Opinion | The Assad supporter who is also a Virginia state senator - The Washington Post

American politics produces its share of useful dupes, but Dick Black, a Virginia state senator, may not be quite as useful as the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad supposes.

Black, once known mainly as a know-nothing Republican who embarrassed fellow GOP conservatives with his antics in Richmond, has lately undertaken a campaign on behalf of Assad. He’s lauded the blood-stained tyrant as a visionary, peace-loving leader and, in a trip to Damascus this week, deemed it “an honor” to have shaken hands with him.

“I will be Syria’s voice,” proclaimed Black, whose actual constituents are mostly in Loudoun County, about 40 miles west of Washington.

While Black was busy hobnobbing with Baathist functionaries and giving aid and comfort to a murderous despot, Syrian media were referring to him interchangeably as a “U.S. Senator” and a “Virginia Senator,” suggesting the distinction may have been lost in translation along Black’s road to Damascus.

There’s every indication that Black is held in higher regard in Syria’s capital than he is in Virginia’s, where he is widely regarded as an embarrassment, even in Republican circles. A brief survey of his greatest hits would include handing out little pink plastic fetuses to fellow lawmakers before an abortion vote; opposing the installation of a statue of Abraham Lincoln at a Virginia factory; trying to ban public schools from teaching Toni Morrison’s slavery novel, “Beloved,” which, though he hasn’t read it, Black called “moral sewage” and “profoundly filthy”; and attacking homosexuals as unfit to raise children.

Employing similarly discerning judgment and measured rhetoric, Black in 2014 took up the cause of Syria, which the U.S. government has designated as a state sponsor of terrorism since 1979. In a letter to Assad, he praised the “extraordinary gallantry” of Syria’s armed forces–the same armed forces whose daily use of barrel bombs, dropped unguided from helicopters, have, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/09/23/stem-flow-syrian-refugees-stop-barrel-bombs">according to Human Rights Watch</a>, “pulverized neighborhoods, annihilated markets, schools, hospitals and countless residents, and left broad swathes of death and destruction.”

The senator’s sympathy for Assad springs from the potentate’s supposed protection of minorities inside Syria, particularly Christians and Jews who have been targeted by some groups, including the Islamic State, seeking to topple the regime. He appears blind to Assad’s starring role in triggering the civil war, now in its sixth year, which began with a brutal crackdown by his security forces against protesters and has left at least a quarter million Syrians dead and forced about half Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million from their homes. (As for the beleaguered Syrian people, Black professes his love for them — but opposes resettling refugees in the United States.),

Black’s self-assigned role as “Syria’s voice” will attract wan demand in Richmond, where the state legislature, in session for two or three months a year, is not much in the habit of debating foreign policy. The senator may encounter equally tough sledding in selling the wider American public on Assad, whose Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon — having also fought on his behalf regime inside Syria — continue to pose a long-term strategic threat to Israel.

Still, Black remains useful as comic relief in troubled times, a virtue not lost on Richard Saslaw, the state Senate’s Democratic minority leader. “Most people would not be concerned abo0ut Dick Black going to Syria,” Saslaw told The Post. “The biggest concern would probably be Dick Black coming back from Syria.”

Lee Hockstader has been a member of The Post’s editorial board since 2004. He writes on a variety of subjects, including immigration, politics, voting rights, foreign affairs, and state and local issues in Virginia, Maryland and elsewhere.

Lee Hockstader

The Washington Post

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Gov. O’Malley’s irresponsible message to Central American minors - The Washington Post

On The Post’s editorial page this morning,<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gov-omalley-is-all-talk-no-action-on-immigrant-children/2014/07/27/b6bb4b42-1447-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9_story.html"> we take Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) to task</a> for the disconnect between his impassioned advocacy for the thousands of undocumented, unaccompanied minors who have streamed into this country and his opposition to the federal government’s proposal that some of them be temporarily housed at a shelter in Carroll County, a conservative, heavily white part of Maryland.

The governor’s aides are livid at the suggestion – first made by the White House – that his stance amounts to blatant hypocrisy. But it’s hard to see it as a model of political courage either. Imagine Little Rock, 1957 . . . President Dwight Eisenhower declares Central High School off-limits to nine black students because he fears the locals may not be very welcoming. How would that have been different from O’Malley’s position on Carroll County?

The governor apparently got himself in hot water with the White House by staking out a position to the left of the president when <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/immigration-leads-omalley-and-obama-spat">he criticized the administration</a> for wanting to accelerate deportations for the thousands of underage migrants whose cases now take months or years to adjudicate in U.S. immigration courts.

It’s possible to see O’Malley’s ringing statements as an expression of genuine compassion for beleaguered kids fleeing from violence and poverty in Central America. It’s possible to see his statements as part of an ongoing political strategy to position himself on the Democratic Party’s left flank, perhaps in an attempt to improve his vice presidential prospects in the eyes of Hillary Clinton, who may need some help with the party’s liberal base.

It’s also possible to see his statements as irresponsible hyperbole — and even more hypocrisy.

O’Malley suggests it would be morally wrong to send the young immigrants “back to a certain death” in Central America. At the same time, his aides say quietly, of course, that the governor does not think all 57,000 of the youths who have entered the country illegally since last fall can stake a legitimate claims to asylum. Naturally, he would not oppose deportation for immigrants once they are accorded due process.

So on the one hand, O’Malley thinks they face “certain death” in Central America. On the other hand, he’s okay with deportation if a judge orders it.

Leaving aside the hypocrisy for a moment, the real problem is with the substance. If the governor were speaking for the U.S. government — which he’s obviously not — his public statements would amount to an open invitation to Central American kids to make the trek north and cross the Rio Grande without much fear that they would be sent home.

That’s not in the U.S. interest and it’s certainly not in the kids’ own interest. It’s also irresponsible in the extreme. The trip north is extremely dangerous. Girls who make it are routinely advised to take contraception in the event they are raped. Many of the coyotes who guide the children through Mexico also prey on them. To invite them to the United States en masse by suggesting it would be immoral for America to send them home to a “certain death” is also to induce them to risk their lives. By following the governor’s prescription, the United States would risk making a bad humanitarian crisis good deal worse.

Va. elections could redefine McDonnell’s image - The Washington Post

Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell is working hard to help Republicans win control of the state Senate in the Nov. 8 elections, which would give the GOP total sway in Richmond for the first time in a decade. Such a sweep might enhance his growing national reputation — and his vice presidential prospects in 2012.

But it also could prove a mixed blessing, forcing McDonnell to answer a question: What kind of Republican is he?

So far, Virginians love McDonnell, and the sentiment is spreading beyond state lines. A policy wonk with a pragmatic record, conservative street cred, civil manners and good looks, McDonnell has overcome early stumbles — such as failing to mention slavery in a proclamation for Confederate History Month — and enjoys enviable approval ratings. In the buzz about GOP vice presidential possibilities, McDonnell is all the rage.

He was known in his years as a state lawmaker as a social conservative. Few who served with McDonnell in the House of Delegates were surprised at the contents of his 20-year-old <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/29/AR2009082902434.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com">law school thesis</a>, which surfaced during the 2009 gubernatorial campaign: It attacked liberals, social programs, homosexuality, birth control, out-of-wedlock sex and the decline of the traditional family.

But since becoming governor, McDonnell has let fire-breathing House Republicans lead the charge against abortion, contraception, illegal immigrants and laws restricting guns. When much of that legislation died in the Democrat-controlled Senate, McDonnell was mum. And while he did sign into law in March a rewrite of state regulations that could <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/virginia-politics/post/mcdonnell-signs-bill-regulating-abortion-clinics-as-hospitals/2011/03/28/AFM9iQqB_blog.html" title="www.washingtonpost.com">force many of Virginia's 21 abortion clinics to close</a>, he did so with a minimum of fanfare.

Meanwhile, he has plugged away at the mechanics of state government — balancing the budget, borrowing money to build roads, closing some state commissions. That’s just what Virginians have come to expect from their governors in what is regularly listed among the best-managed and business-friendliest states. Hence McDonnell’s nearly 3-to-1 approval ratings.

But what if the state Senate is captured next month by a field of Republican candidates far more conservative than the retiring generation?

A stack of right-wing legislation would land on the governor’s desk: bills conferring rights on fetuses, repealing the state law limiting handgun purchases to one a month, forcing state colleges and universities to allow handguns on campus, requiring welfare recipients to undergo screening for illegal drugs, compelling schools to collect information on students’ immigration status, and allowing employers to fire workers for not speaking English. The budget, too, might be subject to radical revision, with funds raided from education, public safety and health programs.

That’s not the agenda most Republicans are talking about in this fall’s campaign. Most stick to national GOP orthodoxy — Lower taxes! Shrink government! Scrap regulations! — with scant mention of hot-button issues, or even Virginia itself.

But it’s an agenda most of them support — and it could redefine not only Virginia politics but also McDonnell’s governorship and his image as a moderate conservative.

That might be perfect positioning for a possible vice president — if, say, Mitt Romney decides he needs a running mate with right-wing appeal. It’s unlikely to sit as well with millions of middle-of-the-road Virginians.

The writer is a member of the editorial page staff. His e-mail address is <a class="show" href="mailto:hockstaderl@washpost.com">hockstaderl@washpost.com</a>.

The Washington Post Opinions section features opinion articles, newspaper editorials and letters to the editor on the issues of the day. Offerings include the Post Partisan blog by Washington Post opinion writers, as well as political cartoons and political cartoon animations by editorial cartoonists Tom Toles and Ann Telnaes.

Incumbents, not voters, shaping Virginia’s congressional districts - The Washington Post

<html><body>Virginia, as other states, is engaged in a decennial redistricting of its political maps. It's an exercise intended tocorrect for shifts in population, which in the commonwealth's case have been considerable. Northern Virginia's population has boomed, especially in the outer suburban localities of Prince William and Loudoun counties, while other, more rural parts of the state have stagnated or lost population. Redistricting in Virginia, as elsewhere, has traditionally been a highly partisan undertaking, meaning the party or parties in power drew maps to their liking and to promote their candidates. Gov. Robert McDonnell seemed to hold out the promise of a fairer, more voter-centric process when, during his electoral campaign, he pledged to create a bipartisan redistricting commission. Although the commission he created last year has made its recommendations, it has no power to implement them.It remains to be seen how much weight the governor will accord them. State lawmakers have more or less ignored the commission's proposals for Virginia House and Senate districts. The proposed U.S. congressional redistricting maps pictured here are both based on new census data and intended to take effect in the 2012 elections. Beyond that, they are a study in contrasts. The top one -- endorsed by the state redistricting commission and based on the work of students at William and Mary Law School -- represents a scheme that tries to hew to existing jurisdictional boundaries to create relatively compact districts that would help voters and citizens alike. It ignores partisan considerations, such as the dwellings of current members of Congress,and its boundaries are meant to help voters choose and press their causes with their representatives to Congress. The bottom one -- passed by the Virginia House of Delegates after consultations with congressional incumbents -- is designed wholly for the benefit of Virginia's three Democratic and eight Republican sitting members of Congress. Its tortuous shapes and unsightly squiggles amount to a highly partisan job-protection program for current office holders, who would in effectselect their voters, excluding potentially hostile ones while keeping the friendlies. Take District 11, a highly competitive purple battleground now represented by Rep. Gerry Connolly, a second-term Democrat. In the William and Mary map, District 11, reconfigured to fit within Fairfax County, remains a swing district, narrowly split between Democratic and Republican voters. In it, Connolly, who eked out a narrow victory last fall, would continue to sweatfrom election to election. By contrast, Connolly would breathe easy with the House-approved map, which contorts his districtboundaries to pack in disparate Democratic-leaning neighborhoods in Herndon, Woodbridge, Centreville, Annandale and FallsChurch while excluding GOP-dominated Lorton. Virginia's legislature is expected to adopt a congressional map in the coming weeks and send it to McDonnell for his consideration. — <author>Lee Hockstader</author>

</body></html>

<body>Virginia, as other states, is engaged in a decennial redistricting of its political maps. It's an exercise intended tocorrect for shifts in population, which in the commonwealth's case have been considerable. Northern Virginia's population has boomed, especially in the outer suburban localities of Prince William and Loudoun counties, while other, more rural parts of the state have stagnated or lost population. Redistricting in Virginia, as elsewhere, has traditionally been a highly partisan undertaking, meaning the party or parties in power drew maps to their liking and to promote their candidates. Gov. Robert McDonnell seemed to hold out the promise of a fairer, more voter-centric process when, during his electoral campaign, he pledged to create a bipartisan redistricting commission. Although the commission he created last year has made its recommendations, it has no power to implement them.It remains to be seen how much weight the governor will accord them. State lawmakers have more or less ignored the commission's proposals for Virginia House and Senate districts. The proposed U.S. congressional redistricting maps pictured here are both based on new census data and intended to take effect in the 2012 elections. Beyond that, they are a study in contrasts. The top one -- endorsed by the state redistricting commission and based on the work of students at William and Mary Law School -- represents a scheme that tries to hew to existing jurisdictional boundaries to create relatively compact districts that would help voters and citizens alike. It ignores partisan considerations, such as the dwellings of current members of Congress,and its boundaries are meant to help voters choose and press their causes with their representatives to Congress. The bottom one -- passed by the Virginia House of Delegates after consultations with congressional incumbents -- is designed wholly for the benefit of Virginia's three Democratic and eight Republican sitting members of Congress. Its tortuous shapes and unsightly squiggles amount to a highly partisan job-protection program for current office holders, who would in effectselect their voters, excluding potentially hostile ones while keeping the friendlies. Take District 11, a highly competitive purple battleground now represented by Rep. Gerry Connolly, a second-term Democrat. In the William and Mary map, District 11, reconfigured to fit within Fairfax County, remains a swing district, narrowly split between Democratic and Republican voters. In it, Connolly, who eked out a narrow victory last fall, would continue to sweatfrom election to election. By contrast, Connolly would breathe easy with the House-approved map, which contorts his districtboundaries to pack in disparate Democratic-leaning neighborhoods in Herndon, Woodbridge, Centreville, Annandale and FallsChurch while excluding GOP-dominated Lorton. Virginia's legislature is expected to adopt a congressional map in the coming weeks and send it to McDonnell for his consideration. — <author>Lee Hockstader</author>

</body>

Virginia, as other states, is engaged in a decennial redistricting of its political maps. It's an exercise intended tocorrect for shifts in population, which in the commonwealth's case have been considerable. Northern Virginia's  population has boomed, especially in the outer suburban localities of Prince William and Loudoun counties, while other, more  rural parts of the state have stagnated or lost population.

Redistricting  in Virginia, as elsewhere, has traditionally been a highly partisan undertaking, meaning the party or parties in power drew maps to their liking and to promote their candidates. Gov. Robert McDonnell seemed to hold out the promise of a fairer, more voter-centric process when, during his electoral campaign, he  pledged to create a bipartisan redistricting commission. Although the commission he created last year has made its recommendations, it has no power to implement  them.It remains to be seen how much weight the governor will accord them. State  lawmakers have more or less ignored the commission's proposals for Virginia House and Senate districts.

The proposed U.S. congressional redistricting maps pictured here are both based on new census data and intended to take effect in the 2012 elections. Beyond that, they are a study in contrasts.

The top one -- endorsed by  the state redistricting commission and based on the work of students at William and Mary Law School -- represents a scheme that  tries to hew to existing jurisdictional boundaries to create relatively compact districts that would help voters and citizens alike. It ignores partisan considerations, such as the dwellings of current members of Congress,and its boundaries are meant to help voters choose and press their causes with their representatives to Congress.

The bottom one -- passed by the Virginia House of Delegates after consultations with congressional incumbents -- is  designed wholly for the benefit of Virginia's three Democratic and eight Republican sitting members of Congress. Its tortuous shapes and unsightly squiggles amount to a highly partisan job-protection program for current office holders, who would in  effectselect their voters, excluding potentially hostile ones while keeping the  friendlies.

Take District 11, a highly competitive purple battleground now represented by Rep. Gerry Connolly, a  second-term Democrat. In the William and Mary map, District 11, reconfigured to fit within Fairfax County, remains a swing  district, narrowly split between Democratic and Republican voters. In it, Connolly, who eked out a narrow victory last fall, would continue to sweatfrom election to election. By contrast, Connolly would breathe easy with the House-approved map, which contorts his districtboundaries to pack in disparate  Democratic-leaning neighborhoods in Herndon, Woodbridge, Centreville, Annandale  and FallsChurch while excluding GOP-dominated Lorton.

Virginia's legislature is expected to adopt a congressional map in the coming weeks and send it to McDonnell for his consideration.

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The ‘Utah Way’ toward immigration reform - The Washington Post

Utah, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by better than three to one in the state legislature, has passed the nation’s most liberal — and most reality-based — policy on illegal immigration. And the Republican governor is expected to sign it.

The legislation includes both a watered-down enforcement provision that police say won’t make much difference and a guest-worker program that would make all the difference in the world — if it survives constitutional challenge — by granting legal status to undocumented workers and allowing them to live normal lives. In a nutshell, it’s a one-state version of the overarching immigration reform package that Congress has repeatedly tried, and failed, to enact.

Conservative Republicans here — and Republicans don’t get much more conservative than the statehouse variety in Salt Lake — say their bill is a gauntlet thrown down to the feds for their inability to deal with illegal immigration and the nation’s demand for unskilled labor.

That’s one way of looking at it. But the “Utah Way,” as some are calling it, is also a fraternal attack on Republicans, in Washington and elsewhere, whose only strategy is to demonize, criminalize and deport 11 million illegal immigrants.

Karl Rove, Jeb Bush and Newt Gingrich are among the Republican grandees who have distanced themselves from that approach and warned of the peril it poses for the party. In the wake of Arizona’s legislation last year, a wave of copycat bills would go a long way toward permanently ridding the GOP of Hispanics, the nation’s largest and fastest-growing minority.

But it’s in Utah that the Republican deportation caucus has been treated to real abuse. What’s interesting is that it’s coming from unimpeachable conservatives. If you want to see the most corrosive long-term wedge issue facing the GOP, come to Salt Lake City.

Utah’s guest-worker bill doesn’t grant citizenship, of course, but in every other way it’s exactly what national Republicans have derided as “amnesty.” It would grant work permits to undocumented immigrants, and their immediate families, who pay a fine, clear a criminal background check and study English.

The bill’s chief sponsor, state Rep. Bill Wright, is a plain-spoken dairy farmer who describes his politics as “extremely” conservative, likes Sarah Palin and believes he may have once voted for a Democrat — possibly 40 years ago for sheriff. He admires the work ethic of the Hispanic farmhands he’s employed over the years and doesn’t care much for anything the government does, least of all the idea that it might deport millions of immigrant workers and their families.

“That’s not gonna happen,” Wright told me. “They’ve got cars, they’ve got money borrowed, they own property, they are intertwined. Just be real and face facts the way they are.”

A milestone in setting the stage for Wright’s legislation was the “Utah Compact,” a pithy declaration of reform principles drafted last fall by business leaders and conservative elites, who feared Utah would follow in Arizona’s footsteps and risk losing tens of millions of dollars in tourism and convention business, as Arizona did. The compact helped swing public opinion in Utah away from the illegal-immigrant bashers who admired Arizona’s law.

"They've had their 15 minutes in the media and now the adults are going to start talking about how to handle matters," said Paul Mero, executive director of Utah's most prominent conservative think tank, the <a href="http://www.sutherlandinstitute.org">Sutherland Institute</a>, who helped draft the compact. "We've been able to break through that political barrier put up by the wing nuts who see every brown person as a criminal."

Advocates of the compact included the police, some key elected officials and, critically, the Mormon church, whose members include perhaps 90 percent of Utah’s state lawmakers. They understood that the fast-growing Hispanic community, which counts for 13 percent of Utah’s population and may include more than 100,000 undocumented workers, is vital to the state’s tourism, agriculture and construction industries.

The advocates’ genius was to reframe the cause of immigration reform, including the guest-worker program, as fundamentally a conservative project. In the face of sound bites from reform opponents such as “What part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?” Utah conservatives shot back with: What part of destroying the economy don’t you understand? And by the way, what part of breaking up families don’t you understand?

The question is whether Utah will inspire similar movements in other states or whether it will remain the exception. On that, the evidence is mixed.

Discouragingly, neither Utah’s two U.S. senators nor its three representatives have backed the Utah Compact or the just-passed state legislation. Most mainstream Republicans remain stuck on enforcement, which is code for deportation. And the Mormon church, which did much to sway public opinion and to inoculate the guest-worker legislation from conservative attack, has limited influence outside the state.

Encouragingly, though, several conservative states have rejected Arizona-style bills this year. Reform advocates are at work on versions of the Utah Compact in Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Washington, Idaho and Oregon.

The lesson from the “Utah Way” is that pragmatists in search of solutions can initiate a reform movement outside the legislature and build a case and a coalition that appeal to conservatives. By offering ideas that may provide a fix in the absence of federal action, they may trump the tired slogans of opponents of reform.

Lee Hockstader

Washington, D.C.

The Assad supporter who is also a Virginia state senator

Gov. O’Malley’s irresponsible message to Central American minors

Va. elections could redefine McDonnell’s image

Incumbents, not voters, shaping Virginia’s congressional districts

The ‘Utah Way’ toward immigration reform