Schoolyard taunts: I know you are, but what am I? Oh yeah? Make me! Most of us grew up hearing these, either directed at us or spoken by us. Sometimes we enlisted a bigger friend or older sibling to bail us out: Touch me and my big brother will cream your corn. We (mostly) grow out of these disputes. The ...
Virginia’s courts, at all levels, have packed calendars. They encourage disputing parties to avail themselves of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), which can mean mediation for all types of legal snags, including child support and child custody. Right at Virginia’s mediation website it says, and we quote, “In Virginia the mediation process is voluntary and confidential.” So, does that mean ...
Divorce in Virginia can take many months, or even more than a year. First comes separation, which itself must be six months (no kids) or a year (with kids), and then the divorce itself. During that time, are you supposed to essentially freeze all your activities? Stop shopping, pay cash for everything, live with an old clunker — what are ...
Sixteen words. Just sixteen words amended to the U.S. Constitution set out the conditions for religious freedom in America. These are the beginning words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”1 You are free to choose a religion or not, as you wish, without government interference. Since ...
Virginia is one of the wealthiest states in America, according to U.S. News & World Report1. With median annual income of $66,262, the state enjoys a prime perch among the Top 10, at #8. Median income is far more important a measure than average income, since it represents the exact middle of earners; half earn less, half earn more. Many ...
“Man was sort of evoluted. From the Old World Monkeys.” So says Howard Blair, child on the witness stand, in the play Inherit the Wind. The play gave way to a fine movie, but it is still produced as a play and audiences still get to see a little child on a witness stand. The sight is unsettling; children are ...
Unmarried fathers, says the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)1, accounted for 36 percent of first births for fathers in the 2000s. Various Virginia institutions, traditionalists and social circles can frown and fret all they want, but practical agencies that deal with the day-to-day realities of life in 21st century Virginia accept unmarried fathers as inhabiting roughly one-third of the landscape. ...
We live in an era of false equivalence. One person’s uninformed opinion is supposed to be as respected and valid as another person’s researched and studied opinion. In a just argument, you will represent all sides of an issue fairly, accept your burden of proof, and reason correctly. This means looking at both sides of a situation, such as invalidating ...
Harry Eastlack, through nothing he did, through no fault of his own, was born with a body he would not retain throughout his life. Eastlack donated his skeletons — yes, skeletons, plural — to Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum1, where it is on permanent display. His normal skeleton betrayed him, transforming his connective tissue into bone as well; a skeleton over a ...