and I heard Cuccinelli pushing his abstinence only approach.  If I remember the colloquy Ed Houck of Spotsylvania responded that the research showed that the approach was not working.   Cuccinelli came back again and talked about how there Federal programs  . .   again, of the colloquys I heard there was nothing that had any impact, as the votes were basically on straight party lines.  One comment, about being sucker punched, did elicit a response, but that interchange involved two other senators, and perhaps illustrated how much the comity of the Senate has declined over the past few years.

Dick Saslaw clearly showed his priorities on Mark Obenshain's amendment to move General Fund dollars into the transportation trust fund.  

In fact Dick's floor comments were, "I would rather spend money on mental health, education, education construction than on roads."

Really Dick???  Your campaign website seems to disagree with that statement...  Hmm let's see what issues are on it... Fiscal Responsibility, Public Safety and Transportation...

Well by voting to block dedicating money to transportation Dick has already broken to violate fiscal responsibility and transportation.

But I guess that was his priority before he saw the new general assembly building in the budget... Disgusting...

NOVA Candidates all made TRANSPORTATION THEIR NUMBER ONE PRIORITY during the 2008 elections, i guess they didn't mean what they were saying...

So Lowell attacks Ken for rededicating money from Non Governmental Organizations (Mariners Museum, Wolf Trap Performing Arts Center, etc.) to a program which has reduced std's by over 40 percent and unwanted pregnancies by over 64 percent for participants.  

Spin the facts all you want...  Ken was trying to help inner city women from suffering the consequences of health problems, while the democrats were looking out for their elitist performing arts...

You tell me who cares about the citizens of Virginia...

What does any of this have to do with anything?  Also, it was the Virginia Senate Democratic Caucus that issued this press release, not me, although I certainly agree with it.

The entire premise of the release is on priorities.  Saslaw's priorities aren't what he ran on, which I think has plenty to do with the release.

I will take back the comment about you targeting Ken, because you are right, you were simply recirculating something.

However one point from all of this still remains clear, Republicans were offering amendments that took unnecessary spending and moved it to necessary spending(IE Obenshain's amendment, Democrat's response to it was killing the amendments, no matter what promises they made a few months ago.

Why do you keep bringing up Dick Saslaw?  If you want to write about him, why don't you post a separate diary?

Can you cite a source for the ridiculous assertion that abstinence only programs have "reduced std's (sic) by over 40 percent and unwanted pregnancies by over 64 percent for participants"?

Because if you took the time to read Congressman Waxman's 2004 report on abstinence only "curriculum," you would see that this type of so called education really only teaches our kids false and misleading information, including but not limited to lies like HIV can be spread via sweat and tears and that condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31 percent of the time in heterosexual intercourse. Here's the report: http://oversight.house.gov/Doc...

Governor Kaine cut funding for these programs because study after study has demonstrated that they are NOT EFFECTIVE.

This is not about $275,000 in the budget, or even about the wisdom of encouraging kids to put off becoming sexually active until they are mature enough to deal with it.  (For the record, all Family Life Education in Virginia is required to be abstinence BASED, meaning that abstinence must be stressed as the optimal choice, even in school systems that choose to also teach about contraception and disease prevention.)

This is really about Senator Cuccinelli's continued insistence on subjecting all of us to his personal religious beliefs--in this case, to the detriment of the health and well-being of Virginia's young people.    

and fiscal responsibility.  I seem to recall that he sponsored a bill to increase revenue in order to, um, pay for state programs.  Yes, that means a T-A-X increase.  In this case it was the gasoline tax.  

Republicans might not like such tax increases (actually, I don't l-i-k-e them either, but I recognize that if the state is to provide a service in a fiscally responsible manner it should have the funds available), but you can hardly make an argument that Saslaw is being fiscally irresponsible if he's making an effort to pay for what he wants.

Flip side, if Cooch wants to fund a special interest program designed specifically to placate the religious constituency, then how about he go out and raise some revenue (i.e. T-A-X) in order to pay for it instead of trying to steal from other funded programs????  Or is that too responsible?

Look, I'm no big fan of Saslaw, but at least he's trying to get some funding for transportation (i.e. being responsible) instead of just cutting taxes and wishing money would start falling from the sky.