Having correctly decided against increasing taxes, the Waynesboro City Council now must play the part of budgetary mercenary, wading through the numeric jungle in search of $600,000 wanted for dead, at least until next year.

Check your pots for chickens. If no cluckers are found, it is only because the Straight Talk Express has not yet rumbled onto Pennsylvania Avenue and deposited its contents, an Arizona senator foremost among them, on the White House lawn.

A thumbs-up, thumbs-down assessment of newsmakers here and beyond:

A thumbs-up, thumbs-down assessment of newsmakers here and beyond:

Affected by a level of delirium suggestive of a Stephen King short story, Augusta County Republicans have taken to feeding on their own flesh in desperate hope of sustaining starving ambitions. Worse, the loss of mind is spreading.

Employing a tactic of leftist politicos and street hustlers, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine pointed to a looming transportation apocalypse while extending government’s sticky mitts toward taxpayers’ back pockets Monday.

When the law, families and education intersect, as they do in America with increased frequency, ugly collisions are inevitable.

Beware government’s helping hand, poised to plunge into the mortgage crisis and sweep to the floor a wounded market rising, feebly but resolutely, to recover.

Spectral figures and troubling alliances form the silhouettes behind the gleaming light of Barack Obama’s resurgence from the political darkness.

Banished to the ideological wilderness, conservatives want to know who sent them and why.

A thumbs-up, thumbs-down assessment of newsmakers here and beyond:

The product of an intense campaign that culminated with Tuesday’s election is a shift in power on the Waynesboro City Council. One thing has not changed: Factions and the dread terms, majority and minority, remain entrenched in City Hall lingo.

Straining like the Israelites under the Pharaoh’s burdens, colonial America turned on the Empire and cast it into the Atlantic.

Questions continue to be raised locally about the Wayne Theatre project.

Beyond the swell of prices at local gas pumps surges untapped sanity and increased independence in the form of domestic crude.

The influence of former trial lawyer and twice-failed presidential aspirant John Edwards radiates still like a noxious gas, the fumes extending beyond his native North Carolina, and his home covering 40,000 square feet of that state, to, of all places, Waynesboro.

A thumbs-up, thumbs-down assessment of newsmakers here and beyond:

Those who bleed gushers from open veins are unlikely to object to trickles resulting from the infliction of lesser wounds. Pulsing with such gothic rationale, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and his Democratic abettors approach, eyes aglow. As gas prices surge toward $4 a gallon, Kaine is readying for a vampiric push next month to increase the state gas tax, principally to pay for road improvements in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.

Chris Graham is a man for the people; Waynesboro Orchestra deserves an applause

In an era when convenience is everything and pain is passe, tragedy of magnitude is the accelerator for government’s perpetually revving engine of reform.

Strange must be the forces that compel one to exchange an online reporter’s hat for that of local politician, but Chris Graham has shown dexterity in making the transition.

A man who smiles easily and speaks softly, Frank Lucente is regarded by his enemies as the big stick who has carried the city’s divided council into the mud.

A thumbs-up, thumbs-down assessment of newsmakers here and beyond:

Coinciding with Democratic presidential aspirant Barack Obama’s rapid descent from the realm of messiah is the demise of the phenomenon of swooning women at campaign rallies. Bodies no longer tumble to the floor, but poll numbers are headed toward that destination, an occurrence of little consolation to the fresh-faced senator from Illinois. This is clearly not the change for which he had hoped.

Anticipating an election that will vigorously stir their dysfunctional dynamics, members of the City Council have drifted into a state in which confusion is everything.

Having endured the withering recognition that U.S. farm aid is a boondoggle of biblical proportions, federal lawmakers have responded in the fashion of Rehoboam, increasing the empire’s burden on the backs of the people.

Never mind the persistent appearance of frost on windshields and lawns each morning, the sweet season known as spring is upon us, and the evidence today is in the water and in the spirited running of the trout

A thumbs-up, thumbs-down assessment of newsmakers here and beyond:

Impressively reducing the likelihood of inaccuracy in their prognostications, scientists as a collective have amended previous hysteria to declare with reasonable certainty that either the Earth will warm or it will cool. So is proved the verity of a cliche, slightly amended: The more scientists change, the more they stay the same.

Possessed of the unaffected amiability of a man who has lived all of his 59 years in the shadows of the Blue Ridge, Sen. Emmett Hanger wears a country politician’s easy smile as he muses over the turn of some corners of his political world against him.