Virginia Senator Mark Obenshein (R-Harrisonburg) has introduced a bill that would require women to report a miscarriage to law enforcement authorities. Violations would be a Class I misdemeanor (punishable by up to a year in jail). Seriously:

Requires that when a fetal death occurs without medical attendance upon the mother at or after the delivery or abortion, the mother or someone acting on her behalf, within 24 hours, report the fetal death, location of the remains, and identity of the mother to the local or state police or sheriff’s department of the city or county where the fetal death occurred. The bill also specifies that no one shall remove, destroy, or otherwise dispose of any remains without the express authorization of law-enforcement officials or the medical examiner, and that a violation of this section is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Now about a third of pregnancies end in miscarriages and most of those occur before a woman even is aware she’s pregnant. A large number of those that don’t fall into that category afflict women who are trying — sometimes desperately — to have a child. Miscarriages can be dangerous to a woman’s health and even if not, are often traumatic.

So the party of “small government” now wants to make sure the government can track who is pregnant and for whatever reason doesn’t end up bearing a live child. To what purpose?

Alas, Obenshein legislation doesn’t say, but we can guess.

Idiot.

Elections. (More on that later.)

The ground has moved a little, here in Virginia. Many others have covered the details.

With the governor’s mansion and the Senate in Democratic hands (and a smaller GOP majority in the House), a Democrat in the U.S. Senate and the likelihood of another next year, Virginia may be in play for the presidential candidates for the first time in my memory, which goes back to when I moved here in 1978.

Time to get ready for the onslaught.

Please don’t do this again. Look at the FISA bill you’re going to be asked to vote for. Find the best expert on Constitutional law you can find, and ask for a thorough briefing. Don’t take anyone’s word for what’s in the bill or how badly it’s needed. On this topic, the people you trusted let you down and they’re about to do it again.

This isn’t about terrorism or 9/11 or Al Qaeda. The White House and the spymasters wanted these powers six months before 9/11 and before Al Qaeda was a blip on the radar screen. In August, they lied to you. They’re lying to you again.

Put a hold on this monstrosity. Filibuster if you must. Vote no, no matter what.

This bill has nothing to do with fighting terrorism or national security. It’s unnecessary. It’s abusive. Voting for it violates your oath of office.

Stop this madness now.

I don’t know what kind of Senator Mark Warner will be. When Jim Webb was elected, I expected he would do things and say things I wouldn’t like much — from time to time anyway. That certainly turned out to be true.

And I suspect I’ll feel the same way about Warner. I’m not one who expects my elected officials to toe some kind of artificial line. Political behavior always is relative.

Is Webb the best Senator ever? No. Is he better than the man he replaced? Of course.

Will Mark Warner be the best Senator ever? No, at least not for a die-hard progressive like me. Will Virginia and the country be better off if he goes to the Senate? Without a doubt.

There are some who tie their own identity up in the candidates they support, or the positions they support, to the point of being personally insulted when someone else dares to criticize the positions or the candidates. Seems like a waste of emotional energy to me.

I’m going to vote for Mark Warner. I’m going to work my keister off for him, as I did for Mr. Webb. And when he disappoints me, I’m going to let him and the world know about it, as I did when Jim Webb voted for that God-awful FISA bill.

It’s going to take many elections to put the country on the right track again. Probably more than I’ll live to see, alas. Mark Warner is a big step in that direction.

A Warner victory (or, more properly, a good prospect for one) combined with some solid gains in this year’s legislative elections will put Virginia in play for the presidential primaries and the presidential election next fall. For those of us partisans who relish the opportunity to make our case to the largest audience and the most influential politicians, it’s going to be very exciting and very rewarding.

In essence, the argument goes…

I don’t care if the government listens to my phone calls or reads where I go on the internet. I personally don’t have anything to hide. And I doubt most of the people online do either. So sue me for not getting fired up over an issue that doesn’t matter to me.

But I’ve thought about it and this is why it should matter and does matter to all of us:

The men who wrote the Constitution and those who ratified it, had in the 15 years prior, endured the tyranny and oppression of a high-handed monarch, fought and won a difficult war for their independence and suffered through the problems of a dysfunctional confederation. When they met in Philadelphia, it was to fix the government and permanently protect themselves and their descendants from the possibility that another tyrant would rule over them.

When they restricted the government’s ability to search and seize (and spy) without a warrant, when they limited the ability to suspend habeas corpus, they were setting up the rules to make it possible for citizens to conspire and organize against a potential tyrant before he (or she) could assume absolute power.

They wrote these rules into the Constitution so they would not be easy to change, because they knew that in some legitimate emergency, the temptation to sacrifice them for a quick fix of security would be irresistible.

The problem is that once sacrificed, these rights are difficult to reclaim. And once these rights are sacrificed, the safeguards our forefathers put in place won’t be there when a real tyrant rears his head.

I’m not doing anything now that I wouldn’t want my government to observe. But if there ever comes a day when I need to do what the founders had to do, I’d hope the tyrant couldn’t watch or listen, thank you.