Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Tuesday, March 17. Let’s hope it’s Bye Bye Bibi Day in Israel!

*Affordable Care Act adds 16.4 million to health insurance rolls (Huge success, Republicans were totally wrong on this one.)

*Israelis vote as Netanyahu faces tough re-election

*Netanyahu: If I’m elected, there will be no Palestinian state (As usual, Netanyahu will say anything, no matter how irresponsible, to save his own tuchus.)

*A dysfunctional GOP (“Republicans are stumbling badly.”)

*None Dare Call It Treason: Tom Cotton, Iran and Old GOP Ideas (“The letter sent by 47 Republican Congressmen to the Iranian government is part of a long history of right-wing mayhem”)

*The Global Coal Boom Is Going Bust: Report (Good riddance.)

*Watchdogs to McAuliffe: Send Back “Inadequate” Ethics Bills

*Debate over gays in St. Patrick’s parades roils Irish on big day

*Governor OKs regulating seclusion, restraint in Va. schools

*Smith out, Edwards in with 2 contested state Senate races in Roanoke region (“State Sen. Ralph Smith announced Monday that he will not seek re-election to a third term. Instead, he’s backing Dave Suetterlein, his legislative director and chairman of the Roanoke County Republican Committee, to succeed him.”)

*Casey: Don Caldwell mulls independent bid in Roanoke senate race

*Rob Krupicka quitting legislature to focus on doughnuts (Love the headline! LOL)

*Prince William lawsuit over primary elections to be heard at end of week (“The state Supreme Court designated a retired Arlington judge to handle the case after local judges recused themselves.”)

*Va. judge rules to keep teacher associations out of public records case

*Sunshine Week: Reporter helps Virginia officials learn more about controversial U.S. 460 deal

*$10 million mistake for region’s roads (“The transportation funding bill approved by lawmakers and then-Gov. Bob McDonnell two years ago consisted of a hodgepodge of tax hikes to repair Virginia’s deteriorating roads and ensure stable, sustainable funding into the future. Unfortunately, and despite lawmakers’ efforts to fashion the measure in a way that guarded against the unexpected, there was one small but critical oversight.”)

*Deeds honored by national group for mental health reform efforts

*Roanoke City Council inches toward tax increases (“Roanoke City Council continued to gird itself for likely tax increases Monday.”)

*Former Richmond mayor Young to seek Morrissey’s seat

*Alexandria’s 52-year-old ban on street sales of vehicles repealed

*Cold air makes a comeback tonight with snowflakes possible Thursday (“The warmth of the past few days will give way to lows in the 20s and 30s.”)

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Monday, March 16.

*Netanyahu warns supporters he may lose election (Let’s all hope so!)

*The Senate’s 47 percent (“There’s no defending the GOP letter to Iran.”)

*Protester charged with shooting officers in Ferguson

*‘Your world is on fire’: Ted Cruz scares the hell out of a terrified little girl in New Hampshire (He scares the hell out of most of us, actually.)

*Huh? Tom Cotton says Iran must be stopped because ‘they already control Tehran’ (Duhhh….drool. The face of the Republican Party on foreign policy used to be the widely respected Richard Lugar, now it’s this clown? Ee gads.)

*Medicaid Expansion in Red States (“Ideological gridlock is inflicting serious harm on state budgets, but the greatest losers are poor people who cannot afford health coverage.”)

*Campaign aims to alter route of Atlantic Coast Pipeline

*Webb on 2016: ‘We’ll see how it goes’

*SORRELLS and REA: Dominion’s Pipeline Proposal is All Pain, No Gain for Virginia (“Dominion’s proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) is a 42-inch, high-pressure natural gas behemoth that will threaten our safety, our property rights and our livelihood for generations to come.”)

*Shining light on ‘The Virginia Way’ (It’s not a pretty picture, to put it mildly.)

*Alternative pipeline routes create new heartaches in Nelson County

*Parent sues Virginia officials for release of teacher-evaluation data

*Hold on to chance for park in Suffolk (“It’s hard to argue with a park on the old Obici Hospital property north of Downtown Suffolk. The 27.5-acre site, between a Chevrolet dealer and offices of the Virginia Department of Transportation, extends from North Main Street to the shores of the Nansemond River.”)

*Henrico displays support of police chief

*Virginia Del. Joe Morrissey announces birth of boy (“Myrna Pride, the young woman at the center of a long-running criminal investigation dealing with her relationship with Del. Joe Morrissey, I-Henrico County, has given birth to a baby boy.”)

*D.C. is about to get a taste of spring, but winter will return midweek (“Temperatures today and tomorrow will hit the 60s before chilly air sweeps in.”)

You might recall a bunch of headlines in the corporate media, mindlessly and uncritically parroting a bunch of nonsensical fossil fuel industry propaganda put out by the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) regarding the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan. As the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote at the time, the SCC took a “seriously flawed,” “extremely pessimistic and inaccurate view of the state’s ability to join a 21st century clean energy economy, claiming it could only do so at a high cost to electricity consumers.” In fact, the EXACT OPPOSITE is the case: according to the Union of Concerned Scientists: “the Commonwealth is well on track to meet its goals under the Clean Power Plan (CPP), affordably and reliably. A majority of its electricity already comes from lower-carbon energy sources like nuclear, natural gas, and renewable energy.”

How the SCC, which theoretically is supposed to regulate Dominion Power and other corporations in Virignia, could have brazenly spewed out such a Big Lie, and how the media could have blasted the headline all over its pages, is beyond infuriating. And now, the Virginia media is compounding their utter lack of journalistic integrity and intelligence by FAILING to publicize the exact opposite finding, one which happens to be correct, by a definitive source: PJM, the “regional transmission organization (RTO) that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia.” PJM’s new analysis is summarized here, and can read in full here (PDF). The key takeaways are as follows.

1. “Virginia can generate net revenue from the CPP as early as 2020 through a market-based allowance trading program among PJM states. In such a regional plan, Virginia efficiently reduces its carbon pollution and then sells pollution ‘allowances’ to neighboring states that have more pollution to reduce, generating revenue for the Commonwealth in the process.”

2. Far from the CPP being “unfair” to Virginia, as some have whined, the fact is the exact opposite: “if Governor McAuliffe writes his state plan utilizing a regional PJM market-based approach, Virginia has the second-easiest target to reach among the 11 PJM states analyzed.” Thus, ” Because Virginia’s cleaner fleet is rewarded in this way by the Clean Power Plan (as currently proposed), Governor McAuliffe should be gunning for aggressive clean energy gains in his state plan for the CPP: right out of the gate in 2020, Virginia could sell the carbon reductions across state lines.”

3. “Energy prices in Virginia will decrease under the Clean Power Plan” : According to PJM, Utilizing a regional market-based plan, energy prices would fall in Virginia under the CPP (compared to business-as-usual absent the CPP), if Virginia achieves its modest renewable energy goal and taps into its virtually untouched energy efficiency resources.”

4. “Virginia is already effortlessly coasting toward compliance with the Clean Power Plan”: According to PJM, under current/”business-as-usual” trends: “Virginia will be 80% of the way to its pollution reduction goal in 2020. This is mainly due to the already-underway phaseout of the state’s oldest and dirtiest coal plants and an increased use of lower-polluting resources. And, by 2030, thanks to an EPA formula that favors Virginia’s particular energy mix (more on that below), Virginia is on track to overcomply with the Clean Power Plan, again under a business-as-usual, don’t-do-a-thing approach.”

5. “The business opportunity of the Clean Power Plan is good news for Governor McAuliffe.” “PJM’s analysis is an economic silver platter for Governor McAuliffe, as it shows that a multi-state approach to the Clean Power Plan is his best chance to achieve two of his priorities at once: sparking a new Virginia economy and tackling climate change.”

Is this the no-brainer of all no-brainers or what? Oh, and if you’re a big coal fan for whatever (stupid) reason? It turns out that “one of the best ways to keep coal units online, ironically, is to double down on renewables and energy efficiency,” as “the addition of clean energy into the state’s energy mix reduces the burden on coal plants to do the carbon cleanup themselves, by displacing their carbon-intensity with zero-emissions clean energy.” So, let’s stop the whining, seize this “silver platter” opportunity, and get to work making Virginia the clean energy capital of the East Coast!

P.S. As for the SCC, how about firing everyone responsible for the embarrassingly false propaganda…er, “analysis” it put last fall, totally restructing the agency so that it serves the people of Virginia (not only the rich and powerful), and basically starting all over again?

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Sunday, March 15.

*As Fla. governor, Bush discussed security issues via private e-mail

*Addressing climate change – the Reagan way (“If the GOP got behind a simple, market-based carbon strategy, it could demand an end to irrational energy subsidies and Environmental Protection Agency carbon mandates. Republicans would have serious policy leverage – if only they were willing to follow the Reagan way.”)

*President Obama jokes about Clinton’s e-mails, Scott Walker and marijuana at Gridiron Club dinner

*Who will be Israel’s next premier? Surprises to expect post-election day (“Who will disappear? Who will become kingmaker? And could someone other than Netanyahu or Herzog become Israel’s next prime minister?”)

*Israel’s Sore Loser (“Benjamin Netanyahu has botched his re-election the same way he has botched everything else.”)

*Garner case brings cigarette trafficking to light

*Our view: The big picture on the pipeline (“If pipeline plans get FERC’s blessing and move forward, partners EQT and NextEra need to acquire or hire the expertise to identify the natural land formations and unique species of flora and fauna that are invaluable to this region and irreplaceable to the world, the better to avoid irreparable harm.”)

*Dominion warns of blackouts if James River line is delayed (Idiots. Focus on improving energy efficiency big time and you woulndn’t need to constantly build more power lines, etc.)

*Dominion’s promises vanish into thin air (“Three days. That’s how long it took Dominion Virginia Power to abandon its pledge of transparency for a law that eliminated state regulation of its base electricity rates until 2020.” Liars.)

*Mistake may cost area $10M a year in road money (“Hampton Roads may be losing out on money for highway construction because lawmakers failed to guard against falling fuel prices two years ago when they created a regional tax”)

*Schapiro: World is UVa. law professor’s classroom

*In brewery deal, documents stay secret while awaiting signatures

*Norfolk mayor drives $50,879.68 city-owned Expedition

*Fairfax police commission adds outside voices

*Sunday starts a solid stretch of spring before midweek cool-down

This piece has been appearing this week in the newspapers of my very conservative congressional district (VA-06). It embodies the strategy I think we in Liberal America should be pursuing: See the evil. Call it out. Press the Battle.

A story from the Bible comes to mind: King David has taken for himself Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite. The prophet Nathan comes to him and tells a story of similar wrong-doing. Not recognizing himself in the story, King David becomes righteously outraged.  At this point, Nathan springs the trap and declares: “Thou art the man!”

David accepts his own behavior, because it serves his own interests. When he sees it from the outside, he is so indignant that he says the sinner should die.

In the spirit of that biblical story, I would like to ask the conservatives reading this column what you would have thought, not long ago, if you had heard about political conduct like this:

1) An American president is elected after promising to solve a long-standing problem that costs thousands of American lives and a trillion dollars every year. His proposal is so moderate that its roots are actually in the other party. But that party does everything it can to prevent passage. Then it tries to overturn the law. When that fails, it tries sabotage.

All this – including voting more than 50 times to repeal a law, knowing it won’t be repealed – is a spectacle unprecedented in American history.

2) This is part of a pattern in which this opposition party has made it a priority to prevent that president from accomplishing anything. It opposes even ideas that were once its own, even measures that are clearly supported by an overwhelming majority of the people.

Although the president proposes nothing outside the American mainstream – he is more moderate than a great many in his own party’s base – the opposition paints him as an extremist.

No party in American history has ever before made the president’s failure its top priority.

3) This opposition party refuses – until that power is taken from them – even to allow many of the president’s nominees to get a vote. This obstruction is not about the quality of the nominees – many are the kind of distinguished and moderate people who used to be confirmed virtually unanimously – but is simply motivated by a desire to prevent the president from exercising the powers of his office.

The obstruction of these nominations goes beyond anything seen before in America.

4) The president, in one of the most important foreign policy efforts of his administration, is attempting to negotiate a diplomatic solution to a dangerous problem that cannot be solved militarily in any acceptable way. The opposition party, in a move unprecedented in American history, invites a foreign leader to address Congress in order to undermine the president’s policy. And then – again in an unprecedented action – it seeks further to block the negotiation process by writing a letter to the adversary with whom the president is attempting to reach an agreement.

5) Throughout all this, the opposition party shows the president a level of disrespect – one might even say, contempt – that had never occurred in more than two centuries of American history. Even in times of rancor between the parties, their leaders showed respect for the office. But, in this story, there is no such restraint.

In the America I grew up in, I doubt that a single conservative of my acquaintance would have supported such behavior. Indeed, part of being a conservative is to be suspicious of what is unprecedented. Our traditions and norms are there for a reason, a real conservative understands, and a conservative honors and protects them. He doesn’t sweep them away because it suits his momentary interests.

But it is said now that all this is playing well with this party’s supposedly “conservative” base, and all evidence supports that claim.

I don’t know which is more troubling:  to have a political party that has gone rogue, that respects neither the will of the people (who have chosen twice to invest the powers of the presidency in a particular person) nor the norms of American politics; or to have the base of a supposedly conservative party rewarding conduct from its leaders that would formerly have been regarded as disgraceful and destructive of our democracy and its traditions.

So I ask you conservatives: If you had heard such a story a decade ago, or a generation ago, what would you have said about such an opposition party?

If you’d have condemned it then but support it now, I say, “Thou art the man!”