Nothing in this world is free; there’s a cost to someone somewhere along the supply chain and someone, ultimately, has to pay.

With the cost of gasoline reaching levels that few thought possible, the demand for mass transit is growing along with those frightful prices. Expanded passenger rail service for the region could be part of the new mass transit system if the state can find the money.

To say that Jim Gilmore and the state Republican Party face a tough fight to retain John Warner’s U.S. Senate would be to utter the understatement of the year.

There has to be something in the water in Central Virginia. That’s the only possible explanation we can come up with for the outbreak of that dreaded disease, “closed-governmentitis,” that’s spreading throughout the region.

With the Senate’s approval of an updated GI Bill, Virginia Sen. Jim Webb sealed his effectiveness as a freshman member of that legislative body. He made improving benefits for America’s military forces a campaign issue in 2006 and just 16 months later, he has produced results. That is, unless President Bush vetoes a similar measure in the House.

The “Click It or Ticket” campaign now under way in Virginia would be far more effective if the state had a seatbelt law that made not wearing the important safety device a primary traffic offense.

Usually, the biggest complaint residents hear from City Hall or the seat of county government is that the budget is too tight, that there is simply not enough money to meet all the pressing needs of government. Tight budgets are often associated with projected expenses that exceed the revenues to pay for them.

Say the phrase “Memorial Day,” and more people than you’d imagine will think of city pools opening, the first three-day weekend of the year, cookouts, the unofficial start of summer, big sales at the mall. Fewer and fewer people today would first think it’s the day to honor America’s war dead.

Just up the road in Charlottesville, the folks at the University of Virginia just may have found the answer to one of the most perplexing problems at all levels of education: how to engage minority students intellectually and graduate.

In the United States, there are close to 27,000 public high schools, filled with tens of thousands of dedicated faculty and hundreds of thousands of students.

Somewhere in the sad story about the Amherst County High School star football player’s being arrested on drug charges, there’s a valuable lesson.

When Sweet Briar College administrators decided to buy Tusculum and dismantle it in 2006, they sensed it was important to the history of the college and its relationship with Amherst County.

With oil prices still hovering at near-record highs, a survey of oil and gas industry executives offered some good news last week. A majority of them believes oil prices will drop below $100 a barrel by the end of the year.

A variety of nonprofit, community-focused organizations throughout the city are feeling the pain brought on by the precarious financial situation of Bluffwalk Center.

Transportation is a pressing statewide problem one governor after another and one General Assembly after another has ignored for the past two decades.

In this day and age, Internet access — fast Internet access — is almost an economic necessity. That’s what makes a recent study on broadband penetration rates so disturbing.

Have the people in Northern Virginia — Fairfax County in particular — become so inured to the presence of guns in their culture that no one raises an eyebrow over the guy in a restaurant with a holstered pistol on his hip?

A regional plan for adequate future water supplies is taking shape exactly when it should — when supplies are relatively robust and the need for additional sources has not reached the point of a crisis.

In the days following a cyclone of apparent epic proportions, how do the government leaders of Burma move to help the thousands of homeless, starving people?

We’ve had presidents caricatured as baboons (Abraham Lincoln), bigamists (Andrew Jackson), B-class actors (Ronald Reagan) and country hicks (Harry Truman). You get the picture, and it’s not a pretty one.

In the wake of Tuesday’s City Council elections in Lynchburg, there are some things that will change and some things that won’t.

Although Gov. Timothy M. Kaine did not get all the money he proposed to the 2008 General Assembly to expand early childhood education across Virginia, he did get money to nurture early-learning programs around the state.

Most Virginians say they want a solution to meet the growing needs of the state’s beleaguered transportation system. But are they willing to pay for it?

With the cost of energy rising almost daily, it only makes sense to focus on energy efficiency in homes built for Habitat for Humanity families.

If public interviews for School Board members are good enough for other city councils, why not here in Lynchburg?

Tomorrow’s Election Day in the city of Lynchburg, and we hope thousands of voters in each of the city’s four wards will turn out to cast their ballots in the City Council races.