Regarding the Feb. 19 editorial “Virginia lurches to the right”:
Where did my vote go? I am appalled at what is happening in my home state, and I wonder whose agenda the Virginia legislators are pushing. I didn’t vote for that agenda, and neither did a lot of other Virginia residents. What happened to the focus on jobs and the economy? Who flipped the focus to a draconian social rights agenda when they thought no one was looking?
I may not know where my vote went in the last election, but you can bet I know where it will be going the next time I enter a voting booth. I just hope the representatives I help elect can clearly define what they stand for and then stand up for their beliefs — and their constituents.
Janet Cave Seely, Alexandria
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The Post’s premier bit of proof that Virginia Republicans have “lurched to the right” is a proposal that welfare recipients take drug tests. Right: It’s only sheer, mad ideology for a state to ask those whose finances are so wretched that they must depend on the taxpayer for subsistence if they are also taking, recreationally, chemicals likely to render them still more wretched and unable to work.
Ask yourself: Which employer would trust his customers or business to a drug abuser? Few. Which private-sector employers, then, test would-be hires for drugs? Most. How possibly, then, does a state help welfare recipients return to independence by deliberately overlooking their possible drug use? It doesn’t.
This isn’t ideology, left or right. It is common sense.
Alexander McIlheran, Stafford
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