THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 17, 1996 TAG: 9606150020
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
LENGTH: 49 lines
OK, all you Democrats and independents who voted in Tueday's Republican Party. You know who you are.
And so does the Republican Party.
In case you didn't know it, a Virginia state law allows candidates, party officials and others to obtain copies of voter lists after elections. They do pay a fee for the lists and, of course, it doesn't tell how you voted.
In a state without party registration, those lists often function as rough political-party-supporter lists. And both parties regularly buy these lists.
They can't make you join the party. But it does mean that any day now your mailbox will be full of warm greetings from Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole and local GOP candidates. Did that make sense?
Southern Baptist Convention leaders voted last week to boycott Walt Disney Co. cartoons, toys and theme parks.
They were angry because Disney had extended health benefits to companions of homosexual employees, had refused to cancel a ``Gay Day at Disney'' and owned companies that released movies with adult themes and language.
What made some readers of the story do a double-take was that the decision to boycott Disney, a name associated with family entertainment, was made in New Orleans, a city associated with sin.
That's like deciding at a convention in Las Vegas to boycott Indian products because some reservations have bingo. Jammed in
Attorney General James Gilmore, who seems determined to be remembered as Virginia's Wyatt Earp, is tackling yet another prison problem: Lorton.
Who can argue with Gilmore's federal lawsuit, which argues that Washington, D.C., ought to take its bad guys home? The Lorton Correctional Center started as a farm labor camp in 1916 for about 60 Washington offenders and has grown to house 7,200 inmates and cover 3,200 acres.
For many years there was a Fairfax County Elementary School next door, which, in addition to ordinary fire drills, practiced prison break-out drills where students were hustled indoors and the school was locked down.
Recent prison escapes, drug seizures and inmate unrest have frightened law-abiding Virginians living nearby.
On the other hand, the District of Columbia has one really good reason to keep its prison in the Northern Virginia suburbs: escapees can't get very far because traffic is so snarled. by CNB