Government wastes like a fat man breathes, heavier and more frequently with each step. Few agencies are fatter than state departments of transportation, whose waste may be anything but voluntary. Feeding perpetually on taxpayer money, state DOTs are a traditional repository of raw gluttony, with parasitic legions swarming to nibble and sometimes chomp at bounties of billions of dollars. A query that percolates in the commonwealth: Is VDOT different?

Gray clouds persist in spreading ethereal gloom, but not in blocking the sun, which shines again today over the central Valley oblivious to conditions meteorological and economic. This time, the light emanates from a familiar source, the Augusta Medical Center, now known as Augusta Health. The regional hospital, which long has prospered in the vanished wake of a clash over its emergence, is on the move.

Presumptions that prevail tell us that when business calls, Democrats answer with hard flicks to the nose and Republicans with coos.

Reggie Love, a former Duke University basketball team captain and a fellow who wears the look of one who can take care of himself, emerged last month from a session on the hardwood with his boss and a few pals sporting a bandage on his chin.

It is the particular gift of political stars to feel pulses and tap them.

Regarding The News Virginian’s Friday editorial, “Firing shots at the shadows,” I won’t enter into the good editor’s fray as to the reasons for my contrariness.

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There Tracy Pyles goes again, standing with crossed arms, chin jutted skyward and his back to Augusta County supervisors, his fellows in name only.

Barack Obama, a reserve of steamy rhetorical air, will supply to Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate a mighty wind, whether it pushes, pulls or breaks is a thing to be determined.

From the Bath County backwoods and the malaise of quiet left in the wake of Barack Obama’s clamorous presidential ascension, R. Creigh Deeds emerged Tuesday as the Democratic nominee for governor.

Having maintained precedent, Terry McAuliffe seeks today to batter it and in November to swing a shattering blow.

Manna descends, carrying with it the same hazards as the sweet-tasting stuff of biblical lore.

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A rough ride to recovery or further recession into the political backwaters advances Tuesday from trot to canter for Republicans here and elsewhere. This places upon the shoulders of the GOP’s carefully coiffed Virginia gubernatorial candidate a burden of hope that he so far appears able to carry though his party falters.

In the unsafe but sure world of Hollywood horror, faith in the resurrection is empirical: the bad guy always rises from the dead. Life adds a twist: sometimes the bad guy wins. That scenario plays on continuous loop in another world, that of the blogosphere where conspiracy theorists hover and are dismissed. Still, a peek inside, revealing a bogeyman stirring, troubles.

Ascending again from originalism’s detritus is a method of opposition leftists are credited with originating but, in the case of Sonia Sotomayor, suddenly scorn.

Aromas wafting from Washington bear a semblance to things bears do in the woods, acts that disturb olfactory sensibilities but don’t surprise much.

T.S. Eliot, occasionally ill at ease within himself and a chronicler of the phenomenon, wrote of the Mississippi, “The river is within us.” What then might the poet say of Waynesboro, where a river snakes and is eyed suspiciously, as if coiled and ready to strike?

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Nothing so confounds in the present day like an insistence on the part of those hewing right of the tolerance crowd to act on views deemed intolerable. Jerry Falwell Jr., son of and successor to Liberty University founder, has done the unthinkable in dropping the College Democrats chapter as an official club. The subsequent piercing shrieks of horror likely were enough to stir Falwell’s father, though not enough to turn him in his grave. Surely, he would have been pleased.

Leo Tolstoy famously observed a telling distinction between happy and unhappy families. It is reversed for towns: Unhappy towns are all alike, but every happy town is each happy in its own way. Well, almost. Some ingredients are common, but less so the mixes that stir towns to life. That which rouses one community might not rouse another.

Perhaps having been suitably perturbed by its previous inanity while attempting to flex nuclear muscle – a missile launch last month failed in the middle of three phases – North Korea hitched its drab-green britches, shook fists and pressed buttons again over the holiday weekend.

In the wee-hour darkness, the stocky young colonel stood on an earthen mound gazing into the faces of the 750 warriors before him.

Recipes for stirring angst seldom are written in the simple form of, say, a recipe, but most people clearly know how to do it.

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Drawing horses and cattle from the nether reaches of fields frequently involves the fine art of rattling feed in buckets. Drawing homeowners from the nether reaches of living rooms is a tad more detailed, frequently involving plans for developing neighboring property. At least cows can’t carry torches.

Government helps in the manner of a gentleman pugilist, with a hand up and a fist to the face. American carmakers, as have some farmers, are learning to beware the first hand as much as the second.

Somehow, amid the thundering of hooves shod in loafers and heels, Pat Berrang managed to turn from the precipice to which he was herded by a plan to snatch away his General Motors franchise in Waynesboro.

As the sheen beams brighter in the mecca known as Waynesboro’s West End, gloom thickens downtown.

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