After the fourth traffic fatality in slightly more than a month last year, a group of residents along Virginia 151 in Nelson County decided that was enough.

As this News & Advance editorial was being written Tuesday, millions of Americans were headed to the polls to cast their ballots in the presidential election.

The 2008 election will go down in history as one of the most important in our country’s history.

A mere four decades after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the bloody struggles of the civil rights era, a person of color — Barack Obama — was the Democrats’ nominee for president and actually won the presidency of the United States of America.

Today, thousands of Central Virginians head to the polls today to cast their ballots in the presidential and congressional races. That citizen participation is key to success of the greatest political experiment in world history, the United States of America.

The 2008 presidential election will go down in history on many counts — the possibility of the first president of color, the possibility of the first woman elected vice president, but one that should concern Americans of all political persuasions is the cost.

You would think from the way some political partisans on both sides of the ideological divide are talking, the sky will fall Tuesday night if the presidential candidate they oppose is elected to the White House.

You just want to look them square in the eyes and slowly and calmly say “Breathe … take deeeeep breaths.”

First it was the vehicular traffic on Wards Road. Spawned by shopping centers, restaurants and other new businesses, there were too many vehicles and not enough road. Additional turn lanes and more strategically located traffic signals helped resolve the problem and keep traffic moving at a reasonable pace. Now it’s pedestrian traffic on the same road, a road that’s not terribly friendly to either those who are walking or those on bicycles.

How could mass transit improvements help the flow of traffic on U.S. 29 through Charlottesville? If that sounds like a convoluted question, it is. Yet, it’s the response that Charlottesville officials are giving to the most recent charges they are dragging their feet on a U.S. 29 bypass around their fair city.

When a high-pressure natural gas pipeline leaks and explodes in the neighborhood, folks have every right to be gravely concerned.

With the challenges this country faces today and in the future, on the economic and foreign policy fronts, we sincerely believe voters would be making an unwise decision to toss aside two capable, seasoned, experienced legislators such as Bob Goodlatte and Virgil Goode.

We strongly, and enthusiastically, endorse both Goodlatte and Goode for re-election.

Presidential elections are always times when emotions run high, but this election season, things seem to be super-charged.

There’s a lot to like about each man who would be president.

But this election is too important for its outcome to hinge on whom voters like more; it’s about the political principles that this nation chooses to embrace.

John McCain, a conservative Republican of the “old school” with a modern outlook for the future, is our choice for president in 2008.

More often than not, when the topic of the Appomattox Town Council comes up, all you can do is just shake your head and wonder “What in the heck are those guys thinking?”

You can’t blame state transportation officials for not sugarcoating the grim budget news about Virginia’s system of roads and highways. The cuts will be severe and the state will have to reduce services accordingly.