GOOD blogging takes lots of time. More time than I have right now. But hope springs eternal, and I'm not taking Virginius down just yet.

JOSEPH SHATTAN reminds us of Churchill's 1919 warning about the Bolsheviks, and of how today's Muslim extremists are just as much to be feared:

Churchill: "[The Bolsheviks] seek as the first condition of their being the overthrow and destruction of all existing institutions and of every State and Government now standing in the world. They too aim at a worldwide and international league, a league of the failures, the criminals, the unfit, the mutinous, the morbid, the deranged and the distraught in every land; and between them and such order of civilization as we have been able to build up since the dawn of history there can, as Lenin rightly proclaims, be neither truce nor pact."

Shattan: "Replace Lenin with bin Laden (or Khomeini, or Saddam Hussein, or that unregenerate arch-terrorist, Yassir Arafat) and you have an excellent picture of what we are up against today."

Wasn't Churchill awesome?

THE ComPost STILL doesn't understand the situation. Real Virginians don't want to live in "one of the ten lowest-taxed states." We want to live in the least taxed state. Numero cincuenta. No state's citizens taxed less, every other state's citizens taxed more. Virginia needs to adopt a USMC-like attitude about state spending: re-use, recycle, make do, and never throw anything away until it's worn out and can't be fixed.

"TAX ME MORE!" Virginia may follow in Arkansas' footsteps with a "Tax Me More" fund, reports the Times. Reader TIM WISE says that Til Hazel should contribute the first million dollars, and the Northern Virginia Roundtable the second. Then we might believe they're serious about funding their pet projects with somebody's money besides ours.

JUST ONE MORE TERM, OKAY MOM? - "The 7 million people of Virginia will send me a signal when it's time to step down," Sen. John Warner tells a rally audience. Well, Senator, you've served four terms, you just turned 75, and if you don't stay hale, hearty, and able to vote till January 2006, Gov. Wormer will appoint your successor. I'd call that something very like a signal.

WEENIE DEMOCRAT DELEGATES who don't have enough clout in Richmond to bring home the bacon continue to whine for a local referendum to raise sales taxes in Northern Virginia. Del. Kevin G. Miller (R-Harrisonburg) calls 'em as he sees 'em, though, pointing out that proposed state bond issues for higher education and parks could ride the coattails of a sales tax hike to defeat.

TESTING CONTINUES. The old Virginius archives are here. They predate the terms "blog' and "weblog." If you can find an older blog that is recognizable as a blog, let me know.