It’s good to be Timothy M. Kaine these days principally because he’s not Mark Sanford. Virginia’s governor, like his counterpart in South Carolina, gets around, but Kaine, in senses platonic and political. So while South Carolina proceeds with inquiries to determine whether Sanford, the skunk, spent taxpayer cash to pursue l’amour in Argentina, Virginia Republicans have halted nosing into the possible use of state tax money to aid Kaine’s cross-country politicking as Democratic National Committee chairman. C’est la vie.

As time goes about healing wounds, the City Council’s so-called Three Amigos brandish pleasant public faces. This is a product of necessity: Majorities require their constituent parts to remain whole. But whatever the fellas might say when notebooks are open and tapes are rolling, this is plainly not the same trio who assumed power, and apparently other things, a year ago this morning.

President Barack Obama promised transparency but has delivered murk, stirred by votes cast in a blur.

Whatever compromise it might engender, politics is more artful than art, evidenced by the ritual whir of campaign spin and a resulting diffusion of rhetorical miasma thick enough to slice. This explains the scenario that has Republican gubernatorial contender Bob McDonnell and Democratic foe R. Creigh Deeds drifting toward that gooey locus known as the center, chanting om and drawing near one another, philosophically now and maybe at the polls later, like last time.

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Distant are the days when Gov. Timothy M. Kaine whisked across the commonwealth in the empyreal embrace of Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, or what may be called America’s Third Great Awakening, a time, like the second, when women swooned, spirits waxed euphoric and reason rested. His hopes of landing on the ticket with Obama cast into a state budget chasm, Kaine today plays out strings while muddy water seeps under the door. Now he hopes only to avoid getting wet.

Amid the fading furor over the killing of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a state ban on a procedure in which he specialized, partial-birth abortion. Tiller’s slaying was heinous and deserves full punishment under the law. The acts in which Tiller practiced were legal in Kansas, but barbaric. Virginia lawmakers were right to outlaw partial-birth abortion, and the Fourth Circuit to affirm them. One wicked act cannot make others just.

The absence of federal mandates be damned, Virginia third-graders will continue an annual rite, searching global maps for regions explored by Juan Ponce de Leon, describing trade in early West Africa and explaining representative democracy’s origins in ancient Greece, among other tasks.

The air was thick with anger.

For a glimpse of what ails, tickle a keyboard.

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Government wastes like a fat man breathes, heavier and more frequently with each step. Few agencies are fatter than state departments of transportation, whose waste may be anything but voluntary. Feeding perpetually on taxpayer money, state DOTs are a traditional repository of raw gluttony, with parasitic legions swarming to nibble and sometimes chomp at bounties of billions of dollars. A query that percolates in the commonwealth: Is VDOT different?

Gray clouds persist in spreading ethereal gloom, but not in blocking the sun, which shines again today over the central Valley oblivious to conditions meteorological and economic. This time, the light emanates from a familiar source, the Augusta Medical Center, now known as Augusta Health. The regional hospital, which long has prospered in the vanished wake of a clash over its emergence, is on the move.

Presumptions that prevail tell us that when business calls, Democrats answer with hard flicks to the nose and Republicans with coos.

Reggie Love, a former Duke University basketball team captain and a fellow who wears the look of one who can take care of himself, emerged last month from a session on the hardwood with his boss and a few pals sporting a bandage on his chin.

It is the particular gift of political stars to feel pulses and tap them.

Regarding The News Virginian’s Friday editorial, “Firing shots at the shadows,” I won’t enter into the good editor’s fray as to the reasons for my contrariness.

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There Tracy Pyles goes again, standing with crossed arms, chin jutted skyward and his back to Augusta County supervisors, his fellows in name only.

Barack Obama, a reserve of steamy rhetorical air, will supply to Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate a mighty wind, whether it pushes, pulls or breaks is a thing to be determined.

From the Bath County backwoods and the malaise of quiet left in the wake of Barack Obama’s clamorous presidential ascension, R. Creigh Deeds emerged Tuesday as the Democratic nominee for governor.

Having maintained precedent, Terry McAuliffe seeks today to batter it and in November to swing a shattering blow.

Manna descends, carrying with it the same hazards as the sweet-tasting stuff of biblical lore.

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A rough ride to recovery or further recession into the political backwaters advances Tuesday from trot to canter for Republicans here and elsewhere. This places upon the shoulders of the GOP’s carefully coiffed Virginia gubernatorial candidate a burden of hope that he so far appears able to carry though his party falters.

In the unsafe but sure world of Hollywood horror, faith in the resurrection is empirical: the bad guy always rises from the dead. Life adds a twist: sometimes the bad guy wins. That scenario plays on continuous loop in another world, that of the blogosphere where conspiracy theorists hover and are dismissed. Still, a peek inside, revealing a bogeyman stirring, troubles.

Ascending again from originalism’s detritus is a method of opposition leftists are credited with originating but, in the case of Sonia Sotomayor, suddenly scorn.

Aromas wafting from Washington bear a semblance to things bears do in the woods, acts that disturb olfactory sensibilities but don’t surprise much.

T.S. Eliot, occasionally ill at ease within himself and a chronicler of the phenomenon, wrote of the Mississippi, “The river is within us.” What then might the poet say of Waynesboro, where a river snakes and is eyed suspiciously, as if coiled and ready to strike?

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