Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent
Politics
Faith
Liberty
Posted

Back in January, Melissa and I went on a seven-day cruise to the eastern Caribbean. First we spent a few days in San Juan, Puerto Rico, then we boarded the Norwegian Epic for a journey to the British Virgin Islands, Antigua, Barbados, Saint Lucia, Sint Maarten and Saint Martin, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

It was a good thing that we decided to spend that time in San Juan before the cruise, because that meant we were already in Puerto Rico before the airspace shut down for U.S. military operations in Venezuela. Unfortunately a lot of people missed the cruise—I heard rumors that more than a thousand of the expected passengers didn’t make it.

Anyway, this trip was mostly for relaxing. I didn’t take my “real” camera, so all these photos are from my phone, and I didn’t even take pictures of everything  . . . but I still wanted to share the ones I did take. It was a good time.

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Virginia Statewide Ballot Issue, Special, 2026

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Seal of Virginia

Citizens of Virginia will be voting in a special election on April 21, 2026, on a referendum to amend the Constitution of Virginia. Early voting begins on March 6.

Under Article XII, Section 1, of the state constitution, the process requires a proposed amendment to pass both houses of the General Assembly in two sessions with an intervening general election for the House of Delegates, after which it is presented to the voters in a referendum. If approved, the state constitution is modified, and the change can only be reversed by another amendment.

The Virginia General Assembly violated voters’ civil rights to equal protection under the law during the adoption and scheduling processes for this proposed amendment. The first passage occurred during (not before) the 2025 general election, so the proposed amendment cannot be considered for a second passage until after the 2027 general election. Additionally, early voting is scheduled to begin only forty-nine days after the purported second passage; the state constitution requires an interval of at least ninety days.

This referendum is therefore unconstitutional, and it is void regardless of the result. But there is no guarantee that the Supreme Court of Virginia will do the right thing and invalidate it, so I will offer my usual endorsement. I strongly encourage voters to participate so their will is reflected if the court refuses to do its duty.

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Hyundai Santa Fe
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There have been a handful of changes to the list of ugly cars for 2026. Two longstanding models have gone on to the great junkyard in the sky: the BMW X4 and the Kia Soul. The redesigned Kia Sportage makes its debut appearance, and the Hyundai Santa Cruz climbs back into the last spot (after being pushed off the bottom last year).

As I’ve been saying for several years, the auto industry is currently in a bland phase. There aren’t many truly ugly cars, but there are plenty of uninteresting, boring, unattractive ones. That means some of the entrants near the bottom of this list aren’t that ugly. That doesn’t mean they look good though.

To qualify for this list, a car must be sold in volume to the general public in the United States. Volume is defined subjectively based on my observations (if I see them on the roads, they qualify; if I don’t, they don’t). Vehicles are excluded if they are not sold new in North America, sell in very low volume, or are sold only for exotic, military, commercial, or other special purposes.

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VPAP
Posted

The Virginia General Assembly has proposed an amendment to the Constitution of Virginia that would, according to the proposed ballot question, “allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census.” It is scheduled to be put to a statewide referendum in a special election on April 21.

Between the unusual scheduling in a special election (instead of a general election) and the false claim embedded in the question itself (that Virginia’s existing congressional districts, which were drawn under a nonpartisan process the voters overwhelmingly approved six years ago, are “unfair”), it’s pretty clear that this is a transparently political attempt by Democrats in the General Assembly to redraw districts for the party’s benefit  . . . but that’s a topic for another day. The amendment is being challenged on several legal fronts and there are serious constitutional issues involved. The Supreme Court of Virginia has allowed it to go forward for now, but has not yet ruled on its constitutionality.

This article is only about the process by which this amendment got passed and scheduled. I will publish a detailed analysis and endorsement article about the referendum itself closer to the election. (Update, March 4, 2026: See Virginia Statewide Ballot Issue, Special, 2026.)

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AdamG2016, CC BY-SA 4.0
Posted

The 2020 presidential election was a strange and controversial moment in American history. Then-incumbent President Donald Trump (R) was challenged by former Vice President Joe Biden (D), and the campaign took place amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the absurd overreaction to it, widespread race riots, on-the-fly changes to election rules and norms, and generally enflamed political tensions.

Biden won a 306-232 electoral majority; Trump and many of his supporters claim the election was stolen.

In my 2024 review of Trump’s election-related federal indictments, I included a background analysis of the 2020 election. Because of the pandemic, early and absentee voting was greatly expanded—about 70% of the electorate voted before the nominal election day. As I said in my analysis, “it is obviously easier to cheat when identities are not verified and there is not even a need to be physically present in a public space to fill out a ballot,” but “there is no evidence that there was enough of this fraud to change the outcome of the race.”

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Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.