In The News

President Barack Obama had two messages for the American public during his address from the Oval Office on Sunday night. While one left much to be desired, the other was precisely what the nation needed to hear. To start, the president outlined his administration's actions against the Islamic Statefighters who control vast swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria. He also proposed a few modest, but important, steps he'd like to see adopted to support that campaign. The president brok...Continue Reading

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine (both D-VA) today announced that 18 Virginia localities will receive more than $1.5 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The funding will help Virginia families who receive federal housing vouchers and public housing residents reduce their dependency on welfare assistance and rental subsidies, by providing tools and resources that will assist them in gaining job skills and increasing the...Continue Reading

British warplanes have attacked ISIS positions in Syria. The sorties came soon after the House of Commons authorized military intervention against the Islamist group. Westminster held a vigorous debate before the vote. Members of Parliament ultimately gave their consent to Prime Minister David Cameron’s request for authorization. The vote issued a stirring statement of national resolve. The United Kingdom stands as one. Hilary Benn, a Labour shadow secretary and son of the legendary leftis...Continue Reading

París está nuevamente en las noticias, pero afortunadamente esta vez no es a causa de un acto de terrorismo, sino por un propósito común de casi 200 naciones que asumen un gran reto. Ese desafío es el cambio climático. Una gran mayoría de científicos, las fuerzas armadas de Estados Unidos, Su Santidad el Papa Francisco, todos están de acuerdo en que el cambio climático es real y es causado principalmente por el uso de combusti...Continue Reading

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine (both D-VA) announced Tuesday that the Senate unanimously passed the bipartisan Treatment of Certain Payments in Eugenics Compensation Act, excluding payments from state eugenics compensation programs from consideration in determining federal benefits. Without this legislation, many eugenics victims who receive compensation payments from states, including Virginia and North Carolina, could see their federal benefits ...Continue Reading

Virginia’s congressional delegation is wrestling with how the federal government can help states combat the heroin epidemic spreading across the east coast. More than 25,000 people across the nation die from heroin or other opioids annually. In the commonwealth last year, more people died from opioids than from car wrecks. That’s partly why Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine is trying to make it easier for people to get the drug Naloxone, also called Narcan.  “It’...Continue Reading

AT SOME POINT, Congress must find the courage to listen to U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine’s warnings about the violence Islamic State is doing to America’s Constitution. Since August 2014, U.S. warplanes and drones have been chasing the fundamentalist thugs of the Islamic State group across Syria and Iraq. We’ve been lobbing bombs into their bedrooms, destroying their encampments, disrupting their movement and killing their leaders. And yet Islamic State — also known by the acronyms...Continue Reading

Back in his hometown of Richmond during a Thanksgiving recess of the U.S. Congress, U.S. Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, D-Va., spent Monday listening to the concerns of seniors and their support groups on issues ranging from Alzheimer’s disease to hunger. Kaine, a member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging and co-sponsor of the HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act, led a roundtable discussion on the disease focusing on how federal and local government can provide better support. Later, Kaine and l...Continue Reading

The Paris attacks have prompted widespread debate in the US over what to do about ISIS — including within the Democratic Party. To get a sense of that debate, I spoke to Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee. He's helped lead an effort to move the anti-ISIS war out of its legal gray zone with a new congressional authorization for military force, and in April co-signed a letter along with Sen. John McCain and two others calling o...Continue Reading

Back in his hometown of Richmond during a Thanksgiving recess of the U.S. Congress, U.S. Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, D-Va., spent Monday listening to the concerns of seniors and their support groups on issues ranging from Alzheimer’s disease to hunger. Kaine, a member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging and co-sponsor of the HOPE for Alzheimer’s Act, led a roundtable discussion on the disease focusing on how federal and local government can provide better support. Later, Kaine and l...Continue Reading

Virginia’s U.S. senators and at least one area congressman say Congress needs to vote on how to respond to the terrorist group carving out territory in Iraq and Syria and expanding its threat elsewhere. After updating Lynchburg businesspeople on his stances toward world and Washington affairs and talking business innovation Friday, Senator Mark Warner said Congress should vote to address the threat posed by the Islamic State group, also called ISIS, ISIL and Daesh. He has supported author...Continue Reading

In light of the deadly terrorist attacks last week in Paris, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine has reiterated his justified and bipartisan call for Congress to approve an Authorization for Use of Military Force against the Islamic State. Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, joined once again by Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, says Congress is mired in shamefully passive posturing by failing to put its official support behind the military action in which the United States has been engaged with ISIS for the past 15 ...Continue Reading

This is the new look of high school sex ed: A roomful of teens, 14-year-olds mostly, is told that a girl and boy meet at a school dance. The boy drives her home. They kiss. What happens next, over the girl's protests, leaves him confused and her crying, no longer a virgin. "Raise your hands if you think this was rape," health educator Justin Balido asks the Carlmont High School freshmen, drawing them into a debate that has preoccupied college administrators, lawmakers and the courts. Sex educati...Continue Reading

For more than 18 months, Sen. Tim Kaine has been like an Old Testament prophet, crying in the wilderness. His message? That Congress and President Obama must jointly negotiate an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (an AUMF, in common parlance) to lay out the terms and overall strategy for engagement against the forces of the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS. And he got the same reception one biblical prophet after another received from the powers-that-be: He was ignored. Well now, aft...Continue Reading

In the aftermath of the horrible Friday the 13thattacks in Paris, many members of Congress quickly took the opportunity to blast the Obama administration’s failure to appropriately counter ISIS in Iraq, Syria and beyond. It is fair game to challenge the administration’s strategy, but these critiques miss an important point: Congress has abdicated its fundamental duty to debate, vote on and shape the extent of the current war on ISIS. Our post-Paris discussion about what more the U.S....Continue Reading

After the Paris attacks, President Obama said the U.S. would intensify the current campaign of airstrikes and arming and training moderate forces, but would not change its overall strategy against ISIS. “We have the right strategy and we’re going to see it through,” Obama told reportersMonday during the closing conference of the G-20 summit. “What I do not do is take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow, in the abstract, ma...Continue Reading

The debate continues on War Powers and Congress. In light of the deadly attacks in Paris, U.S. Senators Tim Kaine and Jeff Flake are again renewing their call for Congress to debate and vote on an Authorization for Use of Military Force against the Islamic State.  The two have a bill on the floor now and Senator Kaine tells 88.9 WCVE it’s the only measure before the Senate that could GET Congress to authorize the war against ISIS/ISIL. Senator Kaine says he and Senator Flake...Continue Reading

Congress has come a long way from “freedom fries.” The Paris attacks have Washington expressing a new solidarity with France — a nation not too long ago derided by conservatives as a “so-called ally.” And the aftermath of the deadly violence is rapidly resetting the capital’s agenda as Republicans and the Obama administration clash over the rising fear of terrorism at home and how best to combat the Islamic State in the Middle East. Back in 2003, Republicans i...Continue Reading

With the scourge of prescription drug abuse still taking a deadly toll on the coalfields of southern West Virginia and Southwest Virginia, area lawmakers are increasingly encouraging physicians to co-prescribe the life-saving drug Naloxone. Naloxone is considered to be a safe and effective antidote to opioid overdoses. A new state law took effect in West Virginia earlier this year allowing first responders, friends and family to administer the potentially life-saving medication to people overdos...Continue Reading

Tim Kaine righted a wrong today.The U.S. senator and former Virginia governor had passed through Leesburg and Loudoun County more times than he can count -- campaigning, meeting with constituents, flying out of Dulles. Yet somehow the Senate Armed Services Committee member had never visited the home of decorated Gen. George C. Marshall, tucked quaintly into a corner of downtown Leesburg.The Democratic lawmaker rectified that today, as he and and a handful of state and local officials honored the...Continue Reading