Souza’s shade: Documentary recalls a world not so long ago

Four years ago, former White House chief photographer Pete Souza wouldn’t have imagined he’d be the subject of a documentary and an Instagram superstar. “We hadn’t elected Donald Trump four years ago,” reminds Souza in a phone interview. Three years and 10 months ago, that had changed. Souza began posting photos of former President Barack […]

ARTS Pick: Lawrence Jackson

Magnetic moments: “Eight years in the White House went by so fast,” says Barack Obama in the forward to Yes We Did, the new book by former official White House photographer Lawrence Jackson. (We feel you, Mr. President.) Jackson will tell stories about his work behind the scenes, snapping photos of Obama’s meetings with world […]

Germ of an idea: How to disinfect dirty politics

False equivalence makes me sick. Likely it does the same to you, too, even if you don’t recognize the symptoms. It’s rhetorical MRSA, an indestructible super-bug that infects the mind and body politic. And as has been widely reported, a new strain of contagion took hold on August 15 when the 2016 Electoral College Winner […]

Legal matters: How court rulings will affect the 2016 elections

Although it’s not something most voters tend to notice, Virginia’s upcoming congressional and presidential elections have already, to a surprising large degree, been shaped and remolded by a number of crucial court rulings (with one of the biggest still to come). The first of these legal battles began way back in 2010, when the General […]

From the Oval Office: Obama responds to local’s letter

After a friend was one of the estimated 13,393 people shot and killed in America last year, Batesville resident Jay Varner wrote to eight political representatives about the increasing threat of gun violence. Last month, he received a handwritten response from the president of the United States. The August 26 on-air slayings of WDBJ7 reporter […]