The picture, a fog-bound Horseshoe at the University of South Carolina. It’s a good showing of higher education in South Carolina, at least for the last couple decades. Before we graduated from high school, we heard from more than one Carolina student — and this was prior to June 1999 — that USC was way, way more expensive for in-staters than North Carolina or Virginia. Granted, we’re not going to bust our asses to see what the average tuition was for USC, UNC and UVa were for fall 1999, but we’ve got this. So, let’s bring on the AP.

An education group says South Carolina’s public colleges charge the highest tuition among 16 Southern states.

The Post & Courier of Charleston reported Sunday that median tuition at South Carolina four-year public schools was $8,400 for the 2008-09 school year. That compares with $4,174 in North Carolina and $4,032 in Georgia.

The figures were reported by the Southern Regional Education Board. The board says part of the reason for the high tuition is because state lawmakers do not fund South Carolina public colleges at the same level as North Carolina and Georgia.

State funding at South Carolina colleges was about $4,800 a student in 2008-09. That compared with more than $11,500 per student in North Carolina and about $7,800 per student in Georgia.

Oh, really? South Carolina lawmakers are not spending on public education to the same level of other Southern states? Jesus, man, you’re blowing our minds right here. Goddamn — we guess that we missed that entire situation while spending 2.5 years in K-12 and three years in higher ed in the Palmetto State. That whole issue missed us entirely.

It doesn’t take a graduate from a college way the hell off the Interstate to tell you that South Carolina doesn’t do dick for its higher education students of a lower income (among other things) compared to North Carolina, Georgia, or especially Virginia, where we transferred from. No kidding — if UVa had as good of a public relations program as Carolina did in 2001-2002, we would be the bastards making Va. Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli‘s life a living hell. But, unfortunately for Mussolini, er, Cuccinelli, we’re here, trying to help people out.

The fact is, though the rotten core would like to dispute it, Sen. Hugh Leatherman‘s idea of capping state college tuition hikes at 7.3 percent is the least anyone can do, but it’s taking one of the most powerful members of the General Assembly to do just that. Even The Post & Courier, whose editorial board must get Christmas cards from both Mark and Jenny Sanford, says that Leatherman is making a needed move.

Many students at our colleges graduate deeply in debt. And that was before the state’s institutions of higher learning upped tuition by as much as 14.8 percent.

There is no question that colleges, like every state agency and almost every business and family, are in a financial pinch. And there is no question that South Carolina would suffer if its colleges were unable to attract and educate people to take on challenging careers in a state actively courting new industry and business.

State colleges have seen state allocations decline over the years as a percentage of their budgets, and that’s occurred more precipitately with the current drop in state revenue. As a result, colleges are more likely to increase tuition to counter the shortfall. College officials should resist the urge, recognizing that students are dealing with the tough economy, too.

Even if students are able to manage higher costs through government loans, it only delays the pain.

This year, the College of Charleston has approved a whopping 14.8 percent hike; The Citadel, a hefty 13 percent jump; and Clemson, 7.5 percent.

Perhaps Sen. Leatherman has overstepped his authority by threatening to deal with state’s colleges and universities in the next budget go-round. But who else has been willing to take up the cause of struggling students and their families?

Just like the P&C, to take a shot at Leatherman to please the Sanford moneymen (and moneywomen). Here’s an idea — help people without a shit-ton of money, but good grades, get into college. You know, merit. Don’t give people who have the benefit of name and money initial admission. South Carolina is good on academic scholarships, so we should try getting need-based grants and loans in line with other Southern states. Because, and this is just a minor idea, South Carolina could lose its best and brightest to other states, while keeping its rich and asinine in-state.

For a certain class of people, starting or helping grow a local alt-weekly publication is not unlike what owning a bar or starting a restaurant is to others. We were always big fans of Richmond, Va.’s Punchline, which was by, of and for the 18-35-year-old set that lived in The Fan, West of the Boulevard and Carytown neighborhoods. But then it happened as always happens to things that no matter how successful which are run by creatives — there was no longer enough jack to keep it up.

‘Round about the we moved back to Richmond for the upteenth incidence, Media General — whose flagship paper is the Richmond Times-Dispatch — hired Punchline‘s former editor to run a new alt-weekly, Brick. It was thinner than River City stalwart Style, and zeroed in on the arts, eschewing Punchline‘s focus and readership. But Style can’t talk, as a property of Landmark Media, owner of The Virginian-Pilot &c. Regardless, this week is Brick‘s last as a functioning publication.

The entire situation brings up several things that have been bad trends in local print media.

One is that truly independent publications run by a handful of people on a shoestring budget have a less-than-zero chance of truly making it in today’s world. We’ve thought of starting an alt-weekly in Florida, and even when Columbia City Paper was starting, we advised that creative and business be separate. It takes different mindsets to make each side work. There should be a person good with finances, marketing and advertising to make the bucks to pay the bills, and someone with skills involving news, photography and design to run what shows up on the stands. All too often, egos, bad ideas and petty disagreements get in between.

Another is that major companies like Media General let the business side take over like an ambitious mafia capo and starts dummy papers. Really, when we’d pick up Brick at fabulous places like Rosie Connolly’s, Penny Lane or The Sidewalk Cafe, we’d be done with it in less than five minutes. It almost seemed like an advertising venture to get dollars from University of Richmond students from up north and people from the Far Far Way Goddamn Far West End who clog city streets with their pimped-out Chevy Tahoes after a restaurant gets a good review in Style or the RT-D. Then there’s the “local weeklies” these companies start or take over, reprinting stories from the flagship paper and pulling in stringers. After all, the accountant says, why operate a small paper with original reporting when you can get more cash for just reprinting the same story four or five times?

Somebody should just stop Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell. First, he decided to exclude gay residents of the Old Dominion from the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, and now he’s suiting himself up in a gray suit with yellow piping.

Gov. Bob McDonnell says this afternoon the Sons of Confederate Veterans asked him to sign the proclamation recognizing April as Confederate History Month.

He said it was “worthy of doing,“ so that people can begin to understand more about Civil War history in Virginia. McDonnell, speaking with reporters on a conference call about another topic, also pointed to next year’s sesquicentennial of the beginning of the Civil War.

Asked why his proclamation did not mention slavery, McDonnell said that in issuing the proclamation he was not focusing on that aspect of the state’s past.

Yeah, oopsie. The men fighting to maintain a system of people owning other people were worthy of a proclamation from the governor of the Commonwealth, but not the thousands of men, women and children who were considered, by law at that time, as much property as a couch or dining room table.

And just like when his excellency flubbed the issue on gay rights, he royally fucked up this one, too. It’s like the second coming of Jim Gilmore. McDonnell should be happy that Virginia governors are limited to one term.

After two days of poundings by Democrats, Gov. Bob McDonnell apologized for omitting a reference to slavery in his proclamation designating April as Confederate History Month and amended it to include a condemnation of “the evil and inhumane practice.”

The governor said in a statement that his proclamation “contained a major omission.”

“The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed. The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War,” McDonnell said in a statement yesterday afternoon.

McDonnell rode to victory on a jobs platform. So far, he’s done everything but address jobs, and he’s setting up Virginia to elect a Democrat for governor in 2013.

Williamsburg is a great town, and William & Mary is a great school. Especially if you like drugs. Hey, that’s just what an alum told us back in 2000. He said his fraternity was like a drug “clearinghouse.” Weed, coke, ecstasy — whathaveyou. And it’s pretty clear that someone had to be in a deep drug binge when crafting W&M’s new sports logo.

See, the sports teams are called the Tribe. But with the NCAA’s crackdown on Native American names for teams, W&M had to do something about it. The final decision was to keep the “Tribe” name, but institute a new logo and mascot. It was, and this is easy to say, a mistake.

That, our friends, is supposed to be a green and gold griffin. You know — part eagle, part lion, totally fictional. But it’s not the griffin part we have a problem with. It’s that the school practically invented that a group of griffins is called a tribe, and, as Deadspin rightly notes, the lion parts look like naked human parts.

This artist’s rendering reveals some of the flaws in the concept. (Is he naked? Are those supposed to be ears?) The actual fuzzy costume works a little better, although the unnamed Griffin (Griffey?) is a little to proactive for my taste. Why is he so angry? And why is he looking into my soul?

The actual costume does look bad. Oh dear.

For every elected official, there’s a learning curve to get by. Bill Clinton lost the Congress before he recovered. George W. Bush was a different kettle of fish because of the five-year free pass given to him by the American public because of 9/11. In Virginia, governors have little room for error, being term-limited to one four-year period.

Va. Gov. Bob McDonnell, who campaigned on jobs and the economy, led off his term by stripping statewide legal anti-discrimination protection for gays and lesbians, something that was signed into law at the beginning of former Gov. Tim Kaine’s term. That was bad enough. Then, raging wingnut Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli issued the opinion that homosexuals cannot be protected under state law as it applies to state universities. Really.

Keep in mind that these people were elected statewide in the Old Dominion, known as “the birthplace of presidents,” some of the best public and private universities in the nation and home to some of the country’s top businesses. It would seem to us that Virginia voters went to the polls in favor of jobs and turning around the commonwealth’s economy, not culture war.

Virginia Commonwealth University, where we started our experience in higher learning, had about 1,000 people turn up, spread out between four different forums, to express their complaints and grievances regarding the insanity coming out of the Virginia attorney general’s office.

In sometimes-emotional comments to VCU Provost Stephen D. Gottfredson, students and their teachers described Cuccinelli’s action as a threat that reaches beyond sexual orientation.
“This hits me personally and professionally,“ said Carol Schall, an assistant professor in the School of Education.

The opinion affects more than the gay and lesbian community, she said. “It is about the university’s right to establish its own scholarly community and its right to maintain academic freedom.“

Describing the opinion as “mean-spirited,“ Gottfredson said it was just Cuccinelli’s interpretation of the law. “I personally beg to disagree,“ he said.

Diversity and inclusion are “embedded in the very fiber of VCU,“ he said, and those policies will stand unless the board of visitors acts to change them.

“If VCU did not protect sexual orientation, I wouldn’t have come here,“ said Luke Schlimme, a graduate student in social work who pointed out that diversity protection is required in the code of ethics for his field.

It’s taken a little while, but at least McDonnell realized he fucked up, signing an executive order that bans workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians. This is good news, but it’s still a little too specific. For instance, let’s say you don’t get served at a business because, for whatever reason, the person providing the service knows that you’re gay. You would have no legal recourse.

Think it’s not a big deal? Columbia’s own Maurice Bessinger took a case against him to the U.S. Supreme Court to try to stop the government from forcing him to serve black customers the same as he served whites. Fortunately for justice, Birmingham barbecue joint Ollie’s had already been taken to court by the Federal government and required to serve everyone, regardless of color (the Court used the interstate commerce clause to justify Federal involvement).

Regardless, Virginia residents are stepping up and showing that they will not tolerate officials who feel it’s OK to give free reign to discrimination against an entire group of people. McDonnell may get out of this without a problem, and have a chance to challenge U.S. Sen. Mark Warner in 2014. Cuccinelli, however, has motivated people who didn’t like him already to work to make sure he doesn’t have a good election in 2013.

UPDATE: McDonnell continues to backpedal after being totally owned on the issue.

The controversy — it ignited protests online and on campuses as well as in the General Assembly — threatened to tarnish McDonnell’s fledgling administration; made the state an object of ridicule on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”; and could complicate efforts to lure defense giant Northrop Grumman, which has gay-friendly employee policies, to relocate to Fairfax County from Los Angeles.

“It has caused too much fear and too much uncertainty in the business community and the higher-education establishment and among young people in the commonwealth — and I simply won’t stand for that,” McDonnell told reporters.

Yes, sir. Conducting a gigantic fuck-up that extends to businesses and higher education just might be a mistake when you’re trying to create a job-friendly environment.

Just because you got elected to one term (by law) as the governor of Virginia does not mean you’re hot shit. You may just be a godawful person when it comes to policy, and you got lucky because the electorate was not interested in electing the person from the other party. Why, hello former Va. Gov. Jim Gilmore.

Gilmore was an unmitigated disaster as chief executive of the Old Dominion. Thanks to how he spectacularly fucked up, Democrats won consecutive gubernatorial terms and he got beat by about 2-1 by former Gov. Mark Warner in the 2008 U.S. Senate race. Any conservative organization worth its bank account should know better than to involve itself with this albatross.

But apparently the Free Congress Foundation is totally A-OK with hiring Virginia’s worst governor in over a generation to head up its effort.

Though it bills itself as nonpartisan, the studies that the group published over the past year, on such issues as global warming, stem-cell research, health-care overhaul and the Nobel Peace Prize, have a decidedly anti-Obama slant.

In a letter seeking money for the organization, Gilmore said “our goal will go beyond solely moving the debate in the right direction. We need to move the country in the right direction.”

Reached at his Henrico County home, Gilmore said he no longer practices law and plans to devote most of his time to the group. He will also continue to serve on four corporate boards.

Gilmore was governor from 1998 to 2002. He was chairman of the Republican National Committee for 10 months in 2000-2001. In 2007, he explored seeking the Republican nomination to run for president, but dropped out due to lack of support.

Gilmore ran for the U.S. Senate in 2008 and lost in a landslide to Democrat Mark R. Warner, who had succeeded Gilmore as governor.

In his fundraising letter, Gilmore said, “there’s no doubt that we need to aggressively respond to the liberal agenda currently dominating the political debate in our country.

“It’s not enough to say that government-run health care, cap-and-trade policies and higher taxes and deficits are the wrong approaches. We need to advocate a positive, conservative agenda that will expand freedom, protect our culture and defend our country from terrorism and other threats.”

If the FCF had any influence before, you can consider that at an end, now. Gilmore is like the inverse King Midas — everything he touches turns to shit.

If you’re involved in public education in this state, Will Folks probably dislikes you greatly (unless you’re superintendent of education candidate Kelly Payne). Or is paid to dislike you greatly. Whatever. All the same to us. His loose cannon on Tuesday fired off to Kershaw County.

The whole “problem” was educators getting raises. FOR SHAME! Look at all those wealthy people in their spats and monocles, twirling their pocket watches, coming out of the classes they teach, and the schools they manage. Yes, we’re rolling our eyes. Because it’s totally absurd.

One of the people he calls a “moron,” is county Superintendent Frank Morgan. We know Dr. Morgan from his days in Virginia. Previously, he was the head of the Goochland County schools. He did a great job at Goochland, and the close-knit community was sad when he left to come to South Carolina. He, unlike Willy Will, is not a moron. Morgan is a man charged with the responsibility of administering a rural, but growing, school district, much like he did in the Old Dominion. And he left a legacy of success in Goochland.

However, he must have had a screw loose to come to a state that has abandoned public education since integration, and has a very small but very vocal crowd that is pumped up by out-of-state cash to destroy public education forever. At least in Virginia, there is a commitment to making sure that children, no matter their financial background or family relations, get a good education.

It doesn’t happen that often anymore, thanks to the inclusion of lethal injection among the options, but a man condemned to death for murder got fried by Virginia’s electric chair on Tuesday. Gov. Tim Kaine, who is against the death penalty (he’s also pro-life, for what it’s worth), declined to stay the execution.

Death-row inmate Larry Bill Elliott was executed last night for the 2001 murder of Dana Thrall of Prince William County.

Elliott, 60, a former Army intelligence officer from Hanover, Md., died in the electric chair at Greensville Correctional Center, about 60 miles south of Richmond. He was pronounced dead at 9:08 p.m. He had met with his family, a spiritual adviser and his lawyers earlier in the day.

Elliott entered the room under the escort of correction officers who attached a metal clasp lined with a moistened sponge to his shaved right calf, affixed a metallic cap lined with a sponge to his shaved head and covered his face with a leather mask.

He was then strapped into the oak chair. In the presence of representatives of the attorney general and state corrections officials, an officer in a side room pushed the “execute button” at 9 p.m., sending 1,800 volts through Elliott’s body for 30 seconds, followed by a 60-second burst of 240 volts.

Elliott’s body tensed at the first surge and again a second time when the cycle was repeated for another 90 seconds. The room was silent.

Five minutes later, a physician entered and put a stethoscope to his chest. He looked up several seconds later at officials in the plain white room and said simply, “9:08.”

Good lord. That’s a full three minutes of juice. The man was probably barbecued. And here we get to the point. On Wednesday’s “Tony Kornheiser Show” on ESPN 980 in DC, a regular emailer sent in his haiku about the situation. It goes like this:

“Virginia justice
Time to fire up ol’ Sparky
Smells like hot dogs”

Believe it or not, South Carolina is the fourth-happiest state in the South. According to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, the Palmetto State is the only trails Virginia, Texas and Georgia in being the happiest state in Dixie. Of all the states in America, Virginia rocks No. 15, Texas shows up at No. 21, Georgia ranks No. 23, while South Carolina comes in at No. 26.

Happiest States in the South
15. Virginia
21. Texas
23. Georgia
26. South Carolina
30. Florida
33. Alabama
34. North Carolina
40. Louisiana
42. Tennessee
46. Arkansas
48. Mississippi
49. Kentucky
50. West Virginia

We’re not making assumptions based on the New Jersey results or the final in NY-23. But, we do know a thing or two about Virginia, and we’re fairly confident that the results in the 2009 elections in Virginia hold as much significance as a dog’s bollocks. Frankly, it comes down to some simple issues.

Mark Warner and Tim Kaine won their elections in 2001 and 2005 by the slimmest of margins. We weren’t in Virginia for the Kaine gubernatorial victory, but we do remember Warner. He was a very centrist candidate — he sponsored a Craftsman Truck Series vehicle, and was endorsed by the Wood Brothers. As well, Warner had name recognition. He had run a high-profile campaign against then-U.S. Sen. John Warner in 1996, while having a shit-ton of self-made money to dump into that race, the same as in his 2001 campaign.

Kaine was lucky enough to piggyback off of Warner. He was beloved as the Richmond mayor, then gained statewide recognition as lieutenant governor. As a pro-life Democrat with the Dem establishment solidly behind him, Kaine was in a great place to take on a Republican challenger in 2005.

Sen. Creigh Deeds did not have any of these advantages. Despite his 2005 run for attorney general, Deeds was not widely-known, and didn’t have the voter-rich constituency that Kaine had nor the connections with business and money that Warner had. The Virginia race could have been called two months ago.

Of course, a lot of conservatives are losing their shit about the wins in Virginia. To us, though, it’s not all that surprising. Barack Obama won the Old Dominion in the Electoral College because of very motivated Democrats, and especially very motivated black Democrats. It’s like a big win by an underdog in college football. Forgive us, but this is of what we think. In 2007, Alabama beat the total dogshit out of Tennessee. It was beautiful. However, the Crimson Tide went 0-for-November, including losing to UL-Monroe.

Obama winning Virginia in 2008 was like Bama taking out the Vols in 2007. It was a big win, and should have been left at that. Just because someone takes home a big win doesn’t mean that it’s the start of a trend. Virginia has been a conservative state for some time. Governor-elect Bob McDonnell ran a great race and capitalized where he should have and won a solid victory. Anything less would be something to worry about for the GOP.