It’s printed on the Opinion page of The News & Advance every day of the week, but sometimes we take it for granted, often to our peril.

It’s the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Environmentalists and other supporters are calling the Senate’s failure last week to advance global warming legislation a missed opportunity. In that it would have been the beginning on the part of the United States to tackle the worldwide problem, they are right.

The Greater Lynchburg Transit Company has had its share of budget lumps in the past several years. Revenue shortfalls and budget cuts at the hand of the city have meant the elimination of some routes. Fewer buses are available on other routes.

There’s a school of thought out there that lays out the characteristics of a local economy that’s on perpetually strong ground.

It’s no secret that individuals or individual groups with common interests can have more clout and attract more attention if they put their efforts together under one organization.

It’s hard to believe that just six years ago, much of the East Coast and southeastern parts of the United States were caught in the grips of one of the worst droughts on record.

Just two weeks from today, the 140 members of the General Assembly will hit the highways, heading back to the state Capitol in Richmond to tackle the commonwealth’s transportation crisis.

The best use of a portion of the old Carver-Price School in Appomattox was always as a museum detailing the black history of the county. It just took a while to get there.

The new state-of-the-art regional cancer center will open later this month, giving Central Virginia residents one more reason to be thankful for living here. It is Centra Health’s Alan B. Pearson Regional Medical Center.

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.