Nicole Burner, Jeff Frederick, Jamey Puckett

They put the "odd" in "Old Dominion," here are this week's nominees for Worst Virginians in the World!

We have our first Mother of the Year candidate. Nicole Burner of Ruther Glen was arrested Sunday for felony child neglect for leaving her three children unattended in her car in the summer heat. Burner told The Free-Lance Star of Fredericksburg on Tuesday that she left them briefly to use the bathroom at a friend’s house while leaving the car and air conditioning on down the street.

However, a Good Samaritan found that the 13-year-old son turned the car off and saw him cursing at his 4-year-old brother to get off the roof while their 2-year-old sister sat in her car seat. Police said they were left unattended for at least 13 minutes.

Burner insists it was all a misunderstanding. “Next thing I knew, my picture was in the paper and I was being made out to be some horrible mother.”

In fact, Burner said she has been drug-free since she was arrested four years ago for heroin possession and child neglect.

The runner-up is former Del. Jeff Frederick, back from the political wilderness but still wandering the mental wilderness.

Remember Jeff? As state GOP party chief, he joked in 2008 that Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama “both have friends that bombed the Pentagon.” Republicans ousted Frederick in 2009, and he left the General Assembly when his last term ended.

Now he is seeking the Republican nomination for state Senate in the 36th District (Fairfax, Prince William, and Stafford counties) and is trying to repackage himself as a bridge-builder who will avoid social issues. Yet, Frederick was quoted in The Washington Post on Wednesday on his pro-life politics:

“The life issue is important to me, but it’s not everything I am. I try to focus on issues that impact your daily life. Now, you can argue that killing babies has an impact on daily life, but that’s not what you’re thinking about when you’re driving down the highway in heavy traffic. If conservatives are going to govern, we have to have a coalition.”

Nothing can appeal to a new big tent of younger voters, independents, and moderates like calling abortion doctors, providers, and patients baby killers. Maybe Frederick is envisioning a coalition of the far-right and the further-right.

But our winner is former Saltville Police Officer Jamey Puckett, who can’t build a rap sheet fast enough.

In September, he was indicted on felony charges after racking up a $1,500 bill on his town-issued cell phone. He pled guilty in March to misdemeanor petty larceny and was slapped with fines and probation.

But while Puckett was released on bond, he tried to retrieve his rifle from a pawn shop. When asked on a federal consent form if he was under indictment for a felony, he checked “No.” Getting a firearm while under indictment for a felony or other serious crime is illegal, as is lying on the transaction paperwork.

The Bristol Herald-Courier reported that a Washington County grand jury indicted Puckett on Tuesday of materially making a false statement on a federal firearms consent form, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Puckett was transferred from the Police Department to the Department of Public Works during the cell-phone scandal. Perhaps now he will be transferred back to the criminal justice system – for up to 10 years.

That’s Jamey “Have Felony Charge, Will Travel” Puckett, today’s Worst Virginian in the World!

I will be on vacation next week, but Worst Virginians will return Aug. 12.

Fluvanna County, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Eric Cantor

The bronze goes to Fluvanna County. The Fluco Blog owner Bryan Rothamel sued the county in December over an ordinance that forbids anyone from using the county seal without permission from the Board of Supervisors. The ordinance was rewritten in February to mirror the state code on seals.

The Daily Progress of Charlottesville reported Friday that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed a brief in federal court this month siding with Rothamel. Cuccinelli wrote that as long as the seal is not used in a “fraudulent or misleading” manner, its use is protected by law and the First Amendment. Fluvanna County may have shot themselves in the foot by including “unless such use is specifically authorized by law” in its ordinance.

Additionally, county attorneys came up with this strange analogy in its own brief: “Mr. Rothamel has no more right to use, for his own purposes, the county’s seal than he would to drive a county automobile or build a home in a county park.”

It’d be a shame if these attorneys have a right to use county money to defend such a ridiculous policy.

Today’s silver goes to the editorial writers at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, who are apparently intent on helping parent company Media General lose even more print ad revenue.

In a piece published Sunday, RTD scorned federal regulators for hurting small businesses with policies enacted after a slew of toy recalls and foodborne outbreaks a few years ago. Their solution? Support the tea party:

“The more establishment parts of the GOP are often comfortable with both big government and big business. When it comes to rolling back Washington, the tea party has done much of the heavy lifting lately. If anyone reins in the regulatory excesses that are smothering small businesses built by bohemians in Birkenstocks, it could be the rabble-rousers of the radical right. Cheese and tea, anyone?”

Timeliness and attribution, anyone? The law that empowered the Food and Drug Administration after the outbreaks was signed into law seven months ago. The quotes from an FDA official and cheesemaker are from six months ago. RTD’s only more recent example of federal overreach was an artisanal cheesemaker that the feds closed nine months ago.

Worse yet, RTD incorrectly said that cheesemaker is in Wisconsin rather than Washington, and the unattributed quotes are lifted from The Washington Post and Reason magazine.

This outdated, lazily written free marketing for the tea party brings new meaning to the phrase “Do you want cheese with that whine?”

Speaking of which, our winner is U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. He has apparently been on an extended vacation in the Twilight Zone during the debt-ceiling debate.

On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Cantor, R-7th, supports a short-term debt-ceiling deal for before the 2012 elections. “Mr. Cantor called the president’s insistence on a deal that carries through the election purely political and indefensible,” the Journal reported. But a month ago he opposed one, saying, “I don’t see how multiple votes on a debt ceiling increase can help get us to where we want to go. It is my preference that we do this thing one time. … Putting off tough decisions is not what people want in this town.”

When Speaker John Boehner released his debt-ceiling plan on Monday, Cantor gave it a, um, thumbs-up by calling it “a well-thought-out and reasoned plan where no side gets what it wants.” That's a ringing endorsement.

Also on Monday, Cantor was caught contradicting himself on CNBC. He attacked Sen. Harry Reid’s debt-ceiling plan because it accounts for declining spending on military operations overseas, before host Larry Kudlow reminded Cantor that both the Republican budget and debt plans also have those cuts:

Cantor: "What Sen. Reid’s plan says is we’re going to raise the debt ceiling $2.4 trillion and we are also going to cut spending but what he does is counts over a trillion dollars in spending that is assumed to decrease and go away anyway which is the spending associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Kudlow: "Yes, but isn’t that in the Paul Ryan baseline also, which is the baseline for Cut, Cap and Balance."

Cantor: "But, but, but … absolutely it is." 

It is no wonder that a majority of Americans, independents, and Republicans believe Republicans in Congress aren’t doing enough to strike a deal.

It won’t get much better thanks to Eric No We Cantor, today’s Worst Virginian in the World!

Staunton Road Crew, Bob McDonnell, Norfolk Community Services Board

It was a tough day at the office for a Staunton road crew. The News-Leader reports how workers on Wednesday accidentally placed a right-turn arrow at an intersection, creating an invisible dead end. (See photo at right.)

To make matters worse, the direction would have drivers turn on the wrong way on a one-way street.

Luckily no one made the erroneous turn, and the arrow was quickly removed – but only after the city traffic engineer was forced to park his truck on the symbol and redirect traffic until road crews could come fix it.

The runner-up is Gov. Bob McDonnell. PolitiFact slapped Bob with his first Pants on Fire rating Thursday, after he claimed on CNBC on July 13 that Virginia is one of four states where state employees do not contribute to their pensions. “We pay the employee and employer share,” he said.

However, PolitiFact points out that not only is Bob wrong, but he himself signed two bills that codified state-employee contributions. Bob signed a bill in April of last year requiring newer workers to contribute 5%, and he signed a bill just two months ago requiring longer-serving workers to contribute 5%. Both laws have been in effect. Employees also get a 5% raise in the deal, but that doesn't change the fact that they now contribute to their pensions.

As PolitiFact put it, “The governor was hardly a stranger to this development.”

If there is anything Bob affixed his name to that you’d think he’d want to forget, it would be last year’s original Confederate History Month proclamation to promote tourism that sparked a firestorm for failing to mention slavery.

But today’s winner, actually topping a Pants on Fire rating, is the Norfolk Community Services Board. Turns out employee Jill McGlone was suspended in 1998 and never returned but mistakenly stayed on the payroll – for the next 12 years. She collected $320,000 in pay and benefits over that period, and McGlone has said she was assured she would be reinstated.

The scandal itself isn’t new, but a commonwealth’s attorney conceded Wednesday that even though a police investigation “does raise questions about prior management operations of the NCSB,” The Virginian-Pilot reports, there is not enough evidence for criminal charges. Why? “People just aren’t talking,” a city councilman said. In fact, the FBI has also been investigating the NCSB.

The NCSB, a quasi-government agency charged by the city with aiding the poor with an annual budget of $24 million, isn’t in the clear yet. Three former employees forced out over the scandal are suing the board and its chief for defamation, and more information will likely be revealed in a civil suit.

But it gets worse for the board. Not only has the NCSB been probed by federal and local law enforcement, inexplicably gave 320 grand to an axed employee, and is facing a lawsuit, but now the Pilot reports that the City Council is thinking of stripping the NCSB’s independence and putting it under more city control. All of this because, as a former board administrator put it, something “got lost in the administrative shuffle.”

That’s the Norfolk Community Services Board (“Hey, why is this dead guy on the payroll?”), today’s Worst Virginian in the World!