Public defender Jim Hingeley explains Paul Garrett’s role in keeping Jennifer White wrongly jailed for a month. #
Sean Tubbs had somebody draw a handgun him at 4:30am this morning, while in his own home. It turned out to be the police, but that didn’t make him feel a whole lot better. #
One year after he was first accused and three months after he pleaded guilty, former CHS choir director Jonathan Spivey has been sentenced to 21 months in prison, Rob Seal reports for the Progress. (He was actually sentenced to twenty years, but the remainder was suspended.) When released he’ll be on probation for five years and have to register as a sex offender.
The couple who run Double H Farm, in Nelson, have been arrested for using non-approved labels as price tags, Dave McNair writes for The Hook. The couple, in their 60s, had their farm swarmed by ten Virginia Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services agents, a state trooper, and the Nelson County Sheriff before they were handcuffed and hauled away in separate cruisers. Their Double H pork products were seized from restaurants across the area, destroyed by soaking them with bleach. Double H’s owners are well-known advocates for the rights of family farmers, which has surely earned them no love from state regulators.
I know a fair number of people in the farming and livestock business. They are all terrified of harassment by the state, which appears to both loathe family farms, actively seeking out piddily reasons to bust them. Locally-produced food is a strong interest of mine, and I’ve encouraged some of these food producers to speak out, but they’re all terrified that if they do, VDA&CS will invent a reason to shut them down. Now I see why.
This is going to get ugly — the Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association will make sure of that. I wonder if any members of the General Assembly will have the good sense to introduce legislation to support family farms and stop this harassment on the part of state regulators.
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