Chuck here.

I saw this column earlier, by David Limbaugh, and thought “Remember when Obama said…?”

The “most open and transparent” president in American history is still playing hide-and-seek with the press, and even the liberal New York Times has begun to notice it, as indicated by this headline: “Obama Turns His Back On the Press.”

If the mainstream media were not so ideologically wedded to Obama’s big-government agenda, they would be doing more than pointing out his secrecy and hypocrisy with the occasional headline. They’d be skewering him daily for his marked inaccessibility.

Not having a genuine news conference since July would be remarkable for the least transparent administration, let alone one that made openness a signature campaign issue.

Yes, didn’t Mr. O have a lot of stuff to say, during his campaign, about how Dubya’s administration wasn’t transparent enough, and if he was elected, his would be a virtual open book?

…A case could be made that Obama’s never had a news conference that he hasn’t largely controlled. He and his handlers, from David Axelrod to Rahm Emanuel, understand the importance of managing the press to control the message in the interest of advancing the leftist agenda.

Jumping a bit here:

In one of his extemporaneous moments at Hampton University, he unwittingly disclosed the administration’s MO, not that discerning observers didn’t already know it. He openly lamented the advent of the “24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter.”

He might as well have just directly said it: “I don’t like the free flow of information in the new media, which tends to impede the advancement of my agenda, which depends on keeping the public in the dark.”

Yeah, that’s pretty cut and dried, worthy of any wannabe chief leftist.

Chuck here.

By now, most of us have heard about the La Raza mayored Mexican colony City of Los Angeles proclaiming a boycott of Arizona (I’ll tellya’, folks, if you ever want to see some real political comedy, along the lines of Dumb and Dumber meet the cook in Fawlty Towers, you have only to go as far as the lefties and Mexican nationalists whom Los Angelinos elect to run their city for them).

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Wednesday defiantly rejected a warning by a top Arizona utilities official that the state could cut off power to Los Angeles should the city proceed with its boycott of all things Arizona.

Spokesman David Beltran told Fox News that the message didn’t even warrant a response.

“We’re not going to respond to threats from a state which has isolated itself from the America that values freedom, liberty and basic human rights,” Beltran said.

If I were a druggin’ man, I’d be after David Beltran to get the name and phone number of his dealer.

isolated itself from the America that values freedom, liberty and basic human rights is laying things on a little thick, even for an obvious hack like Beltran who, unless he’s stoned on something so illegal you probably couldn’t get a prescription for it, or simply a collossal bonehead, would never have said that.

That was after Gary Pierce, a commissioner on the five-member Arizona Corporation Commission, wrote a letter to Villaraigosa slamming his City Council’s decision to boycott the Grand Canyon State — in protest of its immigration law — by suspending official travel there and ending future contracts with state businesses.

Anyway, the “Make my day” moment;

Noting that a quarter of Los Angeles’ electricity comes from Arizona power plants, Pierce threatened to pull the plug if the City Council does not reconsider.
“Doggone it — if you’re going to boycott this candy store … then don’t come in for any of it,” Pierce told FoxNews.com.

In the letter, he ridiculed Villaraigosa for saying that the point of the boycott was to “send a message” by severing the “resources and ties” they share.

“I received your message; please receive mine. As a statewide elected member of the Arizona Corporation Commission overseeing Arizona’s electric and water utilities, I too am keenly aware of the ‘resources and ties’ we share with the city of Los Angeles,” Pierce wrote.

“If an economic boycott is truly what you desire, I will be happy to encourage Arizona utilities to renegotiate your power agreements so Los Angeles no longer receives any power from Arizona-based generation.”

Appearing to tap into local frustration in Arizona over the raft of boycotts and threatened boycotts from cities across the country, including Los Angeles, Pierce warned that Arizona companies are willing and ready to fight boycott with boycott.

“I am confident that Arizona’s utilities would be happy to take those electrons off your hands,” Pierce wrote. “If, however, you find that the City Council lacks the strength of its convictions to turn off the lights in Los Angeles and boycott Arizona power, please reconsider the wisdom of attempting to harm Arizona’s economy.”

I’d love to see that, I truly would.

You see, L.A. is filled with “talk the talk” liberals, the kind who are more than happy to “send messages”, but most of them just ain’t “walk the walk” types. Having to go without electricity would be too large a sacrifice to make, and the politicians responsible would receive an even louder message from their constituents.

Los Angeles officials were furious with the Arizona immigration law passed last month and joined local officials in cities across the country in pushing boycotts to register their dismay. Critics say the law will lead to racial profiling and civil rights abuses.

That ain’t what the lying liberals are worried about. They’re simply concerned that a state has opted for survival over political correctness and so decided to enforce a law that’s already on the books.

The racial profiling outrage is merely a leftist tactic to discourage enforcement of laws that the kommies and their ilk would prefer are not enforced.

Arizona officials have defended the law, saying the state needed to take its illegal immigration problem into its own hands. Pierce said he’s “supportive” of the state’s efforts to control the border.

The law requires local law enforcement to try to verify the immigration status of anyone they have contact with whom they suspect of being an illegal immigrant. It empowers them to turn over verified illegal immigrants to federal custody. The legislation explicitly prohibits screening people based solely on race or national origin.

Seems pretty clear to me, but…

Go ahead, L.A., make Arizona’s day.

Chuck here. It’s been awhile, most of which found me cruising the coast of Mexico in my 52 foot maritime home.

So, while Seth expounded upon the primaries yesterday, I want to get in a few things as well, along with some links and quotes from same.

Personally, I was pretty pleased to see that voters of both the Democrat and Republican persuasions registered their discontent with the job too many Obama/Pelosi sector and lackluster GOP incumbents have been doing. It’s time to get on these peoples’ backs, big time, and, since they insist on paying scant attention to the will of the people, forcing unwanted bills down our throats, force some righteous voter indignation down their gullets.

Larry Elder writes

The storyline goes like this: Recent elections find voters in an angry, “anti-incumbent” mood.

TIME magazine wrote: “This is how it goes in 2010 at the ballot box: old orders are upended, political lions become roadkill, chosen successors get left behind and the outsider, riding a wave of discontent, becomes the new front runner.”

The Associated Press wrote: “It’s an anti-Washington, anti-establishment year. And candidates with ties to either better beware. Any doubt about just how toxic the political environment is for congressional incumbents and candidates hand-picked by national Republican and Democratic leaders disappeared late Tuesday.”

No. Voters said: “It’s not the incumbents, stupid. It’s how they voted. It’s what they stand for.” No incumbent who voted against the Bush/Obama bank bailouts, the “stimulus” package, and ObamaCare lost his or her job.

Voters hate the bank bailouts. They hate the government takeover of car companies. They do not believe that the $800-billion stimulus package stimulated anything but bigger government. They reject ObamaCare and think it’s costly and likely to worsen healthcare. Incumbents who voted for these things now face the music.

There’s no way anyone can say that the American people aren’t exercising our right to express our discontent at the polls, that’s for damn sure!

Voters see this administration as a bunch of leftist, redistribute-the-wealth, we-know-better-how-to-spend-your-money-and-run-your-lives-and-manage-your-businesses, smug busybodies. They see an administration that raised the debt and deficit in a year and a half to European-like levels that threaten present and future prosperity. They see an administration that believes fighting global warming takes precedence over jobs and productivity.

Tax revenues have plummeted, while government continues to grow. Banks and other companies that made bad bets or failed to effectively compete are propped up through bailouts that encourage future risky behavior.

People have been out of work for long periods of time. Homeowners are paying on homes worth less than their mortgages. There is a lot of hurt and pain and fear in the streets.

Bring it on home, Larry!

We Are All Socialists Now,” said Newsweek in a cover story last year. “No,” say the voters. “We are not.”

From the Washington Times

With voters across the country embracing “outsiders” — from “tea party” candidate Rand Paul in Kentucky on the right to Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak on the left — incumbents in both parties face a long, hot summer of trying to save their jobs.

From Sen. John McCain of Arizona to Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York, high-profile lawmakers in both parties are girding to fend off the anti-establishment anger voters displayed in Tuesday’s hotly contested primaries.

The rest of this one here.

If only these bastions of self centered careerism would stop and think back to the days when politicians thought as much about the wellbeing of the American people as they now do about their precious careers, we’d be voting for, as Seth puts it, “The best candidate for the job, instead of the lesser of two or more evils”.

If only these tin-pot whores of politics would dredge up some distant memories of the Constitution and how it applies to the performance of their duties as elected representatives of the people.

If only We, the People could somehow be brought together to vote out all the trash that now profligates on Capital Hill and usher in a crop of politicians who’ll agree to pass an amendment limiting Congress to a single six year term, do away with that stupid retirement plan they voted for themselves sometime back and restrict themselves to the same health care plans they have imposed upon the rest of us.

Yeah, yeah, fat chance. I guess it takes the lowliest of whores to provide a pool for political candidates. Unfortunately, they’re the only ones we’ve got.

So we’ve gotta keep at ‘em, keep voting out the excrementally afflicted, first diluting the Democrat majority to the point that they no longer feel the need to “improve upon” the rules and regs established by the founding fathers, instead sticking by them, and force them under the weight of our each and every vote to do as We, their Employers tell them.

Last, argumentative and very not least, here’s Ann Coulter’s two cents on the subject of the primaries.

Chuck out.

…after tonight, but in the meantime I want to share a couple of columns here:

1. By Michelle Malkin

Back in 1984, when the late Jeane J. Kirkpatrick gave her famous “Blame America First” speech to the Republican National Convention, liberals at least waited for something bad to happen before blaming America.

Today, Obama Democrats have now mastered the treacherous art of the pre-emptive global apology. Foggy Bottom is crammed with so many “human rights” zealots embarrassed by the country they serve that the State Department mission statement should be replaced with a condolence card.

Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner is probably not the first Obama State Department official to badmouth America in front of foreign delegations. He was just dumb enough to get caught.
Last week, the former head agitator at the transnationalist outfit Human Rights First trashed our country’s human rights record to Chinese government officials.

Here is the whole column.

The text of the referred-to Jeanne Kirkpatrick “Blame America First” speech is here.

2. By John Stossel

In America, we’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. Life, liberty and property can’t be taken from you unless you’re convicted of a crime.

Your life and liberty may still be safe, but have you ever gone to a government surplus auction? Consumer reporters like me tell people, correctly, that they are great places to find bargains. People can buy bikes for $10, cars for $500.

But where did the government get that stuff?
Some is abandoned property.

But some I would just call loot. The cops grabbed it.

Zaher El-Ali has repaired and sold cars in Houston for 30 years. One day, he sold a truck to a man on credit. Ali was holding the title to the car until he was paid, but before he got his money the buyer was arrested for drunk driving. The cops then seized Ali’s truck and kept it, planning to sell it.

Ali can’t believe it

“I own that truck. That truck done nothing.”

The police say they can keep it under forfeiture law because the person driving the car that day broke the law. It doesn’t matter that the driver wasn’t the owner. It’s as if the truck committed the crime.

“I have never seen a truck drive,” Ali said. I don’t think it’s the fault of the truck. And they know better.”

Something has gone wrong when the police can seize the property of innocent people.

“Under this bizarre legal fiction called civil forfeiture, the government can take your property, including your home, your car, your cash, regardless of whether or not you are convicted of a crime. It’s led to horrible abuses,” says Scott Bullock of the Institute for Justice, the libertarian law firm.

Bullock suggests the authorities are not just disinterested enforcers of the law.

“One of the main reasons they do this and why they love civil forfeiture is because in Texas and over 40 states and at the federal level, police and prosecutors get to keep all or most of the property that they seize for their own use,” he said. “So they can use it to improve their offices, buy better equipment.”

Obviously, that creates a big temptation to take stuff .

This is serious, folks. The police can seize your property if they think it was used in a crime. If you want it back, you must prove it was not used criminally. The burden of proof is on you. This reverses a centuries-old safeguard in Anglo-American law against arbitrary government power.

The feds do this, too. In 1986, the Justice Department made $94 million on forfeitures. Today, its forfeiture fund has more than a billion in it.

Radley Balko of Reason magazine keeps an eye on government property grabs: “There are lots of crazy stories about what they do with this money. There’s a district attorney’s office in Texas that used forfeiture money to buy an office margarita machine. Another district attorney in Texas used forfeiture money to take a junket to Hawaii for a conference.”

When the DA was confronted about that, his response was, “A judge signed off on it, so it’s OK.” But it turned out the judge had gone with him on the junket.

Balko has reported on a case in which police confiscated cash from a man when they found it in his car. “The state’s argument was that maybe he didn’t get it from selling drugs, but he might use that money to buy drugs at some point in the future. Therefore, we’re still allowed to take it from him,” Balko said.

Sounds like that Tom Cruise movie “Minority Report,” where the police predict future crimes and arrest the “perpetrator.”

“When you give people the wrong incentives, people respond accordingly. And so it shouldn’t be surprising that they’re stretching the definition of law enforcement,” Balko said. “But the fundamental point is that you should not have people out there enforcing the laws benefiting directly from them.”

Balko is exactly right.

Ah’ll be BOCK!

(here, we pause for a quick glimpse at the Obama National Debt)

…there’s a whole passel o’ voters in this country who are dadburn tired of the politicians in Washington, on both sides of the aisle, who have been not only ignoring the voice of the people, but also seem to have forgotten the very principles upon which our great country was founded (Constitution? Constitution!? We don’t need no stinkin’ Constitution!!!!)

Look, as a conservative, I’m happy that the Republicans have been standing up for those principles with all they’ve got — that is, those so vehemently spat upon by the far left controlled Democrats ever since the Pelosi/Reid takeover on the Hill in January of 2007, then powerfully reinforced by the onset of the Obama Dynasty in January of 2009, but given the GOP’s performance and the self seeking, “F–k what my constituents want” attitude of its members (y’know, the one that led to their downfall in the 2006 midterms), but, call me cynical, I wonder whether their primary intention is to take back America for the people, or simply grab back their majority so they can return to the pre-November, 2006 status quo.

That said, there were some good things yesterday, such as a direction taken in the results that did not bide well for Obamalosi, even though Democrats won in many cases. Several more conservative Democrats, rather than the ObamalosiReidmunist variety.

And though he was edged out by a Democrat, it was nice to see greasy turncoat/opportunist Arlen Sphincter Specter get his comeuppance. The riddance on that one is good, and a pox on the man.

The Washington order suffered big losses Tuesday, with establishment-backed candidates losing or facing a fight for their political survival in all three marquee Senate primaries on both the Republican and Democratic sides.

Insurgent candidate Rep. Joe Sestak toppled Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary, Sen. Blanche Lincoln was forced into a runoff in Arkansas’s Democratic primary and newcomer Rand Paul, riding “tea party” momentum, steamrolled to victory in Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary.

Democrats did get good news, keeping alive a three-year winning streak in House special elections when congressional aide Mark Critz easily held the Pennsylvania seat left vacant after the death of Rep. John P. Murtha, a towering figure among Washington Democrats. Republicans had tried to turn the race into a referendum on President Obama, but acknowledged that approach came up short in what many saw as a classic swing district.

Still, the message of the night was what Mr. Paul called “a day of reckoning” for those in power on Capitol Hill.

“I have a message — a message from the tea party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: We’ve come to take our government back,” Mr. Paul, a 47-year-old ophthalmologist from Bowling Green and the son of Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Republican, said at his victory party after trouncing Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson by 24 percentage points.

Ron Paul’s son delivered what a large percentage of the country has been thinking for some time in words that were the equivalent of “both barrels”, G-d bless him:

“I have a message — a message from the tea party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: We’ve come to take our government back,”

Mr. Rand triumphed despite his opponent’s heavy backing by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, former Vice President Dick Cheney and much of the Kentucky GOP establishment.

In Pennsylvania’s Senate primary, Mr. Sestak, a former Navy rear admiral, won in a decisive manner, topping Mr. Specter by seven percentage points with 85 percent of precincts reporting.

Like Mr. Paul, Mr. Sestak said his campaign was a strike against career politicians who are only trying to protect their jobs.

“Accountability has been missing for far too long, and I want to help bring it back,” he said.

His win sets up a general election contest with former Rep. Pat Toomey, a Republican who narrowly lost a primary to Mr. Specter in 2004 when the incumbent was still a member of the GOP.

Mr. Specter jumped parties last year after he voted for the economic stimulus package and realized it had hurt him so badly among Republican voters that he’d lose a primary rematch with Mr. Toomey. He acknowledged that his only chance at remaining in office was to run as a Democrat.

“Accountability has been missing for far too long, and I want to help bring it back,”

Fine, if you get in, make it happen!

The electoral waters have already been bloodied this year by incumbents thrown overboard by voters.

Sen. Robert F. Bennett, Utah Republican, failed even to qualify for a two-candidate runoff as GOP primary voters punished him for working on a health care bill with Democrats — even though that measure failed and he voted against the eventual health care overhaul package.

In West Virginia, Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, a 14-term Democrat and member of the House Appropriations Committee, fell last week in the primary to conservative Democrat Mike Oliverio by more than 10 percentage points. Mr. Mollohan had been dogged by ethics accusations.

Democrats on Tuesday eagerly pointed to the special election for Mr. Murtha’s seat in Pennsylvania, which they called the evening’s most important race. They argued that if Republicans could not win that swing district they were unlikely to win enough seats in November to take control of the House.

It was the only congressional district in Pennsylvania to vote for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004 and for Republican candidate John McCain in 2008, and is seen as a key test of the GOP’s appeal to conservative Democrats.

We’ll see what happens in November, won’t we?

“Tonight’s result was undoubtedly disappointing, but we will take the lessons learned from this campaign and move forward in preparation for November,” said Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

He said Mr. Critz defeated Republican Tim Burns by running away from Mr. Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

running away from Mr. Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

That would seem to be the best basis, at this point, for any campaign strategy in any (D,R,I,L) party this year. By all indications the country if pretty well fed up with those two Kommie Klowns, and are ready not so much for “change”, but for a return to America as America is supposed to be.

The entire quoted Washington Times article is here.

…The World Of Barack Obama.

In a “candid and constructive” human rights dialogue with officials from the People’s Republic of China last week, Obama administration officials brought up Arizona’s new immigration-enforcement law, telling the Chinese Communists it was an example of a “troubling trend” in the United States and an indication of “discrimination or potential discrimination” in American society.

Ironically, the State Department’s most recent report on human rights in China indicates that the government there restricts the internal travel of its own citizens.

“We brought it up early and often,” Posner told reporters on Friday. “It was mentioned in the first session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination, and that these are issues very much being debated in our own society,” Posner said. The Chinese did not raise any concerns about Chinese people visiting Arizona, Posner added.

During the press briefing, Posner explained that “part of a mature relationship is that you have an open discussion where you not only raise the other guy’s problems, but you raise your own, and you have a discussion about it. We did plenty of that. We had experts from the U.S. side, for example, yesterday, talking about treatment of Muslim Americans in an immigration context. We had a discussion of racial discrimination. We had a back-and-forth about how each of our societies are dealing with those sorts of questions.”

Well, I suppose there’s something a little less malodorous than a president travelling the globe and apologizing for America at each stopover than a president and his retinue engaging in a little fat chewing, over eggrolls and tea, on comparitive human rights topics with the Communist Chinese.

In a “candid and constructive” human rights dialogue with officials from the People’s Republic of China last week, Obama administration officials brought up Arizona’s new immigration-enforcement law, telling the Chinese Communists it was an example of a “troubling trend” in the United States and an indication of “discrimination or potential discrimination” in American society.

Ironically, the State Department’s most recent report on human rights in China indicates that the government there restricts the internal travel of its own citizens.

“We brought it up early and often,” Posner told reporters on Friday. “It was mentioned in the first session, and as a troubling trend in our society and an indication that we have to deal with issues of discrimination or potential discrimination, and that these are issues very much being debated in our own society,” Posner said. The Chinese did not raise any concerns about Chinese people visiting Arizona, Posner added.

During the press briefing, Posner explained that “part of a mature relationship is that you have an open discussion where you not only raise the other guy’s problems, but you raise your own, and you have a discussion about it. We did plenty of that. We had experts from the U.S. side, for example, yesterday, talking about treatment of Muslim Americans in an immigration context. We had a discussion of racial discrimination. We had a back-and-forth about how each of our societies are dealing with those sorts of questions.”

Have a “candid and constructive” human rights dialogue, maybe swap a few recipes for fair and balanced media, or for reasoning with those who take umbrage with government policy.

Of course.

The People’s Republic of China is “an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party constitutionally is the paramount source of power,” according to the State Department’s 2009 Human Rights report on China.

The report also states, “Individuals and groups, especially those deemed politically sensitive by the government, continued to face tight restrictions on their freedom to assemble, practice religion, and travel.”

Come on, Mr. President, when are you going to go down to Venezuela and do some serious presidential bonding with Hugo Chavez?

Oh, wait, my bad…You already have.

…in today’s Jewish World Review, and was quite happy to see that the school voucher concept is being reexamined and seen in a more positive note by elements of the left side of the aisle, who as we know were vehemently opposed to that most practical idea.

The storied Anti-Defamation League, one of the nation’s oldest civil-rights organizations, is fervent — very fervent — about the separation of church and state.

It devotes an elaborate page to the subject on its web site. It files friend-of-the-court briefs when church/state issues come before the federal or state judiciary. Whether the controversy is over school prayer, religious displays in public, or the phrase “under G0d” in the Pledge of Allegiance, ADL argues with much passion for keeping the “wall of separation” between government and religion as high and impenetrable as possible. “The more government and religion become entangled,” it has often warned, “the more threatening the environment becomes for each.”

No surprise, then, that ADL takes a hard line against school-choice voucher programs, which give parents the wherewithal to rescue their children from failing public schools and enroll them in private schools instead. Since those private schools are often church-affiliated, ADL contended in an amicus brief the last time the Supreme Court took up the issue, vouchers have the unconstitutional effect of directing “government funding to religious schools for religious purposes.”

That case was Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, a landmark decided in 2002, in which the Supreme Court disagreed with ADL. As long as vouchers enable parents to “exercise genuine choice among options public and private, secular and religious,” the majority ruled, nothing about them offends the Constitution.

But ADL’s opposition hasn’t softened. When the Senate was poised earlier this year to vote on funding school vouchers for the District of Columbia, ADL signed a letter calling for the program be killed. “Instead of sending federal money to private schools,” it urged, “money should instead be invested in the public schools.” In a five-part essay posted online, ADL claims that “vouchers pose a serious threat to values that are vital to the health of American democracy” and “threaten to undermine our system of public education.”

I’ve always held that the two major reasons the left is so opposed to school vouchers are that they do not believe that any child should be permitted to escape the “progressive” political indoctrination presented in today’s education system and that the teachers’ unions feel that vouchering students off into private schools or home schooling, out of their bailiwick, diminishes the power born of influence in the development of young minds enjoyed by said teachers’ unions.

Selfishly, these political parasites could care less about the quality of education a child receives.

The very fact that ADL claims that “vouchers pose a serious threat to values that are vital to the health of American democracy” gives you an idea how far they are willing to journey into the Land of Hypocrisy to defend their opposition to vouchers. If there’s one thing these far left-owned people hold in the least possible esteem, it’s values that are vital to the health of American democracy.

So as I said, I’m glad that there’s some refiguring in effect. The future generations of Americans, seeing as they’re the focal point of the entire issue, should also be the ones whose interests are considered of paramount importance, rather than the political agendas of self-seeking politicians and union leaders.

Needless to say, the ADL position, widely shared on the left, has plenty of critics on the right, including your humble servant. From the conservative editorialists at The Wall Street Journal to the libertarian litigators at the Institute for Justice, supporters of vouchers have frequently excoriated those who oppose them — especially teachers unions and the politicians who genuflect to them — for their willingness to keep poor kids trapped in wretched schools.

But while there may be nothing extraordinary about conservatives or libertarians embracing school choice, it takes real grit for liberals or Democrats do so. Especially when they do so from within ADL.

Three months ago, the executive committee of ADL’s Philadelphia chapter voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution endorsing vouchers. Now it is urging the entire organization to follow suit.

“We believe school choice to be an urgent civil rights issue,” the committee argued in a brief being circulated among ADL’s 30 regional offices. Despite decades of increased spending on K-12 education, “the evidence that our public education system is failing to educate our children is staggering.” ADL should reverse its longtime position “as a moral imperative,” the Philadelphia leadership urges, and “issue a resolution in favor of school choice.”

As it happens, the ADL regional board’s isn’t the only liberal voice in Philadelphia calling for greatly expanded school choice. State Senator Anthony Williams, a black Democrat and a candidate in Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary this week, is the founder of a charter school, a champion of vouchers, and an ardent believer in the power of competition to improve the quality of education. His position puts him sharply at odds with the state’s largest teachers’ union, which opposes choice and has endorsed his main opponent. But Williams — like the local ADL leadership — sees school choice as the great civil-rights battle of the day.

“Anybody who was for Brown v. Board of Education — it baffles me that they would be against vouchers,” Williams told me last week. “Brown condemned schools that were separate and unequal. Well, that’s exactly what we’re back to now — schools that are segregated by income, by ZIP Code, by race.”

Of the 20,000 children who annually enter Philadelphia kindergartens, Williams notes, almost half will drop out before finishing high school — and fewer than 2,000 will go to college. The way to fix the dreadful public schools that produce these results isn’t to shower them with more money, he says. It is to empower parents to pull their kids out and enroll them in better schools elsewhere.

Williams may not win Tuesday’s primary. Philly’s ADL chapter may not persuade the national board to follow its lead. But in swimming against the tide, both have set examples that will inspire others. Educational inequality persists. But thanks to some gutsy Philadelphia liberals, it has just lost a little more ground.

Let us travel hopefully.

…for expanded management of the marketplace by a correspondingly expanded government, we are provided with one reason after another why putting all our eggs in the basket of dependency upon the competency of federal bureaucracies could only lead to disaster.

The federal agency responsible for ensuring that the Deepwater Horizon was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that the rig be inspected at least once per month, an Associated Press investigation shows.

In fact, the agency’s inspection frequency on the Deepwater Horizon fell dramatically over the past five years, according to federal Minerals Management Service records.

The rig blew up April 20, killing 11 people before sinking and triggering a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Since January 2005, inspectors issued just one minor infraction for the rig. That strong track record led the agency last year to herald the Deepwater Horizon as an industry model for safety.

Now, does that inspire confidence, or what?

A summary of the inspection history that the MMS officials provided AP said the Deepwater Horizon received six “incidents of noncompliance” — the agency’s term for citations.

The most serious occurred July 16, 2002, when the rig was shut down because required pressure tests had not been conducted on parts of the rig’s blowout preventer — the device that was supposed to stop oil from gushing out if drilling operations experienced problems.

That citation was “major,” said Arnold, who characterized the overall safety record related by MMS as strong.

A citation on Sept. 19, 2002, also involved the blowout preventer. The inspector issued a warning because “problems or irregularities observed during the testing of BOP system and actions taken to remedy such problems or irregularities are not recorded in the driller’s report or referenced documents.”

During his Senate testimony last week, Transocean CEO Steven Newman said the blowout preventer was modified in 2005.

According to MMS officials, the four other citations were:

• Two on May 16, 2002, for not conducting well control drills as required and not performing “all operations in a safe and workmanlike manner.”

• One on Aug. 6, 2003, for discharging pollutants into the Gulf.

• One on March 20, 2007, which prompted inspectors to shut down some machinery because of improper electrical grounding.

Late last week, several days after providing the detailed accounting, Interior officials told AP that in fact there had been only five citations, that one had been rescinded.

The officials said they could not immediately say which of the six had been rescinded.

The agency’s problems with providing information extends to the data on display on its website. For example, the accounting of accident and incident reports is incomplete, making it very difficult to perform a thorough data analysis of the agency’s performance and preventing a full accurate tracking of safety records of the rigs.

Data problems date back at least a decade. According to John Shultz, who as a graduate student in the late 1990s studied MMS’ inspection program in depth for his dissertation, the agency’s data infrastructure was severely limited.

“The thing I regret most is that, to my knowledge, MMS has not fixed the data management problem they have,” said Shultz, who now works in the Department of Energy’s nuclear program. “If you have the data you need, the analysis becomes fairly straightforward. Without the data, you’re simply stuck with conjectures.”

Wait, let’s go back: That strong track record led the agency last year to herald the Deepwater Horizon as an industry model for safety.

Let’s face it: The majority of federal bureaucrats are where they are because there is where they can “earn” a living with good benefits and a pension without having to worry about job security due to any lack of productivity, common sense or desire to excel. Meanwhile, the folks who would actually be competent at the same jobs are out in the private sector, where competent people go when they want to make more money than the government offers.

As to the former, those are the people the left wants to place in the position of managing our lives, livelihoods and health care issues.

That expression, spawned by a bunch of reporters whose goals are less about keeping “the people” informed and more about selling their most lucrative product (advertising space, whether print, broadcast or Internet) and/or pressing a political agenda and making a name for themselves, is pure, unadulterated bullsh-t.

The First Amendment does not, whatever some irresponsible scumbag with press credentials might insist, contain text to the effect that “the people have a right to know”.

I say irresponsible because the reporting of certain events or procedures can pose threats to human life, the protection of the people or the enforcement of the law, vital intelligence or military strategies or the simplification, by terrorists or criminals, of finding their way around obstacles to the commission of their illicit operations.

Yet there are reporters and editors who could care less about the cost of irresponsible reporting.

Remember the New York Times not long ago and repetitively where their reporting of secret counter-terrorist electronic surveillance Ops endangered those government intelligence operations, for example? And how that treasonous lefty propagandist pea-brain turd Bill Keller actually had the pelotas to defend the practice?

Jeff Kamen has an excellent OpEd on responsible reporting, as well as the responsible conduct of the police and other public protection agencies in informing members of the media about their ongoing activities, in today’s Washington Times.

The all-but-traitorous leaking and reporting of police tactics during the hunt for the Times Square bomber nearly let him escape and may have allowed others to do just that. The damaging relationship between cops and reporters in this case reminded me of a moment in my own journalistic career when I somehow managed to keep my mouth shut and not broadcast a juicy exclusive that could have had the unintended consequence of encouraging terrorist attacks on Americans. No question that it was easier to do the right thing in the absence of competitive pressures, which fueled the bad press behavior over the intense 53 hours of the manhunt in New York City and Connecticut last week.

Some years back, while reporting on a major news event overseas, I stumbled upon the fact that the nearest American military base was being guarded by U.S. soldiers with empty guns. They had been neutered by their captain, a female officer who decided on that bizarre and utterly inappropriate form of group punishment after one of her troopers had accidentally fired his duty weapon. Fortunately, his mistake had caused neither bodily harm nor property damage. But his boss decided to teach all of her “boys” a lesson by taking their bullets from them, despite the fact that the same soldiers were responsible for defending the compound from attacks by terrorists and ordinary criminals.

Next day, I had a previously scheduled interview with the base commander, a rising star in the U.S. high command. Privately, I told him about his military police without bullets who were still patrolling the base perimeter. His face turned beet red and his normally booming voice sounded tight and pained: “What are you going to do with the story?” I told him that since I could not figure out a way to tell it without creating an elevated risk of terrorist attack on his troopers and their families, there would be no story. The general immediately checked the facts and after confirming them, ordered the captain shipped back to the U.S. for a lot more leadership training.

That is what’s known as being responsible, where the Fourth Estate is concerned. The same rules should be applied to Law Enforcement and other government entities involved in an ongoing situation that would be better served observing the old “Loose Lips Sink Ships” adage.

In the Times Square bomber case, serious retraining is required for the federal and local anonymous law enforcement sources who fed true, real-time, tactical information to journalists who then broadcast the intel to everyone - including the suspect, who was listening to the radio as he fled. Will we ever really know if the terrorist had local supporters beyond the under-the-table bankers? The same news reports about the cops figuring out who bought the bomb car and then alerting the public to the stakeouts at the suspect’s two residences could easily have sent any co-conspirator into hiding and then, out of the country.

As a card-carrying member of the press for more than 30 years with many good friends in law enforcement as well, it is painful to write critical words about my own community. But what happened in the press-law enforcement relationship during the hunt for the Times Square bomber signals even bigger trouble ahead for the public, which depends on cops and reporters to be responsible and capable of thinking past the excited moment and their own self-interest. Why did the cops leak so fully and so foolishly? A continuing tension and competitive drive between federal and local agencies for credit and favor with the press is the simple, though pathetic answer.

Had alleged Times Square Bomber Faisal Shahzad been better trained in the tradecraft of terrorism, that information might easily have led him to completely escape the multilayered dragnet that had his name on it. I’m not going to write here what steps he could have taken and gotten away, but count on some other journalist to gleefully pour forth a prescription for more effective escapes by terrorists. (Not because that writer sympathizes with terrorists - he would be shocked at the assertion - but because there is loose in the land of the free and the home of the brave the catastrophically stupid notion that all information is essentially morally neutral and that there is a right to know all things at anytime - no matter whose life it might cost, or who might escape prosecution and be able to strike again.)

Like it or not, in the digital universe in which we all live these days, even the smallest newspaper and radio station is read or heard around the world via their websites, making the press the real-time-look-down intelligence service of anyone being hunted by law enforcement. That makes it essential for law enforcement - no matter how hungry for credit in the press they might be - not to tell reporters their next move.

After the capture is time enough to tell it all. There is no constitutional guarantee of live access to tactical information. No one outside the intel-law enforcement community has a legitimate need to know.

Bravo!

Previously, I commented on what I figured to have been the most likely fate of the pirates who’d made the mistake of plying their trade on a Russian vessel.

Well, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Ten pirates released from a Russian warship 300 miles out to sea may have drowned, according to Russian officials and colleagues of the pirates, raising fears of retaliation against other vessels plying East African waters.

The pirates were captured last week after they hijacked the Moscow University, a Liberian-flagged, Russian-operated oil tanker sailing off the Somali coast. A Russian warship came to the ship’s rescue and apprehended the pirates. But after determining it would be too difficult to obtain a conviction, Russian officials said that they dropped plans to take the pirates to Moscow for trial.

Yeah, so…

Instead, like many other warships that have intercepted pirate skiffs, the Russian marines released the pirates — but not before removing weapons and navigation equipment from the boat several hundred miles from shore. Russian officials gave no explanation for removing the navigation equipment.

No explanation, indeed.

A Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson said radio signals from the boat disappeared about an hour after the release. “That could mean that they are dead,” the spokesperson said.

“Could mean”, yeah.

Fellow pirates in Somalia also said they lost contact with the boat after their separation from the Russian warship. “We will hold Russia responsible if any harm comes to them,” said a pirate commander, Abdi Dhagaweyne, in a telephone interview. “I’m not sure of their safety now because we have since lost contact.”

I hope they’re having a swell time where they belong, down there in Davy Jones’ Locker, where all “good” pirates end up. Now, if they would make some room for captured terrorists, kind of the ultimate waterboarding, justice would really be served.

I like this: “We will hold Russia responsible if any harm comes to them,” said a two bit floating pissant pirate commander, who, on “holding Russia responsible”, could prove only to emulate the famed Black Knight.