Free Republic

Before you all get mad at me for attacking this young lady, let me get this out of the way: Yes, she's better than me. No, I couldn't make a D3 practice squad. BUT, let me also be clear: This whole spectacle is a joke. The NCAA is celebrating Haley Van Voorhis because she's the first female to play a snap in a college football game (Shenandoah, Division III) who isn't a kicker. Van Voorhis came in late in the game as a safety and recorded a "QB hurry." Haley, girl, you were unabated to the QB! You gotta get...

What looked like a draw for control of the House of Delegates turned into an apparent Republican victory with the defeat of Del. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg, who had appeared to narrowly win re-election over GOP newcomer Kim Taylor. Instead, Taylor took a late lead in what appears to be an upset victory over Aird, as the battle for a House majority swung back and forth Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning with unofficial results subject to canvassing by local electoral boards to determine final winners. House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, declared victory with a statement released at 1:40 a.m....

We’ve been informed by the National School Boards Association that concerned parents flooding school board meetings all over the country to object to the implementation of Critical Race Theory, gender identity politics dogma, and mask mandates in public school classrooms present “domestic terror” “threats” in certain instances to local school officials, which the group says merits a stepping in of the Feds for closer monitoring and investigation. Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland has indicated that he agrees with the sentiment expressed by the NSBA, and issued a memo earlier this month that directed the FBI to, in concert with each...

The Wife and I are gonna be in northern Virginia and western Maryland for about a week and a half in mid-September. Because of my love of the Civil War, we are gonna visit Monocacy, Gettysburg, Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley and likely Harpers Ferry. We may or may not hit Antietam. I've already seen it once before. The Wife is surprisingly supportive of visiting these battlefields but I also am gonna throw in a winery visit and possibly head up to Hershey Pa. I need some advice from people familiar with the areas I've described. AFAIK, we're gonna use...

SHENANDOAH — Nearly every pew at St. Casimir Roman Catholic Church was filled Sunday afternoon for the 32nd annual celebration of Father Walter Ciszek Day. The annual Mass commemorates the life and death of Ciszek, whose cause for canonization is being investigated by the Catholic Church. St. Casimir is the worship center of Divine Mercy Roman Catholic Church. It is also where Ciszek was baptized, confirmed and received First Holy Communion. “Please continue to pray that Father Walter Ciszek be elevated to sainthood in our lifetime so that we may celebrate together,” Monsigner Ronald C. Bocian said. He attributed the...

The Hanson sisters bring to the Western music stage their original arrangement of the beautiful and heart-touching Shenandoah. Enjoy!

In the midst of a Saturday rife with calamities, Obama outrages, MSM malfeasance & primary political posturing, perhaps you would appreciate a few minutes of Peace & Beauty. Sissel singing "Shenandoah". Enjoy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__8ctUsx5DQ

"Oh Shenandoah" (also called simply "Shenandoah", or "Across the Wide Missouri") is a traditional American folk song of uncertain origin, dating at least to the early 19th century. The Robert Shaw Chorale - Shenandoah

SCRANTON - Brandon J. Piekarsky will spend his 19th birthday behind federal prison bars after a jury on Thursday convicted him and his friend, Derrick M. Donchak, of a hate crime for participating in the fatal beating of an illegal Mexican immigrant in Shenandoah. In a case that has attracted international attention, the all-white jury of six men and six women found Piekarsky, 18, of Shenandoah Heights, and Donchak, 20, of Shenandoah, guilty of violating the federal Fair Housing Act by assaulting Luis Eduardo Ramirez Zavala. Donchak and his parents sobbed, and Piekarsky grimaced, as federal marshals handcuffed the pair...

The Shenandoah Valley -- an expanse of rolling countryside located between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Allegheny Front -- absorbs the new slowly. The people and places in this article were photographed during the first part of the 20th century, up to 1941, at which time automobiles had begun to replace horse-drawn buggies (but not quite), mail was delivered at a log post office, fields were still plowed with draft-horse power, and a steam engine powered a portable sawmill.

As isolated as the Virginia Backcountry was from the coastal colonies, travelers were eager to tour and enjoy the wild country. Among the early tourists was Thomas Jefferson, who trekked across Rockfish Gap in August of 1767 and found himself entranced by the Natural Bridge. [Eight 19th-century paintings and engravings of Natural Bridge]

The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia is above all a land of farms and farmers. Since the firm Pennsylvania Germans crossed the Potomac with horses, oxen, pigs and tools, the fertile lands along the Shenandoah River have beckoned to those who love the country life. Although areas of the Valley have developed and there are cities here and there, a drive along the old roads will provide a multitude of pastoral views. [Vintage pictures]

"These [Scotch Irish settlers] were the right sort of people to found a commonwealth that should stand the wear and tear of a hundred ages." – Henry Ruffner, President of Washington College (1836-1848). Ruffner's "Early History of Washington College" recounts the settling and development of the Valley of Virginia. An excerpt from "Early History" was printed in Henry Howe, "Historical Collections of Virginia" (1852), which fortunately is more available than the original. Reproduced here are Howe's introduction and the engaging Ruffner excerpt.

“Our neighbors spoke with someone down the street who’s husband was taken away. She was allowed to visit him yesterday after two days with no visitors. Apparently this guy was active in the Tea Party movement and some of those right wing websites like Beck’s and Free Republic so they seized his computer, all of his guns, his two German Shepherds and his Jeep Cherokee."

From the steep heights above Shenandoah, the limits of this square-mile coal-boom settlement are defined by culm banks on one side of the valley floor and the Mrs. T's pierogi factory on the other. Thomas O'Neill, the town's former mayor, stood on his daughter's back deck on Wednesday and pointed out the landmarks: the golden dome of the nation's oldest Ukrainian Greek Catholic church, the smoking cogeneration plant on the far hill that makes electricity by burning the coal waste of the town's mining past, and a low point in the valley - the park where an undocumented Mexican immigrant...

Minutes after the last kick and punch were thrown in a fatal beating in a public park in Shenandoah on a summer night in 2008, the cover-up began, federal prosecutors say. Instead of investigating the vicious beating of Luis Ramirez, police officers of the small borough helped the young men conceal evidence and concoct a less-damaging version of what happened that night, advising the young football players that they "needed to get their stories straight" because the man they had just beaten might die, according to an indictment. The Mexican immigrant's last conscious moments were spent hearing "Go back to...

The Shenandoah police chief and two officers under his command are charged with orchestrating a cover-up in the fatal beating of a Mexican immigrant by altering evidence or lying to the FBI in a hate crimes case against two popular football players. The former Shenandoah High School athletes, 19-year-old Derrick Donchak and 18-year-old Brandon Piekarsky, have now been charged with a federal hate crime, accused of beating Luis Ramirez in a park on a night in July 2008 as they headed home from a party, the Justice Department said Tuesday in Washington. State prosecutors who tried unsuccessfully to win ethnic...

MaryJane & the Free Market Malcolm A. Kline, November 12, 2009 The author of a new study on marijuana use could have used an economics lecture from the late Christopher T. Warden, a journalism professor at Troy University. Maybe we’ll send them the textbook Professor Warden wrote which Accuracy in Academia is publishing, entitled, Voodoo Anyone? How to understand economics without really trying. High prices, Professor Warden pointed out, discourage demand, as do negative consequences. Thus, Professor Warden noted in his chapter on crime, economic principles have an impact on criminal activity. “Certainly, some criminologists and economists analyze the issue...

While the exact route of the Great Wagon Road has not been preserved, as such, we know that in Virginia and West Virginia, from the Potomac to the Roanoke Valley, it is either under or parallel to Route U.S. 11. Because the highway has been regraded, straightened, widened, and sometimes relocated and sometimes expanded to three and four lanes, it is often hard to know whether you are on, or simply driving parallel to, the Great Wagon Road. Except . . . there are places where you can be relatively certain that you are on the old road. [Pictures]

POTTSVILLE — Two Shenandoah teenagers were acquitted late Friday night of killing illegal Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez Zavala. Brandon J. Piekarsky, 17, of Shenandoah Heights, and Derrick M. Donchak, 19, of Shenandoah, were convicted of simple assault. The Schuylkill County jury also convicted Donchak on three counts of corruption of minors and three counts of furnishing alcohol to minors. The defendants hugged each other after the verdicts were read, and friends and family members clapped. Jurors deliberated for nearly eight hours before reaching their verdict around 10:45 p.m., Friday. The all-white jury of six men and six women began deliberating...