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The damning OIG report comes just weeks after VA admitted that six veteran deaths were linked to delayed cancer screenings at a VA facility in South Carolina and a report that appointment delays led to veterans being harmed in Augusta, Ga. VA, which spent more than $3.5 million on furniture on the last day of fiscal year 2013, also awarded a five-figure bonus to the executive who oversaw the Memphis facility, even as it acknowledged that problems were cropping up. “Like other hospital systems, VA isn’t immune from human error — even fatal human error. But what the department does...

Former President Bill Clinton will stop in Roanoke next week to campaign with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe. Clinton and McAuliffe will appear at Charter Hall in the Roanoke City Market Building at 2:15 p.m. Wednesday, according to a news release from McAuliffe’s campaign. The Roanoke stop has been added to a multi-day, statewide McAuliffe campaign swing with the former president. Their itinerary includes a Monday campaign stop at Virginia Tech. Tickets for the Roanoke event are available on a first-come, first-served basis at the Democratic Party’s office at 813 Franklin Road.

I'm so happy to announce my friend President Bill Clinton will join me on the campaign trail this week! We always have a good time together, and this won't be any different. You should join us at the Virginia Votes! event in Charlottesville on Wednesday, October 30 at 10:45 a.m. (Doors open at 9:30 a.m.) Our team will be distributing tickets for the Virginia Votes! events beginning today. They're going to go fast, so check out the details and get there early: What: Ticket Distribution for Virginia Votes! Charlottesville Where: Democratic Party of Virginia Office, 913 West Main Street, Charlottesville,...

Independence USA PAC, the pro-gun control group affiliated with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is spending $1.1 million on advertisements supporting Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the final two weeks of his race to become Virginia’s next governor against Republican Attorney General Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II. Politico reported that the ads in the D.C. area market will begin Tuesday and continue through the eve of the Nov. 5 election. Mr. Cuccinelli’s campaign blasted the development. “Terry McAuliffe and his allies are spending tens of millions of dollars in an attempt to buy Virginia’s governor’s mansion and impose an ideological agenda...

Reston Police District – A 17-year-old Reston boy is in the hospital in life-threatening condition after sustaining a gunshot wound on Friday, October 18. Police were called to a home in the 2200 block of Marginella Drive at around 10:15 a.m. for a report of a person who had been shot. The injured person was flown to the hospital and police began their investigation to determine the circumstances surrounding the injury. Detectives identified the teen and are following up on numerous leads and pieces of information. Police are still determining all of the circumstances surrounding the incident and whether or...

Having been cued by President Obama that his attention will now turn to immigration reform, some Catholic bishops are revving up their campaign to demand that Congress grant amnesty to at least 11 million illegal immigrants. In an op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch entitled “Who Is My Neighbor?” Virginia’s bishops criticized Americans who claim illegal immigrants are “lawbreakers.” Bishops Francis DiLorenzo of Richmond and Paul Loverde of Arlington wrote, “Many regard the undocumented immigrants among us as lawbreakers, when instead we are all challenged to embrace them as fellow children of God, deserving of the same dignity that we ourselves...

Hillary Clinton will campaign with Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe (D) this weekend. It will be Clinton's her first public campaign event since she left the Obama administration in February. Clinton will officially endorse McAuliffe at a "Women for Terry" event in Northern Virginia on Saturday afternoon, McAuliffe's campaign announced. This will be the former secretary of State's third event for McAuliffe, after hosting two fundraisers, and her first public campaign stop in years. The Clintons have long been close with McAuliffe. He headed the Democratic National Committee while President Clinton was in office and was a top fundraiser for...

Election officials across Virginia are grappling with how to follow through with a directive from the State Board of Elections to purge up to 57,000 registered voters from the state rolls — a move that has prompted a lawsuit from the Democratic Party of Virginia and outright defiance by at least one registrar. The state, working this year for the first time as part of a multistate program intended to validate voters, says it is required by law to conduct maintenance on voter lists and is not canceling voters but directing local registrars to review registrants carefully. The program provides...

University of Wyoming President Bob Sternberg says he will "find a way" to help students whose veterans' benefits may be delayed as a result of the ongoing government shutdown, so no veteran will need to leave their studies because of political gridlock. Federal agencies have provided enough money to cover veterans' benefits for the remainder of October, but delays are likely if the shutdown continues past Nov. 1, Marty Martinez, project coordinator for UW's Veterans Service Center, said Tuesday. If those delays should affect whether a student could continue paying for classes at UW, Sternberg said, the university will find...

The Veterans Affairs Department has been able to maintain most operations amid the government shutdown, but Secretary Eric K. Shinseki warned Congress on Wednesday that it will soon have to halt payments to more than five million beneficiaries. Mr. Shinseki said that by next month he will likely run out of money to cover disability and pension payments to veterans and surviving spouse, and will also have to halt GI Bill payments for education expenses. “Before the end of the month, the mandatory account will not support payments in November — even though I will have checks lined up to...

Four House Republicans from Virginia have broken ranks to try to end the government shutdown and blunt its expected political fallout on Virginia's tight gubernatorial race, The New York Times reported Wednesday. U.S. Reps. J. Randy Forbes, Scott Rigell, Frank Wolf and Rob Wittman have called for a government funding bill with no policy strings attached, which, if approved, would end the shutdown. The Virginia governor's race pitting Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli against Democrat Terry McAuliffe may wind up focusing on which party will take the blame for the shutdown, strategists told The Times. Swing-state Virginia is being closely...

In only seven days, Sen. Ted Cruz will address the largest political gathering of conservatives in Virginia. Do you have your tickets, yet? On the day he speaks, it will be exactly one month to the election of a new governor for the Commonwealth and we're building momentum! I personally invite you to come and listen to Ted Cruz, along with Ken Cuccinelli, and over 1,000 politically-active conservative Virginians. Come be inspired.

The Great Debate: McAuliffe’s All Show No Go Performance By John Fredericks If you like music, circus ring ponies and a light show than you were likely enamored by Terry McAuliffe’s gamesmanship performance last night at the nationally televised Virginia gubernatorial debate hosted by the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce in Northern Virginia. McAuliffe’s all show and not much go brusque debate exhibition highlighted his one major vulnerability as this tiresome campaign’s final six weeks ticks down: he’s heavy on pizazz and light on substance. This reality was present all night as the grand presenter used his prime time showcase to...

Back in June, Equality Virginia Advocates announced our statewide endorsements. With Terry McAuliffe as Governor, Ralph Northam as Lieutenant Governor, Mark Herring as Attorney General, and LGBT-friendly leaders in the House of Delegates, we can keep the pendulum moving toward equality. Time is running out to make sure that the right leaders get elected to the House of Delegates. The stakes are high: this election could mean the difference of having Delegates who support the LGBT community or having discriminatory and backwards-looking Delegates who could care less about equality. Who would you rather see win the vote? Turnout is key...

From the sounds of this article about a Virginia gun club that needed approval to take on some construction projects, it appears as though anti-gun advocates were actually trying to end all gun owner activities rather than having any concern for actual firearms use on the range. In July, they report that 13 people came out to oppose the club’s plans. Now, that might be expected if the club was looking to vastly expand the number and size of ranges or do something else that would greatly increase quality-of-life factors for residents around the club. But, no. They were opposing...

Democrat Terry McAuliffe is telling supporters that as Virginia governor he would issue a “guidance opinion” that would exempt existing abortion clinics from complying with strict new health and safety standards. The only problem: State officials say there is no such thing as a guidance opinion and that governors have no such formal authority. Mr. McAuliffe said last week that he plans to take the action to keep 18 remaining centers open after abortion clinics in Fairfax City and Hampton Roads announced that they would shut their doors as a result of the standards. He said that just one of...

McAuliffe on defensive as Cuccinelli gets a boost By Laura Vozzella, Published: September 18 E-mail the writer RICHMOND — Terry McAuliffe said Wednesday that he knew nothing about a failed effort by his supporters to wrest an important business endorsement from Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, his Republican rival in the governor’s race. McAuliffe also dismissed accounts that he had flubbed his interview for that endorsement by touting his ability to schmooze. And he backed off a campaign pledge that Republicans said amounted to a threat to shut down the government over Medicaid. McAuliffe made those comments on a morning...

Reuters) - Democrat Terry McAuliffe leads Republican Ken Cuccinelli by just 3 percentage points in the race for Virginia governor as the tightest U.S. governor's contest gets even closer, a Quinnipiac University poll showed on Wednesday. McAuliffe, a businessman and former Democratic National Committee chairman, leads Cuccinelli, Virginia's attorney general, 44 percent to 41 percent, within the survey's margin of error.

RICHMOND — High-powered Terry McAuliffe supporters made a furious attempt over the weekend to reverse a Washington area business group’s endorsement of Republican Ken Cuccinelli II for governor, with state legislators warning that “doors will be closed” to the group if it sticks by its choice. The pressure exerted on the Northern Virginia Technology Council’s political arm, Tech PAC, by a U.S. senator, a Republican lieutenant governor at odds with Cuccinelli and several others suggests that McAuliffe’s campaign is worried that a Cuccinelli endorsement could undermine the central premise of the Democrat’s campaign — that he, an entrepreneur who started...

Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe issued a campaign promise to exempt existing abortion clinics from state health and safety standards. The promise came amid concerns that inability to meet minimum health and safety standards could lead to the closure of all the state’s abortion providers. “The notion that these clinics need to be as pristine as a hospital is flawed thinking,” McAuliffe said. “Given the objective being served I think the standards applicable to a waste disposal facility would be more appropriate.” McAuliffe dismissed contentions that any unilateral actions he might take to absolve clinics from observing the law...