you can afford these new taxes!”

Or, how about this, HB557 that would expand the state’s hated personal property tax - known as the “car tax” to include electric landscaping equipment. Why just electric? Because another bill would ban gas-powered leaf blowers and the like.

Who are the nut jobs introducing these bills? HR978, the tax increase bill, and HB244 in the graphic below, go-easy-on-robbers legislation, are authored by Vivian Watts, 85, the longest serving woman in the legislature. She’s won “legislator of the year” accolades. She represents a suburban district in deep blue, federal-employee-rich Fairfax County in Northern Virginia. Freshman Delegate Atoosa Reacher is the first woman of Iranian descent and a Muslim who represents a deep-blue eastern Loudoun County district with a high population of foreign-born residents. She wants to tax my electric leaf and snow blowers. She loves the hated “car tax” so much she wants to expand it.

That’s not all. Let’s cut to the chase: Fox News’s “Fair and Balanced” Bret Baier summarized this chart in one of his news broadcasts this week, some of these exaggerate, but only a little:

Then there’s what I call the “Make Virginia Minnesota” Act that would set the stage for Somali-like corruption and graft in my Commonwealth.

Or how about this doozy, which US Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, has announced via X that she will challenge in court if enacted.

The evidence continues to accumulate: the Democratic Party is a criminal enterprise.

And many of us, including US Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), wonder why a Democratic legislator would want a law to prohibit the hand counting of machine-readable ballot? I can think only one reason, as this book superbly outlines and details.

Pray for us. The inmates are in charge of the asylum. But be forewarned, my fellow Americans. This is what Democrats want to do in your state, and to our nation. I wonder what our framers, especially those from Virginia, would think of this.

Where is Patrick Henry when we need him?