Bob Lewis, Virginia Mercury

Mixing politics, law enforcement and religion is a difficult high-wire act under the best of circumstances. Add in a sex sting operation and you’re toeing the wire over the Grand Canyon without a net or safety harness in the middle of a blizzard.

Chesterfield County’s commonwealth’s attorney, Stacey Davenport, should know that.

A lurid, real-life soap opera with all those elements, and more turns than a mountain backroad, is playing itself out in Chesterfield County and showing up in headlines from sea to shining sea. ...

A Virginia man drove the width of the United States, kidnapped a 15-year-old girl, shot her mother and grandparents dead in cold blood, torched their home and then killed himself in a shootout with California police. The gun he used came with the badge he wore back in Virginia.

So many questions. And to date, not enough answers.

Cops are vested with extraordinary legal authority over us in enforcing society’s laws, up to and including the taking of lives if their training and judgment tells them it’s necessary. ...

The myopic partisan brinksmanship that is the predominant pursuit of Congress these days reached a seeming impasse last week over a critical vote to raise the federal debt limit before our elected elites did what they do best: kick the can down the road.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., offered the Democrats, who hold the slimmest possible majority in the 100-seat Senate, an “off-ramp" ahead of an Oct. 18 deadline for Congress to increase the government's $28.5 trillion line of credit. The Democrats lunged at the offer with the desperation of a drowning person groping for a floatation device.

Without such a delay, the nation was on course to default on its debts for the first time one week from today. That would have left the government unable to fund its operations or pay its bills, potentially plunging the planet into a financial catastrophe....