Short-term lending companies will have at least another year to ply their destructive wares in Virginia, offering quick cash and an endless and destructive cycle of debt. Senators this week shelved a proposal from Hampton Roads' Mamie Locke and John Miller to rein in practices that have allowed companies to charge 300 percent or more in interest on short-term loans.

This week, as Virginia’s lawmakers debated whether to expand the death penalty, the state prepared to exonerate a 56-year-old man who has spent his adult life being punished for a 1978 rape in Williamsburg that he didn’t commit.

Religious institutions receive extraordinary protections under the Constitution. Government must be exceptionally careful that its mandates don't impinge on the freedom of a religious institution to pursue its mission.

The garbage truck that killed sanitation worker Jerry Holton sits unused in a warehouse, a sinister reminder of an unanswered question.

Closing the U.S. embassy in Damascus is the clearest sign yet of how utterly and repeatedly international diplomacy has failed the people of Syria. But the alternative to diplomacy is worse.

President Bashar Assad has shelled and shot civilians and rebels in an attempt to put down an 11-month-old uprising.

Virginia has started on a path to improve the lives of its citizens with intellectual and developmental disabilities, planning to close four out of five state institutions by 2020.

It must continue to improve those lives by making sure the money that previously paid for institutional care follows those leaving state facilities to the communities they will call home.

For people accustomed to driving wherever they wished on the beach at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the restrictions imposed by a court order four years ago and by a new, and long-awaited, off-road vehicle management plan may seem unreasonable.

Not even Sheriff Bill Watson, who runs the place, thinks it’s a good use of real estate to keep a jail on Portsmouth’s waterfront. But apparently it’s a fine idea to house prisoners there.

As The Pilot’s Dave Forster reported recently, something odd has been going on in the numbers at the city jail.

Virginia Beach began the year with a smart move, delaying indefinitely a controversial plan to build a headquarters hotel for the convention center that would have used nearly $67 million in public money.

The delay offered city officials and a split City Council the opportunity to cool off, assess what went wrong and learn from mistakes.

The U.S. military's respect for its fallen is legendary. Or, rather, it used to be.

In recent months, Americans have been startled by a series of revelations about the mismanagement of graves at Arlington National Cemetery and other military burial grounds, as well as the mishandling of the remains of men and women who died in Afghanistan and Iraq.