Perhaps inspired by fallen pop stars, Robert F. McDonnell has a drum and he’s going to beat it.

Dude, somebody, like, forgot to tell car buyers that the Camaro, General Motors’ classic muscle car, is so not cool.

The fear is that somewhere lurks Danny Padgitt, or a facsimile of him. Padgitt is a product of rough fiction from the smooth mind of John Grisham. A member of a Mississippi bootlegger family, Padgitt rapes and kills a pretty widow, then threatens to hunt down jurors if they convict him. The scenario in “The Last Juror” made for intriguing reading and another big seller for Grisham, but is rare in the nonfiction realm. As legal premise, it stinks.

Something else Sarah Palin can see from her house: The end of her 15 minutes. Since announcing that she would resign later this month as Alaska governor, a move that will keep her resume as trim as her figure, Palin has learned anew how rapidly political sheen can turn to dusk.

A crowd gathered to remember a man, and among the memories arose one of the fallen, life pulsing through him, brought to his feet by the sound of a band playing to dance as only he could.

There being 118 days between this one and the one when an election happens, Robert F. McDonnell is of the mind that R. Creigh Deeds ought to have 10 to spare for a bit of rhetorical scrapping.

Step carefully along the trail, where myths slither and sometimes bite.

THE FOURTH OF JULY EDITION

It’s good to be Timothy M. Kaine these days principally because he’s not Mark Sanford. Virginia’s governor, like his counterpart in South Carolina, gets around, but Kaine, in senses platonic and political. So while South Carolina proceeds with inquiries to determine whether Sanford, the skunk, spent taxpayer cash to pursue l’amour in Argentina, Virginia Republicans have halted nosing into the possible use of state tax money to aid Kaine’s cross-country politicking as Democratic National Committee chairman. C’est la vie.

As time goes about healing wounds, the City Council’s so-called Three Amigos brandish pleasant public faces. This is a product of necessity: Majorities require their constituent parts to remain whole. But whatever the fellas might say when notebooks are open and tapes are rolling, this is plainly not the same trio who assumed power, and apparently other things, a year ago this morning.

President Barack Obama promised transparency but has delivered murk, stirred by votes cast in a blur.

Whatever compromise it might engender, politics is more artful than art, evidenced by the ritual whir of campaign spin and a resulting diffusion of rhetorical miasma thick enough to slice. This explains the scenario that has Republican gubernatorial contender Bob McDonnell and Democratic foe R. Creigh Deeds drifting toward that gooey locus known as the center, chanting om and drawing near one another, philosophically now and maybe at the polls later, like last time.

This week’s opinion marketplace

Distant are the days when Gov. Timothy M. Kaine whisked across the commonwealth in the empyreal embrace of Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, or what may be called America’s Third Great Awakening, a time, like the second, when women swooned, spirits waxed euphoric and reason rested. His hopes of landing on the ticket with Obama cast into a state budget chasm, Kaine today plays out strings while muddy water seeps under the door. Now he hopes only to avoid getting wet.

Amid the fading furor over the killing of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a state ban on a procedure in which he specialized, partial-birth abortion. Tiller’s slaying was heinous and deserves full punishment under the law. The acts in which Tiller practiced were legal in Kansas, but barbaric. Virginia lawmakers were right to outlaw partial-birth abortion, and the Fourth Circuit to affirm them. One wicked act cannot make others just.

The absence of federal mandates be damned, Virginia third-graders will continue an annual rite, searching global maps for regions explored by Juan Ponce de Leon, describing trade in early West Africa and explaining representative democracy’s origins in ancient Greece, among other tasks.

The air was thick with anger.

For a glimpse of what ails, tickle a keyboard.

This week’s opinion marketplace

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.

THIS WEEK’S OPINION MARKETPLACE

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.