The predatory lending practice waged by car-title lenders against consumers caught in a cash squeeze will finally be regulated if Gov. Bob McDonnell signs the legislation.

At least one member of the General Assembly agrees that the state needs to increase its gasoline tax to keep the highway trust fund from going broke. But that doesn’t mean he has been able to sell the idea to tax-averse Republicans who dominate the House of Delegates.

The number of earmarks in the federal budget has dropped since last year, but that’s not the full story.

The other shoe dropped in Richmond last week, and it was a 12EEE, heavy-duty work boot.

Virginia could be on the verge of celebrating the days of the old Wild West. That’s because a State Senate committee has approved legislation that would allow bars to admit people carrying concealed weapons.

Local school boards have chafed under the thumb of politicians in Richmond for decades, having to implement one unfunded mandate or instructional policy after another hoisted upon them by office-bound bureaucrats.

Ethics investigations in the General Assembly have generally been one of the best-kept secrets in the legislature. A citizen or lawmaker can file what he or she believes to be a legitimate complaint about a conflict of interest, for example, and that’s the last anyone beyond the ethics panel hears of it.

Virginia’s ban on texting behind the wheel, enacted last year, was a good first step. But, highway safety advocates argue, it is basically a toothless law that needs some muscle. That’s because its status as a secondary offense can’t in itself prompt a traffic stop.

When city and state officials worked toward getting a second Amtrak train from Lynchburg to Washington, D.C., the idea was to get travelers to Washington. There’s so much to see and do in the nation’s capital. At the same time, business travelers always seem to be heading north.

Del. Charles W. Carrico, R-Grayson County, believes the rights of what he calls the Christian majority are being trampled by an administrative order requiring Virginia State Police chaplains to deliver non-denominational prayers at official public events. He wants the General Assembly to do something about it.

Virginia’s outgoing Transportation Secretary Pierce Homer could not have been more blunt about the state’s transportation woes than he was last month when he said the latest round of budget cuts was eating significantly into road maintenance. The bulk of that is road repaving, which has been cut by some $45 million.

In his last budget and last speech to Virginia lawmakers, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine did the best he could with dwindling revenues produced by an ailing economy.

While Congress and the special interests remain enmeshed in America’s health care reform debate, the future of health care for low-income and uninsured patients in Nelson County took a leap forward last week.

The Hanover County school superintendent painted a bleak picture for public education in Virginia recently. It’s a picture of days gone by — an era that many residents hoped Virginia would not have to revisit.

Rep. Frank Wolf, a Northern Virginia Republican congressman who represents the 10th District in the House of Representatives, is not a politician who’s prone to hyperbole.

In the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, to say that Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell faces a challenge or two as Virginia’s 71st chief executive would be to put it mildly.