In The News

Another political prediction service has moved its rating of the Kansas governor’s race from “Leans Republican” to “Toss-up.” Sabato’s Crystal Ball out of the University of Virginia Center for Politics revised its rating on the race Wednesday, noting that “In Kansas, despite its strong Republican roots, Gov. Sam Brownback (R) has trailed in a majority of polls to state House Minority Leader Paul Davis. Brownback’s governorship has proven very controversial, costing him support among many more-moderate Republicans in the Jayhawk State.”

(By Stephen A. Schuker, professor of history at the University of Virginia) On the eve of the Great War's centennial, many still get a great deal wrong about the conflict's outbreak: the world did not blunder into mass bloodletting by accident.

(By Douglas Laycock, Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia) On July 21, the President issued an Executive Order prohibiting government contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. There is no exception for religious organizations with government contracts. But neither is there any override of existing legal protections for religious liberty. The Department of Labor is to issue more detailed implementing regulations in ninety days. The White House was lobbied hard by gay-rights gr...

Chances are you probably remember the story of University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly. The then 20-year-old girl was harassed by state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents who mistook her LaCroix sparkling water she had just purchased from Harris Teeter (along with cookie dough and ice cream) for a case of beer. Well, after Daly filed a $40 million federal lawsuit against the ABC officials, who she claims "terrified" her, an apology has come in the form of a whopping $212,500 settlement with the commonwealth of Virginia.

Morgan Moses is finding out that his second education comes with a lot more bumps and bruises than the one he received at the University of Virginia. Moses, who was selected by the Redskins in the third round of the 2014 draft, graduated with a degree in anthropology shortly after rookie minicamp in May. The offensive lineman is adjusting to his new life as a full-time football player during training camp in Richmond.

Quick, who wears No. 23 for the St. Louis Rams? Oh, sorry, it’s actually safety Rodney McLeod. That’s OK, though. Most people miss that one. Just like the Dangerfield version, this Rodney gets no respect – at least from outside observers. He signed with the Rams in 2012 as one of the team’s 19 undrafted rookie free agents. A former University of Virginia star, he made the 53-man roster out of training camp and became one of the club’s most consistent and productive special team players, joining other non-starting stalwarts like linebacker Josh Hull and running bac...

Back in May, Matt Feinberg was sitting at a red light watching some break dancers on the side of the road. He started moving along with them in the seat of his car and – bam! – he was hit from behind by someone going 35 miles per hour. The crash left him with a sprained back, sprained knees and sprained shoulders. At that point, his chances of competing in tennis at the 2014 Gay Games in Cleveland in August were pretty slim. After many weeks of physical therapy and playing at two tennis tournaments in July, the Philadelphia Open and the Liberty Open in Flushing, N.Y., Feinberg deci...

As much as social equality is advocated in the United States, a new study suggests that besides evaluating their own race and religion most favorably, people share implicit hierarchies for racial, religious and age groups that may be different from their conscious, explicit attitudes and values. “People from relatively low-status groups can readily report that their group does not have the most power. At the same time, most groups, even if they have less social power, favor their own group above all others,” explains psychological scientist Jordan R. Axt of the University of Virgin...

A recent working paper by Sheetal Sekhri of the University of Virginia draws attention to the positive impact of having access to water nearby on literacy rates of women. Using data for 8,261 villages in the state of Uttar Pradesh, she finds that female literacy rates are 5% greater in villages with better water access accounting for many demographic and geographical characteristics. The paper adds further the “suggestive evidence that time spent on fetching water has a negative effect on schooling outcomes of children including enrolment, attendance, dropping-out, and hours spent doing ...

One of these scholars is Ken Hughes, who has worked on the Nixon tapes since 2000 as part of the ambitious Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. His “Chasing Shadows,” the best account yet of Nixon’s devious interference with Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 Vietnam War negotiations, shows just how early Nixon’s dirty tricks began and just how deeply he was involved.

By and large, the bulk of residents in Southwestern Virginia are poor, uneducated by standards in the rest of Virginia and struggling to find a job and make a living. That’s the conclusion of the Weldon Center at The University of Virginia and the Statistical Abstract of the Census Bureau.

Show that you're there for them: In a University of Virginia study, researchers found that those who thought of their close friends while working on difficult tasks found them to be a lot easier. This is because their friends provided them social support.

At the top 12 schools with the highest median LSAT scores in 2013, median scores were 168 or above for full-time students, according to data submitted to U.S. News in an annual survey. (Virginia Law in a three-way tie for seventh.)

(Video) Host Shaka Ssali will introduce you to some extraordinary young Africans to share their experiences in U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2014 Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders program. (U.Va. mention at 11:50.)

The Transformation Zone was created in response to a partnership with the Recovery School District and the University of Virginia to help around the failing schools.

As the legal scholars Richard Bonnie (U.Va. Law) and Charles Whitebread explain in their authoritative history, “The Marihuana Conviction,” the drug’s popularity among minorities and other groups practically ensured that it would be classified as a “narcotic,” attributed with addictive qualities it did not have, and set alongside far more dangerous drugs like heroin and morphine.

“Any entity with a buffer zone law is probably looking at it and thinking about whether they need to tweak it — whether that means showing it’s necessary or modifying the law,” said Leslie Kendrick, a University of Virginia law professor and First Amendment expert.

In his order, Obama did not go so far as to repeal an existing provision signed by President George W. Bush that allows religious groups to make hiring decisions based on a job candidate’s faith. Some viewed the move as a sign of respect for religious groups. “This Administration has been quietly attentive to religious liberty issues, and may quietly use the religious liberty protections it left in place,” said University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock via email.

Douglas Laycock, professor of law and religious studies at the University of Virginia, said that past orders sustain a patchwork of protections for religious organizations. “And very important, the executive order creates no right for anyone to sue anyone else,” he told Christianity Today. “So gay rights groups cannot organize litigation against religious contractors. Only the contracting agencies can enforce this order, and they may quietly enforce it with attention to religious liberty – which is what this administration has mostly done so far.”

“This strikes me as a more atypical defense, but that doesn’t mean it’s a Hail Mary pass,” says Josh Bowers, a professor at University of Virginia Law School who specializes in criminal procedure. “It could very well be the truth, and sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.”