"Virginia State Senate Moves Ahead on Electoral College-Rigging Bill."

What, exactly, makes this "rigging"?

"Eleven days after the windstorm, more than 2,300 Amherst County residents remain without power."

"To beat the heat, some chose to stay in an unlikely shelter — the old Amherst County Jail."

Seventeen people took refuge in the jail Monday morning. At the height of the power outages, the jail housed as many as 40 people.

The old jail, which closed Dec. 31, 2011 after a new regional facility opened in Madison Heights, served a cooling station in the aftermath of the storm.

Empty cells transformed into rooms. Children played in the recreational yard once occupied by prisoners. A crib sat inside a sparse cell.

Life in Virginia, one of the united states of America.

"Wow! Jimmy Dean. He was pretty cute when he was young!"

What I exclaimed, after seeing that Jimmy Dean had died and Googling "Jimmy Dean" and seeing this...



... and it took me a couple seconds to recover from the dazzle of male beauty and realize the essential stupidity of Google.

What I was really looking for was the old TV show, "The Jimmy Dean Show." What passed for entertainment in 1964:



Was Rowlf the Dog the original Muppet? He was the first Muppet star!

I remember watching that show. I don't have much to say about Jimmy Dean. He seemed like a nice man — I've heard otherwise, but I won't pass the story on. He's dead. Here's a piece about whether, now that Dean's dead, Dean's song "Virginia" ought become the Virginia state song:

Virginia is one of the few states that has no official tune. It's been without one since 1997, when the General Assembly retired "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia," because its lyrics were deemed racist. 

"Deemed racist"? "Virginny" was "where the old darke'ys heart am long'd to go."

The state has repeatedly tried to choose a replacement, notably by appointing a 12-member committee that sifted through 400 suggestions and whittled them down to eight finalists.

One of those finalists was the appropriately titled "Virginia." It was a ditty played for legislative committees by its composer, song-writer and Varina resident Jimmy Dean.

Is the song any good? I can't find an on-line video rendition of it, and apparently neither could the author of the linked column. There's video there, but not of the song "Virginia." It's a video of Jimmy Dean singing his hit song "Big Bad John." Which he didn't write. (It's by Dean and Roy Acuff.) [CORRECTION: Dean co-wrote the song. Somehow I managed to read "Dean and Roy Acuff" as referring to Roy Acuff and some other guy named Dean Acuff! Ha.] And it's a big, big song. I love it. I listen to it every time it comes on "60s on 6" (my favorite satellite radio channel). Go listen to it. I don't think there's a better storytelling song. 

Do I have to mention the sausage too? (NSFW:)

"[H]alting a decade of Democratic advances in the critical swing state..."

"... Virginians elected Republican Robert F. McDonnell the Commonwealth's 71st governor Tuesday...."