Florida Pilot

Tampa Bay Rays and the street con

2008-07-01T19:04:00.001-04:00

There is a great web site that follows the shenanigans of the superwealthy as they try to get public subsidies for their ever more grandious stadium projects www.fieldofschemes.com -- check it out.

What the Rays are likely looking for is a new venue to have better and more luxurious suite accomodations to market to businesses. They also know that the novelty of a new ball park will permit them to increase ticket prices -- 30% is typical. The luxury suites to be constructed at taxpayer expense, although never discussed in any of the promotional material produced by the Rays, are surely at the heart of their desires. I'm also sure they will be air-conditioned unlike the "regular" seats out under the sail.

I've seen where a lot of people are unhappy that oil companies are making big profits but, by any measure the Rays are much more profitable than any oil company. Would you be willing to pay an extra $4 per gallon of gas to increase Exxon's profits? Probably not but the Rays are already getting a public subsidy that is about the equivalent of their entire gate receipts. And they want more, much more!

If the Rays could put St. Petersburg in a new stadium with no new taxes, would that be okay? Sure, sounds like a good deal. But then the facts start to come out. This is the same marketing strategy used by the guys selling cars in the lots off the Vegas strip. They get you to commit to the car before you even know what it is going to cost you and then they know they have you hooked. The Rays hired the guy who managed to get over $1 billion in public subsidies for the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Now put that kind of hired talent up against the St. Petersburg mayor and city council -- no contest and we know who is going to leave the room with their wallets empty. And guess what -- they have Mayor Rick Baker on record as saying the Rays need a new stadium. And that means that, if Baker stays in office, the taxpayers are going to be stuck paying for a new stadium -- cost and terms to be decided later. It is really no different than a street con but the stakes are a lot higher.

But St. Petersburg is a "major league city", right? But what that seems to mean is pay the man what he asks for and don't put up a fuss. If you have to ask what it really is going to cost you, you're just not "major league" enough or maybe your voters are just too old!

Secret stadium negotiations fail, taxpayers saved so far

2008-06-26T19:25:00.004-04:00

Over a year ago, the Tampa Bay Rays started their efforts to get a new taxpayer-subsidized stadium so that they could increase the profits the team earns for its out-of-state owners. For almost nine months, the Rays conducted secret negotiations with St. Petersburg city leaders. Only after the team's plans were leaked by the media, were the public let on on what was envisioned as the largest subsidy by far to a private business in St. Petersburg city and Pinellas county history.

As soon as the plans became public, they started to fall apart. When scruitinized. the team's rosy financial and other projections, apparently taken at face value by St. Petersburg officials, were shown to be unrealistic and/or imcomplete. For example, the team originally indicated that the city could raise enough funds from selling the site the current taxpayer-owned stadium occupies to pay for the new stadium. After serveral months, the city discovered that the sale of the entire 86 acre parcel that existing stadium and related infrastructur occupies would not even pay what is still owed on the stadium to say nothing of demolition costs.

The Rays offered optimistic projections about parking but they never bothered checking with many of the parking lot owners to see if their space would be available for stadium parking. Also, the Rays out-of-town owners suggested that some sort of a sail would substitute for air conditioning and protection from Florida's summer storms. Had this turned out not to be the case, it would probably have cost the taxpayers another few hundred million to fix the problem.

While the Rays and their supporters kept talking about how important it was for St. Petersburg to remain a "major league" city, evidently by doing eveything the team owners demanded on an immediate basis, the Rays treated City leadership and taxpayers like country bumpkins. Anyone with a $5 calculation, pencil,and the back of an envelope could start to demolish the figures provided by the Rays.

As criticism began to mount, some St. Petersburg elected officials began to get nervous about backing the Rays. Even council members started asking questions and the mayor refused to offer his complete support although the wheels to accomplish what the Rays had requested remained in motion. In one serious setback for the Rays, the city failed to select the developer for the old stadium that they Rays had preferred.

Becuase the Rays had decided they wanted the new taxpayer funded stadium on the waterfront, it had to be put to the voters. With a strong likelihood of a rejection by the voters, the Rays apparently withdrew the question about use of the waterfront land from the upcoming election. Although one would think it was the City's responsibility to decide what is going to be on the ballot, apparently that authority has been delegated to the Rays -- additional evidence of just how much the City officials are "in the tank".

Although the Rays have abandoned their goal on an immediate basis, this is certainly not a time for complacency by concerned St. Petersburg taxpayers. For one thing, the removal from the ballot of the allowing use of city waterfront land to benefit a private organization will deny the voters an opportunity to be heard on this importatnt question. Mayor Baker wants the status of Al Lang field, the parcel in question, to remain the same. Given what has happened so far, it is hard to interpret this as anything other as an attempt to allow the Rays to buy time to try to change public opinion.

What is most outrageous is the impression that the City of St. Petersburg has, in essense, contracted out its entire city planning function to a baseball team.

Second amendment comes to life

2008-06-26T19:22:00.000-04:00

The Court's correct reading of the Second Amendment represents a trememdous boost to individual freedom. Obviously, it is disappointing that four of the justices failed to acknowledge the obvious but the struggle for freedom and liberty is never easy and it is never over. The usual lobbys and the politicians they support will loudly complain that this ruling will lead to more violence but time will show them wrong as it has every time restrictions against people being able to defend themselves have been removed.

Clinton technique -- the distraction

2008-02-09T20:38:00.000-05:00

With the nomination contest between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama heating up, the Clintons are starting to resort to some of the classic techniques they have used in the past. I'm sure they had not planned on using these until the general election campaign.

Yesterday, a commentator at MSNBC noted that Chelsea Clinton has now been taksed for a more active role in the campaign. He described this as "pimping-out" Chelsea; probably not the most elegant language but certainly the gist of the facts. While the most important trend in the nomination is the erosion of Clinton's support, Hillary got the classic distraction going by whining about the language used about Chelsea. And thus, the media was distracted from the real story.

A Clinton distraction like this, one involving an attack on the media, serves dual purposes. Not only is the public distracted from what is really going on but members of the media are discouraged from sharp coverage of Clinton in the future. In fact, Hillary's complaints about unfair media coverage disguise the reality that she has been treated very gingerly -- not only in comparison to republicans who are attacked on a regular basis, but also in comparison to other democrats. Who else, for example, could claim eight years of experience as "co-president" while keeping all of the documents secret that might shed light on this claim.

Clinton every day for the next 4 or 8 years?

2008-02-07T21:34:00.000-05:00

Who can consciously consider the idea of having another four or eight years of Clinton every day. The one thing you can say for sure about Hillary is that she has no greater sense of integrity and honesty than her husband. Today we find out, for example, that Hillary had to loan her campaign $5 million last month. Up until this past Tuesday, Hillary promoted herself as the "inevitable" candidate. But Obama has been moving up in the polls and seems to have some momentum as the campaigning continues. Had it been known prior to super Tuesday that Hillary was having to did into her pin money to fund her campaign, it would surely have helped Obama. Since that information would have been damaging to Clinton, it was kept under wraps.

But now, Hillary wants us to view her as the underdog so we are told she had to loan her campaign money. We were even told that her campaign staff has had to go without being paid -- well, maybe that part wasn't actually true but, with a Clinton as the source, actual facts mean nothing.

Any outcome would be better than Hillary and Bill Clinton back in the White House.

Edwards drops out

2008-02-01T17:46:00.000-05:00

John Edwards has ended his five year campaign for president. Only Hillary Clinton has been running for longer.

Edwards based his campaign on a class-warfare approach; the haves versus the have nots. Class-warfare techniques have not been particularly successful in the United States since most people seem to understand that a free society provides the opportunity (but not the guarantee) for have-notes to become more like the haves.

Of course, Edwards was a stange poster-boy for the have-nots. His personal lifestyle was one of narcissism and excess consumption. For example, he was evidently unhappy with his 11,000 square foot or so house and had it replaced with one of 26,000 square feet. He had some huge piece of property yet still complained that he had to share the road with other residents. The best example of narcissism and vanity was his $400 haircuts -- charged to his campaign.

Edwards was also well known for changing his mind on positions he had taken in the past. Since Edwards' participation in the public sector was limited to a single term in the Senate, his flip-flopping as a percentage of positions he had previously taken was probably more than any other candidate.

Edwards will be remembered for his $400 haircut, his man-love with John Kerry during the 2004 presidential and his exploitation of his wife's cancer in an attempt to butress his campaign. Good riddance.

Insurance greed

2008-01-17T18:52:00.002-05:00

One of the most outrageous examples of corporate greed is property insurance in Florida. Although there were substantial claims from storms a few years ago, the insurance companies seem to want to make sure that their premium income every year will provide for substantial profit as well as cover claims from the most extreme storm scenario imaginable and, if those storms don't occur, well that is just that much more profit.

One of the largest and most greedy insurance companies operating in Florida is Allstate. When the insurance industry (including Allstate) claimed that skyrocketing property insurance rates were due to increases in reinsurance costs, the state acted to provide low-cost reinsurance and dircted the companies to pass along the savings to policyholders. Instead of doing so, Allstate put in for a 42% rate increase -- this after previous years of huge increases. The state responded by denying the increase and by requesting detailed documentation of Allstate's justification.

Now, several months later, Allstate has still not provided the information so the state of Florida has now restricted Allstate from writing any more highly profitable auto polcies in the state. This is great news! It turns out that the state could have fined Allstate $10,000 per day for refusing to provide the data but Allstate is already being subjected to $25,000 per day penalties in another state for also failing to provide required information. Allstate is crying the blues that the ban will hurt its agents which is true but those agents need to blame the company and greedy management and not the state which is trying to reduce outrageous insurance company premiums and profits. Perhaps the agents can put some pressure on Allstate management to correct its practices -- so far, nothing else has slowed down the greed.

taking privacy a step too far

2008-01-17T18:52:00.001-05:00

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is apparently supporting Idaho Senator Larry Craig's attempt to withdraw his guilty plea relative to the infamous sting in which he was alleged to have solicited homosexual sex in an airport bathroom.

The ACLU is claiming that a previous Minnesota court decision provides for the expectation of privacy of individuals taking part in sexual encounters in public bathroom stalls. By extension, I guess the new theory is that the solicitation for sex cannot be a crime since the ensuing act would presumably be protected by some privacy right.

This seems like a strange and bizarre position to take. While it is reasonable to have an expectation of privacy in a public bathroom in using those facilities for their intended purpose, to extend that privacy right like this makes no sense at all. Does a public restroom stall now become some extension of one's residence?

A public restroom stall is not sealed off from the rest of the world. It would be noticeable to a casual observer if there are two individuals in a stall and who knows how much noise and commotion would ensure from the kind of activities advocated by the ACLU. If the ACLU's position is to be upheld, people would be reluctant to use the restrooms for their intended purposes.

The "real" Clintons

2008-01-13T20:06:00.000-05:00

As it becomes apparent that Barack Obama is a real threat to Hillary Clinton's march to coronation, the fur is starting to fly. Most interesting is the claim that the Clintons are now starting to try to play the race card against Obama. Some Clintonistas in the media claim that is not possible, isn't Bill Clinton the self-described "first black president". Well, the most important things to the Clintons are power and money. The Clintons love blacks -- blacks that are subservient to the Clintons -- but blacks like Obama who threaten the goals of the Clintons are fair game for any of the dirty tactics they are famous for.

Arkansas during the Clinton years was a poor state but the Clintons looted it anyhow and Bill Clinton acted like a Middle Ages monarch towards women who attracted his interest.

But Bill Clinton was also about wanting love, whether from the intern-de-jour, the media, or the public at large. That desire moderated his political views to a substantial extent. With Hillary, there is no respect or desire from affection from anyone, especially the public at large. Hillary is all about the raw desire for power. Yes, she can occasionally act like she is a real person but only a fool would believe it.

Hillary Clinton is the most devisive political figure in a long, long time. If she becomes president, it will be bad times for the county. Even slimy, greedy John Edwards would be better than Hillary.

still too pretty for prision?

2007-12-05T20:07:00.000-05:00

Last week, the news was that Debra "too pretty for prison" Lafave's attorney was going to try to have her sentence shortened from three years of house arrest to two years since she had done so well in the two years. Although house arrest is considered to be unpleasant, Lafave was permitted some liberties including an appearance with Matt Lauer on the Today show in which she blamed her involvement in child molestation on the victim. So much for remorse.

But now Lafave is back in the news for violation of her plea bargain; more specifically, having sexually-related discussions with a minor. Conditions of her sentence included no unsupervised contact with minors which seems to be a clear and reasonable requirement. It is clearly inappropriate for someone convicted of child molestation to be discussing sexual behavior with minors.

Lafave's attorney John Fitzgibbons will have quite a job to do this time around. During his previous work on the Lafave case, Fitgibbons made a public statement that Lafave was "too pretty for prison." While one might have thought that this strategy would not work, it did and Fitzgibbons was able to plea bargin a whole raft of serious felonies down to a short period of house arrest. Fitzgibbons' task was made more difficult as Lafave had molested her victim in two separate jurisdictions, so there were two state's attorneys plus two judges that needed to agree to the "no prison" deal Lafave ended up with. Actually, one judge in Marion County refused to go along -- instead of putting Lafave on trial and having her risk prison time, state's attorney Brad King decided to simply not prosecute any of the multiple felonies in Marion county, letting her off entirely.

The lenient treatment of Lafave raised quite a stir at the time since most offenders are sentenced to at least a few years of prison time for similar behavior. The justifcation for the sweet deal for Lafave was that the victim did not want to testify. Fitzgibbons was reported to have issued statements describing how difficult his cross-examination would be which probably helped to intimidate the victim.

This time around, there will be no need for the original victim to testify so we will see if the Hillsborough county prosecutor and judge are still inclined to let Lafave off. Violations such as these are typically treated fairly harshly in Florida. Fitzgibbon has already come out and characterized Lafave's behavior this time as "girl talk". We'll see what happens.

Nick Bolla and the Tampa Bay Rays

2007-12-01T19:50:00.000-05:00

At first glance, there is nothing in common between the story about Nick Bolla (Hulk Hogan's son) and the Tampa Bay Rays' attempt to get the taxpayers to pay for a new $450 million for the team to play in but how the stories have been covered is quite interesting.

In the case of Bolla, the local media have been aggressively on the story from day one, even to the point of wondering why it was taking so long for the police to make any charges or release a report. When the report was released (130 pages) the entire document was made available online for review by members of the public. Although the fate of Nick Bolla is not going to have any kind of effect on the public, all details of this incident are being fully reported and explored.

On the other hand, the Tampa Bay Rays' plan to have taxpayers finance a new stadium for them will have a significant effect on everyone in St. Petersburg and most probably Pinellas county. The scope of effect is orders of magnitude more than anything about Nick Bolla. Yet, media coverage of the Ray's proposal has been primarily limited to publication of press releases produced by the Rays. To date, any actual investigative work has been gentle.

Among the issues raised in the Rays' plan that have been downplayed by the media are:

(1) the oft-quoted $150 million contribution to the stadium by Rays owners turns out to be only a promise to pay somewhat more rent for the new stadium although still way below market.

(2) the Rays started negotiating with the city back in March and city officials repeatedly lied to citizens inquiring about the plans for Al Lang field.

(3) although the Rays claim to have been working for a year and a half on their plan, it has the appearance of something put together in a big hurry.

(4) the Rays claim to have released a 600 page document discussing their plans but this has not been made available online for public review (contrast this with Bolla's police report). The Rays put up a web site http://www.majorleaguedowntown.com but that contains nothing of any real substance.

What is outrageous is that the media is more intersted in covering the actions of the son of a minor celebrity that has no real effect on anyone that in delving into the multitude of questions concening the owners of the Rays attempt to extract hundreds of millions of dollars from the taxpayers for their private benefit.

not too pretty for prison this time

2007-12-01T19:20:00.001-05:00

If you were an attractive young woman with a criminal allegation problem in the Tampa Bay area, you would probably be drawn to attorney John Fitzgibbons whose public statement that child molester Debra Lafave was "too pretty for prison" apparently was convincing to Florida prosecutors in two counties and one county judge.

Fitzgibbons seemed to work his magic for former American Idol contestant Jessica Sierra. Charged with cocaine possession and felony battery for hitting a man with a glass at a bar last April, she pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 12 months of probation.

After last night, however, we will really see Fitzgibbons' magic put to the test as Ms. Sierra was arrested by Tampa police for disorderly intoxication and resisting arrest without violence. As of this morning, she was being held in jail without bail.

too pretty for house arrest?

2007-12-01T19:05:00.000-05:00

When I last discussed Debra Lafave, she had managed to completely avoid prosecution in Marion County, Florida for molesting a male teenager thanks to State's Attorney Brad King who evidently went along with her attorney's statement that she was "too pretty for prison". King wanted to negotiate a plea agreement that would sentence Lafave to house arrest and probation to run simultaneously with the same punishment that was agreed to by a pliant Hillsborough county judge -- this would, of course, have been no punishment at all and Judge Hale Stancil courageously refused to go along with the give-away.

Now, two years later, Lafave has completed two years of the three years of "house arrest" that she was sentenced to. Now, Lafave's "house arrest" included such activities as an interview with Today show host Matt Lauer in which she blamed her predicament on her victim. After two years of "good time", Lafave is now ready to ask to be released from the rest of her sentence. Apparently the victim's mother and the Hillsborough prosecutor plan to object.

Remember, men typically convicted of the same crimes Lafave was are often given the maximum sentence for identical offenses -- 30 years in prison, even if they show remorse over their conduct. Lafave, of course, is on record on national television as blaming the victim.

We'll see what happens.

selling the sizzle

2007-11-22T19:18:00.000-05:00

The Tampa Bay Rays have spent the last week or so attempting to sell their plan for a lavish new taxpayer-financed stadium while leaving out the most important details; how and how much will be extracted from local taxpayers. While working out the numbers will apparently take even more time, the Rays wasted no time in sending various customized uniform items to selected state legislators who presumably would be the ones voting on a requested $60 million state subsidy to the team.

Based on some back-of-the-envelope calculations, the projected taxpayer subsidy for the Rays at Tropicana Field over the entire lifetime of the stadium agreement (to 2027) is estimated to be about $8.00 for every person who attends a game. The average ticket price is currently about $17.00 so the tax subsidy is almost 1/3. This is with a stadium with a nominal initial investment of $138 million.

If the Trop is razed, the taxpayers will still be responsible for the repayment of the $130 million or so still owed and the subsidy per attendee will end up being more than the $17 that the typical attendee pays to go to the game.

The new stadium will nominally cost $450 million but the $150 million to be contributed by the Rays ownership will probably turn out to be something a lot less and the $450 million total cost will likely end up being much higher.

Perhaps the most telling statement is that made by Rays primary owner Stuart Sternberg who indicated that he started to plan for a new stadium [to be paid for by the taxpayers] on his second day on the job. Evidently, he did not consider the terrible performance of his team to be an important issue for management.

reinvented Al Gore

2007-11-14T20:24:00.000-05:00

When Al Gore was Vice President, he initiated a "reinventing government" program. Typical for big idea programs pushed by people with little if any knowledge or experience, it was a dismal failure. I know that there were people assigned to write up all of the successes of Gore's program but I think that the actual facts shine though.

What is interesting about Gore is that he has successfully reinvented the only thing he was really capable of which is himself. While Gore was very wooden as a politician, he is a world-class star as a propagandist. Of course, putting on an anti-American global warming show to sympathetic liberals is a lot easier than engaging in actual debate on public policy issues with others who not only have different ideas but are intelligent in their own right.

Gore comes across as a real true believer in his global warming show. Of course, one should also note that he has set himself up to make significant financial gains from sales of carbon offsets. And Gore's lifestyle uses a lot more energy than the average American whose standard of living he is willing to sacrifice.

What is most interesting about Gore is his unwillingness to debate anymore. Remember, this is a guy who believed he could run the country and take on all comers. Nowadays, he doesn't even want to debate about his sole topic of choice, global warming. It appears that he believes that his sale job on the Oscar voters and the Nobel Peace Prize group and given him a lifetime pass from having to debate. More than anything, I think that is why Gore is afraid to run for President. He is just too fat and happy dealing with the converted.

lambs to the slaughter

2007-11-14T19:52:00.000-05:00

The plan to extract hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to subsize the worst performing team in the recent history of professional baseball is apparently proceeding along well. Below is a copy of a letter to the editor faxed to the St. Petersburg Times. It will be interesting to see if any of it is published.

If someone proposed a plan to reduce St. Petersburg City and Pinellas County taxes by at least $450,000,000 over a period of years by selling city/county-owned property for development and returning the money raised to taxpayers, I’m sure that the St. Petersburg Times would oppose such a plan on the grounds that there are many unmet needs and so many poor residents in the area needing government assistance.

But the recent proposal to turn over $450,000,000 of city/county money to some of the wealthiest individuals in the nation, the owners of the Rays baseball company represented by multi-millionaire Stuart Sternberg, is treated by the paper as a idea that should be seriously considered.

In addition to the poor public policy of using even more taxpayer money to subsidize businesses owned and operated for the benefit of the well-off, the numbers being discussed simply don’t add up. The Trop site is valued at $100 million or so but the city/county owes more than that on the 17 year old stadium they would have to tear down. Maybe a developer would pay $200 million but there would still not be much left over to pay for a $450 million ball field. Worse yet, the $150 million contribution from the Rays company appears to include a $60 million state tax subsidy as well as a slice of the $100 to $200 million to come from redevelopment of the Trop site. The Rays owners probably expect to pocket all of the money from naming rights meaning they would likely walk away from the closing table with a nice pot of cash.

As the saying goes, the rich get richer.

pickpockets at the baseball park

2007-11-12T08:21:00.000-05:00

One always has to watch out for pickpockets and other petty thieves at baseball games and other sporting events. In St. Petersburg, Florida, however, the major pocket picking going on is by the team ownership.

When it comes to baseball, the city of St. Petersburg is a "mark" that can be taken again and again. Some 20 years ago, the city of something like 250,000 people spent close to $100,000,000 to build a baseball stadium "on spec" with the hope that a team would be assigned there. Some 10 years later (and tens of millions more in tax revenues), a team was assigned, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays -- note it was not the St. Petersburg Devil Rays.

Since the Devil Rays started playing, they have been consistently the worst team in the entire professional sport. Not surprisingly, the attendance has not been the greatest either.

This year, much of Florida is experiencing a tax revolt, so much so that the state legislature has taken steps to roll back and reduce the growth rate of taxes. Localities such as St. Petersburg have had to deal with reductions from planned expenditures.

One might think that now would not be a good time for a private business with a poor performance record to ask for massive public subsidies but this is not just any private business but a baseball team. The Devil Rays have now reinvented themselves as the Rays and want a $450,000,000 public subsidy to provide them with a new ball field. Wow!

Remember, there are 20 years remaining to pay for the existing ball field. The Rays want the city to raze the existing ball field and resell the land for high density development and use the money to further subsidize the baseball operation. The hope to have their new ball field, to be built on prime waterfront property, ready for use by 2012. There is no mention of where the money is going to come from to pay for the remaining amount due on the existing baseball field.

While details are scarce, the team seems to be offering to put in some of the money for the new stadium -- or are they? They also want a state tax subsidy of $60,000,000 and I'm sure they expect to receive any proceed from the sale of naming rights.

It is hard to imagine that St. Petersburg would suffer much if the Devil Rays, oops Rays, would just disappear and end up playing somewhere else. The taxpayers would certainly benefit.

The Hillary Campaign

2007-11-12T08:08:00.000-05:00

It is interesting to watch how the Hillary Clinton campaign apparatus responds to errors and mistakes.

When she was caught trying to give two different and incompatible answers to a single question in a debate a couple of weeks ago, her staff tried to blame it on the moderator asking questions. She personally accused the men of piling on and then her husband chimed in. It was a well-orchestrated if ineffective response.

Now we find out that Hillary's campaign has tried to have specific questions planted in the audience for those occasions in which she is asked questions. After an initial denial, an admission was made that this might have happened one time. Now we understand it was attempted on at least one other occasion. The latest response -- a claim that George Bush is worse! Huh? I don't think Bush is even running -- and certainly not in the democratic primary.

Is Hillary really in charge of her campaign apparatus? If so, it reinforces the conclusion that she is below the norm for ethics in politicians (and the norm is pretty low). If not, it suggests that she would fall far short of the ability to run the country. This is reminiscent of John Kerry's campaign which was so disorganized and mismanaged that he couldn't even keep his wife's public statements under control.

Hillary makes it official

2007-01-21T09:19:00.000-05:00

The most predictable event of the last several years is now a reality as Hillary Clinton has officially declared she is running for President. Despite protestations to the contrary, I don't think that she had originally planned on announcing this early. As long as no serious candidates were officially pursuing the office, Hillary had a big advantage since everyone knew she was going to announce sooner or later.

Hillary has to be unhappy with the media (and Hollywood type) lovefest for Barack Obama and I'm sure this has spurred her action. With her high negatives, there was always the slim (or perhaps slim to nothing) possibility that Hillary would pass up the race; the possibility of which enhanced the opportunity for a viable alternative. Also, while Hillary has worked hard to keep as low a profile on issues as possible, with no track record at all, Obama has her beat. John Kerry's attempt to be on all sides of all issues didn't work in 2004 but by 2006 the democrats figured out the winning strategy was to never yield to temptation and take an actual position on any issue and it worked well beyond what they could have hoped for.

But the thing that has always struck me about the Clintons (both Bill and Hillary) is their willingness to promote and enrich themselves over a period of close to 20 years while looting the residents of Arkansas, a very poor state. During the Clinton years, the road to any sort of state benefit ran through the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock where Hillary was employed. Public facilities such as schools and roads in Arkansas are very spartan yet the Clintons enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle completely out of touch with what their subjects had to endure.

ultimate conspicuous consumption

2006-10-14T20:45:00.000-04:00

These days, there are very few limits to the excesses in consumption that can achieved by wealthy businessmen, politicians and Hollywood stars. Yachts that are so big they are limited to the harbors they can use; fleets of automobiles so large that drivers must be hired to drive the vehicles around periodically lest they deteriorate, houses so large that they require prodiguous amounts of energy to operate plus large indoor and outdoor staffs even when not occupied by the owners.

But the latest goes beyond mere consmption into a level of self-agrandizement that is breathtaking. I am talking, of course, by Madonna's recent "adoption" of a poor infant from the country of Malawi. In this case, it is not even completely about money but about a level of celebrity so powerful that it can overwhelm the laws of a soverign country. This is not the first such example of such hubris but it is the most outrageous to date as it involves the purchase of an infant whose father is too poor to raise him adequately.

If this is not stopped, what will be next?

How safe?

2006-10-12T20:42:00.000-04:00

How safe is general aviation? If you had asked Cory Lidle last September 8 as the New York Times did, you would find that he viewed his new airplane as very safe to fly, despite his relatively little experience as a pilot.

"“The whole plane has a parachute on it,” Lidle said. “Ninety-nine percent of pilots that go up never have engine failure, and the 1 percent that do usually land it. But if you’re up in the air and something goes wrong, you pull that parachute, and the whole plane goes down slowly.”"

Of course, you couldn't ask him today as he died yesterday when his parachute-equipped airplane crashed into a New York highrise building. Did he experience an engine failure? That hasn't yet been determined. We do know that, if he attempted to deploy his parachute, it did not cause the "whole plane to come down slowly".

A lot of people seem to have been convinced that having an airplane parachute adds to safety as Cirrus has sold a lot of airplanes on that basis. However, this "safety" has not been reflected as crash and incident statistics contine to be collected.

Although the concept of having a parachute seems appealing, the fact is that the percentage of accidents and incidents in which having a parachute could be beneficial is very small.

Also, it turns out that the speed at which the plane "goes down slowly" is actually about 1,500 feet per minute or 25 feet per second. This is less a floating to the ground than a crash and once the parachute is deployed, the pilot really has no more control about where the plane will land. This was the case in a recent Cirrus crash in which the pilot was killed when the plane ended up ditching in a lake. A conventional airplane with an engine failure becomes a heavy glider and, if properly controlled, will descent into the ground with less than half the vertical speed of a Cirrus.

So, if the parachute is not the answer, what is? Looking at accident statistics provides the answer. Most accidents are caused by pilot error. In almost all cases, an investment in additional training will yield a much better return than purchase of a parachute.

too pretty for prosecution

2006-03-21T19:34:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, Debra Lafave's attorney stated that she was "too pretty for prison" despite the fact that she had admitted to molesting a young teen age student in two separate political jurisdictions. While the attorney's statement outraged local citizens, it was apparently okay for local prosecutors who were anxious to make a plea deal for Ms. Lafave on terms that must have made here lawyer a very happy man indeed. Facing over 30 years in prison, the deal required no jail time whatsoever.

The prosecutor and judge in Hillsboro county apparently had no problems with the prosecution give-away and the Marion county prosecutor was apparently also on board the "too pretty for prison" bandwagon; the only potential problem was the Marion county judge who would need to approve the deal.

However, Marion county Judge Hale Stancil was not impressed with the prosecution give-away. Saying the give-away deal "shocks the conscience of this court," Stancil rejected it. So, one might conclude that the Marion county portion of the case would now go to trial with Lafave potentially subject to punishment appropriate to her offenses? But no! -- States Attorney Brad King decided that he would prefer to let Ms. Lafave walk than endure the possibility of facing prison. In King's eyes, Lafave is not only too pretty for prison but too pretty for prosecution.

Of course, the media are still serving as stooges for the defense time, now parroting the strange claim that letting Ms. Lafave walk away with essentially no punishment will benefit the victim of her crimes. Here is a story that discusses this. http://sptimes.com/2006/03/21/Hillsborough/To_the_end__a_mother_.shtml Of course, protecting witnesses from intimidation and adverse publicity is one of the responsibilities of the prosecution team. In this case, however, it appears that the prosecutors were more concerned about Ms. Lafave than they were about the victim of her crimes.

Geography or liberal politics

2006-03-18T11:04:00.001-05:00

The Colorado geography teacher who spent a good portion of his class comparing George W. Bush to Hitler has apparently returned to work after an unpublicized settlement with the school district.

For some strange reason, this was characterized as a "freedom of speech" issue but that makes no sense. Surely the school management has the authority (actually responsibility) to specify the curriculum in enough detail to make sure that geography itself is covered. And, while geography can cover a wider range of issues that simple knowledge of capitals and location of mountains, the fact is that the National Geographic Society conducts periodic surveys that show that American students are well behind in basic geographic knowledge.

As far as I can tell, no one was attempting to restrict what Mr. Bennish could say outside of his classroom which, if it had happened, would be a free speech issue. In fact, the school district rules apparently are quite liberal in that they only required that both sides of controversial issues be presented. In the instant case, perhaps Mr. Bennish could have augmented his comparison of Bush to Hitler with a discussion about the symptoms of Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS), one of which is making senseless comparisons of Bush to Hitler.

Perhaps other liberal-minded teachers who cannot keep their case of BDS under control with medication or by other means will be a bit more cautious realizing that a motivated student can easily record a Bush-bashing lecture as in this case.

Geography or liberal politics

2006-03-18T11:04:00.000-05:00

Al Gore's big show

2006-02-23T08:01:00.000-05:00

It is hard to imagine anyone who would be worse as an entertainer than Al Gore. The "man of wood" shows almost no expressions except when he is coached and, even then, it is apparent they are faked. So it is probably good for the Al Gore TV network that Al himself is not an on-air personality.

Now that he is, to some extent, an "entrepreneur" (a strange concept for a liberal), we can see how he performs in the real world. Apparently one of the first things to go was opposition to sexually-explicit materials most often associated with his wife Tipper's silly tirade against song lyrics. These days, however, sex means money in the till so it is apparently all right.

"To capture the elusive eyeballs of the iPod generation, Mr. Gore's channel has also been experimenting with some raunchy fare. In a segment titled "Hooking Up," women loosened up by tequila suck on lollipops as they muse about their sex lives. There's no nudity, but there are graphic discussions of "fingering" and under what conditions they will "put out." Another recent segment included a photo of sex toys.
That kind of material might alarm Mr. Gore's wife, Tipper, who once led a crusade against explicit song lyrics, but the former vice president has apparently taken it in stride."

It goes without saying that their is a liberal slant to the Gore network. Not a "deliberate" liberal slant of couse but more like the New York Times or the Washington Post -- since no conservatives are anywhere near the place, only liberal ideas are even considered.

"Despite the caveats, on balance the on-air segments do tilt left. Cartoon "pods" mock Mr. Bush and other administration figures. A commissioned video exploring military recruiting in high schools used hidden cameras to capture a uniformed recruiter giving a pitch that was portrayed as misleading. Anti-war "counter-recruitment" activists were featured, but the video showed no young people explaining the benefits of military service."

Joel Hyatt (of Hyatt Legal Services) and a bunch of other liberal fat-cats are backing the Gore network. I always considered Hyatt a true entreprenuer but might re-think that after discovering that he is a big liberal. Most entrepreneurs that have to work hard at building their businesses are not liberals as they dislike the high taxes on those who work the hardest. It is "get rich quick" folks like Hollywood types that tend to be liberals as they view that money falls off trees.

Gore's network also seems to share with its radio cousin Air America a taste for improper funding sources.

One investor that has generated controversy is the Yucaipa American Fund. President Clinton is an adviser to the fund, which is backed by California pension money and was described in press accounts as specializing in investments benefiting lower-income urban and rural communities. A critic of the fund, Peter Schweizer, said he doesn't believe the network is aiding the underprivileged. "That's the express goal they established," Mr. Schweizer, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, said. "Of course, Current TV doesn't fit the bill."

The idea of Al Gore actually having to worry about meeting a payroll and dealing with staff issues is intriguing but unrealistic as it appears that Gore is not really that involved in day-to-day operations.

As stupid as they come?

2006-02-19T08:49:00.000-05:00

Obviously nobody is going to mistake Britney Spears for a highly educated individual but that is not her role. You would think she could hire someone with some smarts to help her figure out what to say when required to comment on one thing or another. Caught mistreating her young infant, her first instinct was to blame someone else.

Now, after reflection, she has refined her story, claiming she doesn't want to become the next Princess Diana. It is hard to understand what that means; Princess Diana was killed because of riding in a vehicle with a driver who was highly inebriated. Spears can avoid that fate by the simple expedient of making sure whoever is driving her around is sober and, when you think about it, that doesn't seem like too much to ask.

But of course Spears is really trying to blame the paparazzi; she apparently can't understand the riding around with a drunken driver can result in a fatal accident while having photographers around does not.

But if the good Spears gains from the paparazzi (free publicity) is not worth the hassle, she can move somewhere when they don't hang out and then she can go about her business as she wants. Maybe she won't get as many cover stories in People magazine but that is the choice she has to make.

media blowout

2006-02-16T19:12:00.000-05:00

The overreaction of the mainstream media to the Cheney hunting accident is truely astounding. After all, this incident had nothing to do with any official duties of Cheney or anyone else and the other individual affected is a private citizen.

Perhaps the very concept of hunting is so foreign to typical members of the dominant liberal media that they simply cannot fathom the idea of a hunting accident. Of course, the very concept of gun ownership is something that many liberals are uncomfortable with. To them, this incident is simply another reason to fear firearms. Of course, the reality is that hunting accidents, while rare, do occur and individuals who hunt have to accept that possibility in much the same way that anyone who partakes in any activity with any risk must accept that risk.

I don't think that anything Cheney did or did not do would have made any material effect on the media overreaction to this minor incident. If he had called an immediate news conference as the media suggest he should done, they would have accused him of ignoring the condition of the man who was injured. When Cheney did speak out, the liberals jumped on him for choosing for choosing Fox News.

Even today, five days after this minor incident, the media are still abuzz with it; NBC claiming that this incident will weaken Cheney's influence in the administration. The moonbat blogs are, of course, filled with various conspiracy theories.

The liberals media are like a pack of wolves just waiting to find anything to pounce on; anything that makes the President or members of his administration look bad. What a disgrace.

Is Michelle Kwan a good sport?

2006-02-14T20:48:00.000-05:00

There have been a lot of stories about the circumstances surrounding Michelle Kwan's withdrawl from the Olympics. In most of the stories there is very little said about how Kwan actually made the U.S. team. The answer is that she used political influence to have the rules changed on her behalf. Under the rules in existence at the time the team members were to have been selected, she would not have qualified. What Kwan managed to pull off would be the equivalent of the number 3 ranked football team having the Bowl Championship Series rules changed to their benefit after all the regular season games had been played.

I don't believe that Kwan should be given any praise for giving up something that was not really hers to begin with. In fact, only by Kwan's claiming a new injury was the righful team member, Emily Hughes, able to participate in the competition (although not the opening ceremony and she will be some days behind the other competitors.) It is said the participation in the Olympics is a once-in-a-lifetime dream for many of the altheletes. Kwan was apparently ready and willing to have Emily Hughes' dream dashed in order for Kwan to participate a third time.

Get Oprah on your side if you are going to lie

2006-01-13T21:10:00.000-05:00

It was recently disclosed that James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces", a claimed memoir about his life, contains a lot more fiction than Frey was willing to admit to. In fact, NBC's Today show brought back a segment from 2003 when Frey told Matt Lauer that the whole book was true. Now, of course, we know that many of the more dramatics parts of the book are total fiction.

Of particular interest was the fact that Oprah Winfrey, Queen of the daytime talk show crowd, had endorsed the Frey book. What would Oprah say when she found out she was the victim of a con? Well, we now know that it was okay with Oprah; maybe she doesn't know about the distinction between fact and fiction or maybe she doesn't care. Apparently, however, Oprahs' continuing support of Frey's fraudulent work will enable him to avoid the pressure to come clean and, according to the cited story, permit publishers to continue to publish "enhanced" works as nonfiction instead of fiction.

It seems to me that there should be an important distinction between fact and fiction or fantasy. Oprah can still appreciate the "redemptive value" of the work but why not call it what it is; fiction. There is no law that says that a fictional work cannot have "redemptive value".

Washington D.C.'s gift to baseball heads for the record books

2005-12-21T19:57:00.000-05:00

The Washington, D.C. goverment spent years denouncing major league baseball for abandoning the city some years back (and leaving a stadium that had not yet been paid for). Last year, the city decided to demostrate its feelings by gifting baseball with a stadium expected to cost slightly in excess of half a billion dollars, all to come from the pockets of local taxpayers. Providing this facility to the baseball team relocating to town caused the value of the franchise to increase by a cool $300 million or so, none of which will, of course, been seen by local taxpayers.

But as typically happens in this type of arrangment, the original cost estimate was maybe a little bit to low; in this case, by $130 million or so -- and that figure may go even higher as construction hasn't even started yet! And, of course, since the costs of the stadium will be paid for by borrowed funds, the ultimate cost to taxpayers will end up being well over a billion dollars, quite a bit of money for a city with many school buildings over 100 years old that are deteriorating year after year.

For its part, major league baseball had indicated a willing to make stadium rental payments of $6 million per year plus a one-time $20 million amount. The is apparently some issue about what the $20 million can be spent for but, let's face it, that amount is a small drop in a very large bucket.

So, let's do a few back-of-the-envelope calculations and see what they reveal. (Of course, all of the actual agreements are going to be many hundreds of pages and written by a legion of well paid lawyers in $1,000 suits.) Let's start out by assuming that the stadium will be in use for 30 years. This may seem like a short period of time but it is not given the recent history of publicly-financed stadiums built to benefit private organizations. In addition, since the new stadium is being built as a baseball-only facility, the ability to use it for other purposes is greatly diminished. Anyhow, let's say that the total cost to the taxpayers including principle and interest is $1.2 billion and is paid out over the estimated 30 year life. In reality, the $1.2 billion amount is probably low and the payout period rather short but to the extent that the payout period exceeds the actual life of the facility, it means that future taxpayers will be paying for a facility that no longer provides any benefits whatsoever.

Amortizing $1.2 billion over 30 years would take $40 million per year. Offsetting this taxpyer expense will be a lease payment of $6 million. I'm not sure who is going to pay for the maintenance and repair of the facility itself but I would be surprised if it was NOT the taxpayers of the District of Columbia. So the taxpayers of D.C. will be out a minimum of $36 million per year to have a bunch of millionaires play ball. Of course, the team will also generate a variety of minimum wage-style jobs for ticket-takers and folks hawking beer and hot dogs. Assuming that baseball in Washington draws 4 million fans per year (the actual number will surely be less), the minimum out-of-pocket subsidy for each ticket-holder will be $9.

Now let's look at this another way. The lease payment on the stadium is equivalent to the goverment constructing customized million dollar houses and offering them for rent at $800 per month!

But the D.C. stadium deal may be the most costly stadium ever constructed (at least, until the next one). Chicago claims the record expenditure for Soldier's Field http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=News&id=612180 at $606 million but it is clear that the D.C. baseball stadium will exceed that figure by a considerable amount.

This all leaves one one inclined to believe that the city leaders in Washington don't care about their schools falling down or the students enrolled in them. Not true. In fact, the city council is hard at work trying to increase the number of free tickets distributed to disadvantaged youth in the city. Perhaps students who cannot attend classes due to plumbing or electrical failures in their antiquated schools will be given tickets to attend baseball games instead.

maybe not too pretty for prision after all

2005-12-13T16:11:00.000-05:00

The incredible sweet deal that Debra Lafave's attorney had negotiated on her behalf to settle multiple counts of sexual misconduct with a 14 year old in multiple jurisdictions has evidently fallen apart. The judge in one of the jurisdictions (Marion County) was apparently unwilling to let Ms. Lafave walk away with almost no punishment despite the fact that the mother of the victim was unhappy about the idea of having her son testify.

The Tampa Tribune interviewed an expert on obtaining testimony from young witnesses:

Just because the mother doesn't want [her son] to testify," Afield said, doesn't mean he shouldn't. "All parents are protective of their children, but the question is: Is it going to cause permanent damage to him? If he doesn't have a history of mental problems, if he's not fragile or mentally ill, he gets over it just like you recover after having your appendix taken out or an impacted wisdom tooth pulled." There are ways to minimize the trauma for the boys, Afield said, by videotaping heir testimony or having them testify behind a curtain.

The response from Lafave's publicity-hungry attorney was fascinating:

Lafave's attorney, John Fitzgibbons, called Afield's comments "ludicrous and absolutely ridiculous." "The detail of questioning that a lawyer would need to do in a case like this would clearly have an impact on any young person. That's why we have tried so hard to keep the young man and his cousin out of testifying at this trial."

So, are we now supposed to believe that Lafave's attorney is now concerned about the victim in this case? Since the facts in the case are not really in dispute, why would it be necessary to aggressively question either the victim or his relative who witnesses Ms. Lafave's rather flagrant actions? Fitzgibbons had previously stated he would attempt an insanity defense which, again, would not require much in the way of testimony from the victim. (I'm assuming that Fitzgibbon's is not going to share his "too pretty for prison" claim with any jury; it just doesn't seem to me like that would go over well.

The way the system works is that Fitzgibbons owes his total loyalty to his client, Ms. Lafave. It is entirely to be expected for him to attempt to disrupt the lives of the victim and family as much as possible in order to reduce the punishment imposed on his client. The repeated delays in bring this case to trial are evidence of Fizgibbon's success to date and the plea bargain agreed to by the judge in Hillsboro county reflected an almost total retreat by the prosecution in the case. For Fitzgibbon to imply that his defense strategy for Lafave incorporated concern for the victims in any possible way is absurd.

shoot first, ask questions later

2005-12-07T21:09:00.000-05:00

"An agitated passenger who claimed to have a bomb in his backpack was shot and killed by a federal air marshal Wednesday after he bolted frantically from a jetliner that was boarding for take off, officials said. No bomb was found."

So, after a few hundred billion dollars, the Homeland Security Department has executed the first terrorist actually caught in the act. Oops; no bomb was found. The individual shot was actually a mental patient who had failed to take his medication. I think he was probably shot in the back but none of the stories I have seen mentioned that detail.

making baseball team owners rich

2005-11-25T10:47:00.000-05:00

And now another baseball owner is threatening to leave for greener ($$$) pastures. In Miami, Marlins team owner Jeffrey Loria has apparently been unsuccessful in obtaining a public subsidy of $300 million plus which, if the experience of other citites is typical, would end up being substantially more.

Two large local newspapers, the Sun-Sentinel and Herald, seem to see nothing wrong with huge public subsidies for baseball. But let's take a closer look at what is going on here.

What is apparent is that Loria made a business decsion when he agreed to buy the Marlins and, in retrospect, it may have been a poor one. He purchased the team subject to a stadium lease that does not provide him with as much of the ancillary financial perks (parking, concession revenues, luxury box revenue in excess of the ticket value, etc.). It is these perks, typically not even shown on the books of the baseball team itself, that make the baseball business immensely popular for the owners. Let's take parking, for example. It costs $9 to park at a Marlins game. While this is not as high as the charge at some venues, it is clear that it is 80-90% profit.

One has to assume that either Loria was smart enough to reflect the conditions of the stadium lease in what he paid for the team and was, essentially gambling that the taxpayers would pay for a new stadium in which he could get a better deal or he was very naive and overpaid for what he got. In either case, he is apparently expecting taxpayers to make him a fortune as they have in Baltimore, Washington DC, Pittsburgh, and other cities that have spent hugh amounts of taxpayer money on stadiums. In the case of Washington, the sweet deal negotiated for public subsidy of the team increased the value of the franchise by a cool $330 million!

I hope that the political leaders of southern Florida decide not to subsidize a new professional baseball stadium. Will the Marlins head for greener pastures? Probably but it will be no real loss to the south Florida area.

Professional baseball, the endless subsidy

2005-11-25T10:35:00.000-05:00

Washington, D.C. spends a lot of taxpayer money on its school system but most of it is spent on compensation for staff with the physical facilities being outmoded and in a poor state of repair. With some buildings over 100 years old and literally falling apart, the children of D.C. deserve better.

But the D.C. mayor and city council have little interest in constucting new school buildings and instead are willing to spend over $1/2 billion in taxpayer money for a baseball stadium to be rarely used and which will primarly benefit billionaire sports team owners. But now it appears that the $535 million projected will not be nearly enought to finish the stadium and related
infrastructure.

At this point, the mayor and council are removing required road and subway improvements from the $535 allocation and plan (hope?) to have these expenses covered by others. But others certainly does not include the baseball team owners:

"Baseball cut a deal in good faith when they came on board here," Nationals President Tony Tavares said. "They entered into very detailed negotiations that were comprehensively written and that were expanded into a full lease on RFK and
a new building with all the accoutrements that come with it. Bottom line: Baseball has stayed the course and done everything it said it was going to do. The [stadium agreement] clearly stated that cost overruns were clearly the responsibility of the city."

And bseball cut a very good deal indeed:

The sports commission and Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) view the significant shift of money as necessary to meet the terms of the September 2004 stadium agreement with Major League Baseball. The promise of a stadium and all the revenue sources that come with it has allowed the league, whose 29 owners bought the Nationals three years ago for $120 million, to command $450 million for the franchise.

So, the public subsidy of $535 million translated to an immediate benefit to baseball owners of $330 million -- not a bad deal for them but a very poor one for the citizens of Washington, D.C.

Too pretty for prison?

2005-11-25T10:22:00.000-05:00

News that Debra Lafave was able to avoid prison time on multiple counts of abusing a 14 year old boy has caused quite a bit of outrage since her "punishment" (up to 3 years of house arrest and 7 years of probation) was so much less than that given to men who are charged with the same type of crime.

But it appears that a major reason that the prosecution was willing to agree to such a deal is that the victim's family was anxious to have this long drawn out case brought to a conclusion.

While one might argue that Lafave's attorney John Fitzgibbons showed an amazing amount of arrogance when he asserted that Lafave was "too pretty to go to prison", the timing of his statement (close to when the plea agreement was announced) suggests that he knew that his client was not going to have to face a jury of her peers.

In fact, the Lafave case was also about legal manipulation and not at all about the facts as the facts were never seriously in dispute and were butressed by a substantial amount of evidence. While the announced Lafave defense strategy was to claim insanity, given the known facts, this would have been a hard claim to argue. What the strategy did do, however, was to enable to defense to delay the case by many months, a strategy which evidently succeeded in demoralizing the prosecution witnesses.

Given the entire situation here, the fact that Lafave is an attractive female has less to do with her minimal punishment than the fact that her legal team effectively manipulated the system using a series of delays to demoralize the prosecution's witnesses to the point where they were unhappy with the prospect of attempting to see the case to a conclusion.

Ready for surrender?

2005-11-20T20:06:00.000-05:00

From the sound of their rhetoric, it would appear that the democrats are ready to surrender in Iraq. In the U.S. House of Representatives the other day, however, only 3 backed the resolution supporting surrender; i.e., the withdrawal of U.S. forces at the present time. One can only conclude that most of the advocates of a surrender in Iraq were unwilling to go on the record with that sentiment.

But while the type of surrender envisioned by anti-war democrats would reduce the trickle of U.S. casualties, at least in the short term, it would certainly have other negative and long-term consequences.

The advocates of surrender support their position with the assumption that the terrorists operating in Iraq are only there because of U.S. actions in removing Saddam Hussein. Under that line of reasoning, once U.S. forces are removed, the foreign terrorists currently active in Iraq will go home to the countries they came from (most are not from Iraq), lay down their arms and become peaceful and productive citizens. But the terrorists (termed insurgents by mainstream media) operating currently in Iraq have expressed goals far beyond the removal of U.S. forces from that county to include elimination of all U.S. influence in the region as well as the elimination of Israel! It is hard to believe that a U.S. surrender in Iraq would cause these groups to suddenly abandon their larger goal.

But the overarching belief of those advocating U.S. surrender in Iraq is that terrorism is a product of the foreign relations policies of the Bush administration. Under this view, changing those policies would somehow cause terrorism to fade away and cease to exist. This view, of course, ignores the fact that terrorism was present prior to Bush assuming office and that it was the United States that was attacked on 9/11. It also falls short in beginning to explain why France, a supporter of Saddam Hussein and opponent of U.S. policy, has recently been subject to terrorist attacks and/or insurgent activities, depending on what you want to call them. (It certainly makes no sense to call the activities of young Muslims in Iraq an insurgency and to call those of young Muslims in France the actions of unhappy youths as done by the mainstream media).

It is my view that the surrender of U.S. forces in Iraq would lend considerable support to terror operations throughout the world, increasing their ability to recruit new members and increasing the likelihood that the next battleground in the war on terror will be in the United States and not in Iraq. Surely, the democrats will be unwilling to surrender when terrorists again strike New York or Washington.

6 million without power in Florida; will anything different be done in the future?

2005-10-24T20:52:00.000-04:00

According to reports, Hurricane Wilma knocked out power to 6 millions Florida residents and it will take weeks before power is restored.

If there is one thing that has been consistent about the hurriicanes striking the United States over the past few years, it has been the devestating effect on electric power infrastructure. While the extent of injuries and even loss of life has been relatively low in even the more severe of storms in recent years, damage to electric power infrastructure has been widespread and has taken a long time to repair.

After being repaired and replaced, the power infrastructure is left no less vulnerable for the next storm. And the utilities are always there to take advantage of the situation to raise rates. In fact, while building codes have been strengthened over the years, typically requiring new or rebuilt structures to be made less vulnerable to storms than older structures, fragile electric power lines and poles are replaced again and again with a certainty that they will fail at the next opportunity.

Perhaps the view is that the larger investment costs associated with running power lines underground is not justified by the frequency of storms that can disable the fragile above-ground infrastructure. The number and strength of storms over the past few years suggests that is not a convincing argument. Scientists tell us that we are about 10 years into a 20 to 40 year cycle of increased hurricane activity. Over this period of time, it is likely that much of the vulnerable power infrastructure will be rebuilt multiple times under emergency conditions with associated high costs.

One might think that a smart and visionary political leader would gain something by advocating hardening of the power infrastructure but no one has made such a proposal. Certainly the technology to run power lines underground exists and is proven. In addition to being inherently fragile, overhead power lines are an eyesore. A 20-30 year project to replace vulnerable overhead lines with storm-resistant underground service would certainly cost a lot of money but perhaps less in the long run by piecemeal rebuilding of facilities that have been shown from experience to be extremely fragile. And that doesn't include the costs to the economy when power supplies are disrupted for long periods of time.

Jeb Bush changes position on oil drilling in the Gulf

2005-10-06T14:51:00.000-04:00

Florida Governor Jeb Bush has changed his position and is now supporting limited oil drilling rigs in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

Although part of the problem of high fuel consumer due in great part to its high population, Florida has not been part of the solution in terms of developing national fuel resources due to opposition to oil and gas development in the Gulf of Mexico. But gasoline prices around $3.00 a gallon may result in changing some minds.

The opponents of drilling have attempted to demonize proposed offshore oil and gas development by claiming it would result in large scale damage to the coastline and there is a widespread public perception that oil fields would be visible from the shore. In fact, nothing that has been proposed would be visible or noticeable in any way.

The bias against energy development has been pervasive. The Sun-Sentinel story about Bush's change of mind contains the following poll question alternatives regarding whether to drill off the coast if that nation faces a gasoline shortage.

Yes. Drilling is OK if there is a major fuel crisis.

No. Damaging Florida's coastline is not a good solution under any circumstances.

The two alternatives tacitly assume that drilling would damage the coastline.

Senator Bill Nelson has gone so far as to suggest that the area off the coast be excluded from drilling so it can continue to be used as a military bombing area. This from a Senator who rarely finds anything positive about the United States military.

In the aftermath of the recent hurricanes, other countries drew down some of their own reserves in order to reduce the price spiking resulting from speculation about damaged production and refinery capacity in the United States. Are these countries going to continue to do that kind of thing if the United States continues to avoid even exploration in large areas with substantial potential oil and gas production?

Sandy Berger again "unaware"

2005-10-06T14:36:00.000-04:00

We had last heard from Sandy Berger, national security advisor to Bill Clinton, when he was given a "slap on the wrist" level of punishment for stealing classified documents by hiding them in his trousers and then attempting to lie about it when he was caught. Before admitting his guilt (and getting almost no punishment), Berger had claimed that he was unaware that he had stuffed documents into his pants.

Now we hear that Berger was again "unaware", this time that he was speeding 33 mph over the speed limit on I-66 near Washington, DC.

When making the required report to his probation officer, Berger claimed "that he had been speeding because he was late to a meeting and was unaware of how fast he was traveling."

For those not familiar with it, that part of I-66 is in a very urbanized area and it is a busy road filled with traffic. Perhaps a lot of people are doing "10 over" or 65 and might be "unaware" that they are speeding but it is no more credible to be "unaware" of travelling over 30 mph over the limit there than it is to be unaware one is walking out of the national archives building with a bunch of documents in your pants.

prosecutorial abuse -- a case study

2005-10-05T11:27:00.000-04:00

The criminal justice system offers extraordinary powers to prosecutors which, when abused, can result in really outrageous results. The recent personal "jihad" of Santa Barbara county prosecutor Thomas Sneddon against Michael Jackson was one example and now, Texas democratic Ronnie Earle is showing just how far he is willing to abuse the system in an attempt to get even with Tom Delay for his successful efforts to break the democratic stronghold on the Texas state legistlature and congressional delegation.

The grand jury process is particularly suited to an abusive prosecutor as no defense or even exculpatory evidence need be presented when the prosecutor chooses to seek and indictment. It is typically the case that a good prosecutor can manipulate a grand jury to bring almost any charge. For Ronnie Earle, however, even those overwhelming advantages were not sufficent and he had to use three separate grand juries to get the results he wanted.

"Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle acknowledged that prosecutors presented their case to three grand juries — not just the two they had discussed — and one grand jury refused to indict DeLay."

Earle, of course, has a history of failed political prosecutions. Even those who don't care for Tom Delay have to be appaled at the conduct of Earle.

gun control lobby gets desperate

2005-10-04T21:28:00.000-04:00

The gun control establishment has been on the decline for some years now. Absent Columbine-style incidents that can be manipulated into public and legislative sympathy for more restrictions on second amendment rights, the general trend has been to relax sometimes irrational restrictions on the public's rights to own firearms.

The fact is that claimed terrible consequences that the gun control establishment has stated would result from increased firearm rights have simply not come about. Instead, crime rates seem to come down as gun rights increase. It will result in a major blow to the gun control lobby and their highly paid staffers if voters in places like Washington DC and New York start to become aware that increased gun ownership by law-abiding citizens will lead to less crime and that the gun control lobby has lied and misrepresented facts for years.

A sign of the lobby's desperation is their attempt to convince Florida visitors that recent changes in Florida's self defense laws will lead to shootings of innocent visitors. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth as the gun control lobby well knows. The intent of the Florida law is to permit individuals to exercise longstanding rights to self defense without fear of prosecution by aggressive liberal prosecutors. Having long ago lost credibility with Florida voters and legislators, the gun control lobby is now resorting to passing out misleading leaflets and sponsoring misleading advertisements to visitors to the state.

One thing you can be sure the gun control lobby will never do is to compare crime rates in places with substantial firearms freedoms like Florida with those in Washington, DC or New York City with the most stringent firearms control in the country.

mainstream liberal media -- prepetually "stuck on stupid"

2005-09-22T19:49:00.000-04:00

Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, Federal military commander in New Oreleans, used the phrase "stuck on stupid" to describe the media's incessant focus on claimed Federal failing related to Hurricane Katrina. The phrase seems to be abhorent to the liberal mainstream media, probably because it is so apt. In the instant case, Honore was trying to describe plans to evacuate individuals from New Orleans as Hurricane Rita approaches but the media refused to let him make the announcements that needed to be made.

The phrase "stuck on stupid", however, has general applicability to much of the activities of the mainstream media. Well over a year into the effort to introduce a democratic government into Iraq, the media are still debating whether it was appropriate to remove murdering dictator Saddam Hussein from office as insufficient evidence of weapons of mass destruction were uncovered.

During last year's presidential election, the media were "stuck on stupid" when it came to George W. Bush's national guard service, despite that fact that it was never a significant part of his qualifications for high office. On the other hand, the media were never willing to provide the same scrutiny to John Kerrys' Vietnam service, despite the fact that it formed the centerpiece of his campaign.

Are the liberal mainsteam media "stuck on stupid"? Most of the time, it appears that they are.

"I hate Bush, send money" -- John Kerry

2005-09-20T11:05:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, John Kerry formally joined the list of democrats who have decided that the benefit of using the Hurricane Katrina tragedy to bash the Bush administration outweight the disadvantages. In the case of Kerry, he is evidently asking that readers of his diatribe contribute money to him; I guess he assumes the Katrina victims are all married to folks with substantial inherited wealth and, unlike himself, do not need financial assistance.

So, what are the disadvantages to democrats of bashing the Bush administration? Apparently, getting the facts all wrong is not an important consideration. Certainly the liberal media have proven willing to forgive that as long as the statements made are strongly enough anti-Bush. Also, polling results suggest that the bizzare claims, made without any evidence, that the Bush administration is employing discrimatory policies. have evidently been convincing to many African-Americans.

Of course, the idea of John Kerry criticizing the administration for mismanagement is almost laughable. After the election, Newsweek magazine, not exactly friendly to Bush, published information revealing that the Kerry campaign was in total disarray. It is hard to imagine that a man like John Kerry who could not keep a small campaign aparatus running smoothly, could someone manage the response to a major natural disaster.

great drama but just not true

2005-09-19T16:14:00.000-04:00

Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, La., (like being in charge of a county) grabbed for his 15 minutes of fame when being interviewed by Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press. Broussard gained points with the liberal mainsteam media by attacking the Bush administration and, in a very emotional manner which was widely rebroadcast, essentially claiming that Bush administration delays were somehow responsible for the death of a co-worker's mother.

The drama was superb and, since the story line was consistent with the theory that the Federal goverment was responsible for all of the problems associated with Hurricane Katrina, the media never bothered to look into the numerous holes in Broussard's story. The blogsphere did and found a lot of problems.

Now, over two weeks later, NBC is characterizing Brossard's story as a "misunderstanding". But the facts of the story prove that it had nothing to do with the Federal goverment at all. In fact, the woman died almost a week before Brossard claimed she did, quite a significant "detail" to be characterized as a "misunderstanding". Also, the failure of the owners of the home the woman lived in to evacuate has led to criminal charges being filed against them.

At least NBC is more honest than CBS was when it was caught peddling the Bush forged documents. But the failure to do even minimal fact-checking of stories critical of the Bush administration is a hallmark of liberal media bias.

a distinction without a difference?

2005-09-09T22:11:00.000-04:00

Attacks by the liberal media on the Bush Administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina are becoming more and more extreme even as more and more information is uncovered that points to local and state officials as primiarly responsible for shortcoming in emergency response.

Time Magazine apparently scrutinized FEMA head Mike Brown's background to a degree not seen since the CBS "investigation" of President Bush's Air National Guard service came up with the now-famous forged documents that will always be associated with liberal reporter Dan Rather.

Here is a summay of what Time is reporting.

"Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division" In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "

To the vast majority of Americans, the distinction between "Assistant City Manager" and "Assistant to the City Manager" for a job held about 30 years ago is not very significant. To a liberal Bush-hater, however, this is something to play as much as possible and all of the mainstream liberal media have publicized this as much as possible just like the CBS document forgeries.

It is interesting that the media are so concerned about details of a job title held by a Administration appointee almost 30 years ago but last year, during the Presidential election, they showed no interest in the issues raised about John Kerrys' Vietnam service which was the centerpiece of his entire campaign. In addition, Brown's service during last year's hurricane season was considered to be outstanding; shouldn't that record of recent service carry more weight than whether a job title from decades ago was accurately reported.

USATODAY.com - Berger to pay $50,000 for taking classified material

2005-09-08T19:39:00.000-04:00

Well, no one can say that the Bush Administration is excessively aggressive in protecting classified materials from abuse by liberals. The Administration evidently recommended a paltry $10,000 fine be assessed to Clinton national security advisor Sandy Berger for deliberate theft and destruction of classified documents and subsequent lying about it. A Federal judge found that the punishment was so inappropriate for the crime that he bumped the amount up to $50,000; still a relative slap-on-the-wrist for well-off Berger.

Do you think any of the liberals that have been after Karl Rove, claiming he should jailed for being accused of leaking the classified name of Kerry-backer Joseph Wilson's wife will complain about the soft treatment of Berger?

It is hard to believe that an "ordinary" person who did what Berger would not be facing at least a year or two of Federal prison time. In Washington, the saying should be "the bigger there, the easier the deal they get"

New Orleans and the liberals

2005-09-07T10:28:00.000-04:00

The effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are shocking in their scope. It will take a concentrated effort over an extended period of time to accomplish a recovery.

For many liberals, however, the storm damage simply provided another opportunity to bash conservatives and President George W. Bush.

Perhaps the first attack was launched by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in The Huffington Post. This bizarre piece blamed Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour for the fact the Katrina took dead aim on Mississippi; somehow equating some prior memorandum Barbour wrote opposing the Kyoto "global warming" treaty as incurring the wrath of God. (The Kyoto treaty was designed to marginally reduce carbon dioxide emissions from selected countries but required no reductions or even controls on emissions from such major countries as India and China. Anyone who has ever been in Wal-Mart can understand that China has a large and growing economy and failure to consider it in any kind of environmental program is simply foolhardy). The Kennedy piece was written before New Orleans was inundated due to levee breaks. Kennedy provided the following update "[UPDATE: Alas, the reprieve for New Orleans was only temporary. But Haley Barbour still has much to answer for.]" Of course, using Kennedy logic, one might conclude that the Lord, in his infinite wisdom, decided to increase the pain on New Orleans residents in response to Kennedy's irresponsible comment.

But the Kennedy comment was just the beginning. Although emergency response is clearly a primarily local and state responsibility, the liberal mainstream media were quick to attack the Bush administration, ignoring as much as possible the clear incompetence of those such as the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana. Obviously, those folks were not elected based on their skills in handling emergency situations.

The media have had been trying to ignore some pretty strong pieces of evidence that point to local and state officials as the key contributors to the chaos we have all seen. Local officials told New Orleans residents weeks before the storm that they would be on their own in the event of a major storm. Subsequently, they waffled about whether to order an evacuation and, when they finally did so, instructed folks with no means out of the area to come to the Superdome which apparently had no food, drinking water, or even remotely adequate facilities. News cameras have continued to show a large parking lot filled with school buses that are mostly under water, begging the question as to why they weren't used by local authorities to evacuate residents. This is one oversight that is going to be hard to blame on Bush so don't expect to hear about it from the major networks.

Recent news has the mayor of New Orleans now deciding that he is now really, really serious about his evacuation order and intends to forcibly remove folks who don't want to leave. He has also gone back and forth about how looters should be dealt with. This sort of waffling may appeal to the liberal media as it is sure reminiscent of John Kerry.

So far the liberal media attacks on Bush do not seem to have swayed public opinion. It looks like the liberal attempts to exploit Katrina may be no more effective that their attempts to exploit crazy Cindy Sheehan (who seems to have drifted so far from reality that her media entourage has evaporated).

fed up with Cindy Sheehan

2005-08-15T18:41:00.000-04:00

Although Cindy Sheehan's appeal to the liberal media in the United States continues to increase at an amazing rate, apparently not eveyone connected with her is that impressed with her antics. As picked up by The Smoking Gun, Sheehan's husband has filed for divorce. Now Cindy will apparently have more than last year's taxes to worry about.

The timing of the filing seems a bit curious. Since California is a community property state, it is likely that her husband would have an entitlement to any financial gains resulting from the virtual liberal lovefest of Ms. Sheehan. Perhaps some estimate of the future value of Ms. Sheehan's Bush-hating activities can be calculated and factored into the divorce settlement. Sheehan's husband has asked for payments of spousal support which suggests he has at least some idea of the value of her Bush-hating activites which have proven so popular with liberals.

heat stroke??

2005-08-14T19:50:00.000-04:00

Cindy Sheehan has become a top draw for the mainstream liberal media, many of whom are downright bored by having to spend a hot August in Crawford Texas with President Bush.

Sheehan meets all the criteria to cement her appeal to the national liberal media (and there aren't that many); she hates George Bush with a passion and she is very outspoken about that fact.

But as Sheehan has started to get the national media attention she craves and as her antics have energized the liberal "hate Bush" media, she has also started to draw attention from conservative bloggers. Last week, it became known that Sheehan's family are not so pleased with her performance in Crawford. Oops.

This weekend, some Sheehan quotes reported by Matt Drudge suggest that Ms. Sheehan may have been adversely affected by the Texas sun. For example, Sheehan's view of terrorism is as unsophisticated as one can get; "You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism" -- pretty simple but pretty naive. Would handing Iraq back to the likes of Saddam Hussein really be a good move and where would all of the millions of Jewish residents of Israel go?

With Sheehan spending her time playing to the national media in Texas, it is possible that she has not had the time for more mundane activities like paying her Federal taxes. With the August 15 deadline for tax filing for individuals requesting the automatic extension upon us, Sheehan has evidently found a convenient excuse to ignore this basic responsibility -- "My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny...you give my son back and I'll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we'll put this war on trial."

So, will the liberal media publish some of this information about their new best buddy? Something tells me the answer is no.

you be the editor

2005-08-06T21:56:00.000-04:00

As Editor of a major metropolitan area newspaper, you have the following two stories brought to you for a determination as to which one should be pursued.

Story 1. A radio network headquartered in your city is being investigated for accepting an improper "loan" from a local nonprofit organization whose mission is to help children. It appears that taxes paid by residents of your city could have been used to subsidize this highly-partisan radio operation.

Story 2. The President has nominated a current Federal Appeals Court Judge to sit on the Supreme Court. The individual in question was easily confirmed to his current position only a couple of years ago. Your newspaper has discovered that the Judge's two young children were adopted and the adoption records sealed. A reporter wants to see if these records can be unsealed. There may possibly be embarrassing information in the sealed records.

Most people would certainly select story 1 as it is highly relevant to the newspaper's readers. Story 2 raises a number of ethical questions regarding what level of privacy a public appointee should be permitted to have.

The New York Times had no problem in selecting story 2 as the place to deploy its resources and ignoring story 1 completely. Story 1, it turns out, is about improper financial activities surrounding liberal radio network Air America that had already received a substantial amount of favorable publicity from the Times. Story 2 is about John Roberts and apparently the Times has run into quite a bit of criticism for their attempts to pry into such personal matters.

Is there a liberal bias in the media?

Karl Rove

2005-07-15T09:13:00.000-04:00

It seems like it is almost mandatory if one is going to bother having a blog to say something about the Karl Rove controversy. The democrats and liberal media have picked this as the single issue through which they are going to focus their hate of George W. Bush (at least until a Supreme Court justice is nominated).

Part of the reason for the intense focus on Rove is the fact that the democrats blame him for John Kerry's loss in last year's election and would love to get even. Of course, the real reason for Kerry's loss was his own poor performance in the campaign combined with the underlying attempt to characterize himself as a war hero from 30 years ago while entirely ignoring the fact that he spent 20 years in the U.S. Senate doing next to nothing. Perhaps ignoring the 20 year Senate record might have worked but the Swift Vets did a very effective job of showing Kerry's service record was not what he was attempting to present it to be.

But, the democrats are so anxious to score some sort of success that they are not even willing to wait for the results of the special prosecutor's review of the whole matter. This suggests that they suspect there will be not much heat generated by the prosecutor so now, while things are otherwise quiet, they can work with their friends in the media to get even with Rove.

As more information dribbles out, it seems clear that Rove did not violate any law so the democrats are trying to move the bar in their attempt to force the President to get rid of him. This is unlikely to be successful as the public is not going to be interested in this whole trivial matter.

Jeb gets a spanking and STILL doesn't please his overseers

2005-07-09T08:25:00.000-04:00

After receiving a report a week or so ago from the prosecutor he had asked to once again look into the Terri Schiavo matter, Jeb Bush has apparently given up his fruitless efforts to please the Schindler family.

"In what could be a final chapter in the legal saga of Terri Schiavo, Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe says he could find no evidence that Michael Schiavo caused his wife's collapse 15 years ago.
In a June 30 letter to Gov. Jeb Bush, McCabe suggested ending the state's inquiry into the case.
Bush responded Thursday in a two-sentence letter to McCabe: 'Based on your conclusions, I will follow your recommendation that the inquiry by the state be closed.'"

Quite polite, all things considered. But the details of the memorandum written by staff members to McCabe clearly reflect a disgust with Bush's outrageous bias in this case and his lack of interest in the facts.

"Based on what he refers to as 'new information' contained in the Terri Schiavo autopsy report, Governor Bush has requested that our office take a 'fresh look at the case' with no "preconceptions as to the outcome.

Although the Governor suggests that the cause of Terri's 'injuries' is more in doubt than ever, Dr. Thogmartin's extensive report makes clear that there is no evidence that she suffered any physical trauma.

(The) discrepancy between (Michael Schiavo's) recollection of the time of the incident and the time that paramedics and police recorded receiving the call hardly constitutes new information."

McCabe's conclusion that there must be at least some minimal amount of evidence that a crime was committed before an investigation can be launched might be common sense to most people but it is apparently something that is above and beyond the capability of Jeb Bush and his staff to understand. What an embarrassment when the Governor of a major state shows such a basic lack of knowledge.

But Bush's attempt to please the Schindlers by continuing to stir the pot on the case seems unlikely to last for long.

"The report, though, will not end the controversy over Schiavo's collapse and the court order to remove her feeding tube, causing her death in March.

David Gibbs III, an attorney for Schiavo's parents, questioned how prosecutors were able to take a new look at the case after only 10 days of work.

'It seems surprisingly quick to us,' Gibbs said.

Prosecutors did not speak to Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, during that time. Gibbs said he didn't think that was what Bush expected when he asked for a "fresh look" into the case.

'We were probably expecting a more elaborate investigation into some of these questions,' Gibbs said."

Poor Jeb Bush; again anxious to please the Schindlers even to the extent of neglecting his real responsbilities and acting like to total idiot, again comes up short.

At this point, it is not clear what would have pleased Gibbs and the Schindlers. Bush had already ordered his Department Against Children and Families (DCF) to "investigate" the many Schindler complaints and they came up empty handed. Surely an "in-house" agency like DCF, knowing what the boss wants as the outcome, would be inclined to slant the facts as much as possible and, in this case, they were still unable to come up with any justification for more "investigation". Perhaps Bush felt that McCabe would have the same fealty to the Schindler interests as he evidently has and would perhaps be even more creative with the facts than his own in-house Gestapo group had been.

With Bobby Schindler evidently launching a new career as a spokesmodel for folks in vegetative states, any publicity he or his family can generate will translate into income.

So what additional mischief can the Schindler's generate and will Jeb Bush continue to serve their interests instead of working for the taxpayers of Florida? I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

just desserts?

2005-06-28T20:49:00.000-04:00

If Supreme Court Justice David Souter ends up having his property seized by eminent domain in order to build "The Lost Liberty Hotel", it will certainly be just desserts for his role in the decision to permit governmental agencies to seize private property for virtually any reason.

Is this likely to happen? I don't think so. The Supreme Court's decision does not mandate seizure of private property in circumstances like this, it only permits it. The intent of the court can only be interpreted as encouraging seizures of property owned by middle class folks with minimal political clout (poorer folks could generally already have their property seized by simply declaring it to be "blighted'). Celebrities and wealthy folks will be able to protect their property by means other than the fifth amendment clause that has been effectively removed from the Bill of Rights by the court ruling.

ending private property rights

2005-06-25T19:18:00.000-04:00

One would think that the language of the fifth amendment regarding the taking of property "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation" would be relatively easy to interpret.

As Boortz observes:

"For hundreds of years the term 'public use' was interpreted to mean use for something like a school, library, police or fire station, power transmission lines, roads, bridges or some other facility owned and operated by government for the benefit of the general population. As politicians became more and more impressed with their own power they started to expand this definition of public use."

For some time, most jurisdictions have had the right to take property for redevelopment of "blighted area"; in other words, neighborhoods where poor people live. The redevelopment is typically done by private parties with the property ending up in private hands (different from the original owners). Thus, the novelty of the Suprement Court's recent decision is not that it permits use of goverment property seizure powers for private benefits but that it
erases the previous pretense of claiming that an area is "blighted" before it can be seized.

Apparently private property can now be seized without limit since a claim of increased tax revenue from the seizure is now the only "public use" the Court concludes is necessary. It takes little imagination to conclude that this "limitation" is no limit at all. Thus, the Supreme Court has simply erased a one-time important limitation on government authority.

In the instant case, the city of New London claims that it needs to seize (steal) private property in order to enhance the city's economic viability but why should some property owners in the city have to suffer so that a nonviable government entity should continue to exist. It would be better for the officals in New London to consider ways to surrender their charter and merge with another jurisdiction or back into the county in which it sits.

Unlike most recent laws and court decisions, the founding fathers were economical and careful with their words. It is hard to believe that the term "public use" in the fifth amendment was put there to have no real meaning.

Jeb Bush opines on the two party system

2005-06-24T09:12:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Governor Jeb Bush called the Florida Democratic Party "pathetic" in response to the reports that the party had failed to pay Federal withholding taxes for employees on a timely basis.

Bush went on to state that "It's important that there be a vibrant two-party system so that there is a focus on ideas because the void is filled by other things and other people. And in my opinion up here in Tallahassee, it's filled too much by special interests". Wow! This is certainly a true statement and best example of the excessive power of special interests in Tallahassee is Jeb Bush's own fealty to the Schindlers of Terri Schiavo fame, most recently demostrated by requesting yet another investigation of oft debunked claims that Michael Schiavo was somehow responsible for his wife's condition.

The lack of any strong criticism of Bush's recent actions is evidence of the lack of a viable political oposition in Florida.

There is also evidence that Bush has surrounded himself with a poor set of advisors. The recent release of the Terri Schiavo autopsy results and the irrational Schinder family response have caused many of the politicans that previously supported the Schinder position to back off. While more and more folks realize that the Schinders fit the classic definition of "nut cases", Bush doesn't seem to have figured out the obvious.

Sneddon's word good for three days

2005-06-18T06:56:00.000-04:00

Tom Sneddon has shown himself to be unable to control his longstanding animosity towards Michael Jackson. After the Monday acquittal, he stated that he would not "second guess" the jury. As of Friday, he felt compelled to hold an inteview with a reporter in which he did just that.

"Santa Barbara County District Attorney Tom Sneddon and his two lead deputies in the case said in an interview with The Associated Press that they believed the jury set too high a bar for evidence.
Jurors rejected the prosecution's entire 10-count case Monday after a 14-week trial. Some later said that Jackson probably had molested other boys but insisted the case they heard was not proven.
Sneddon, who said immediately after the verdict that he would not second-guess the jury, discussed the nature of child molesters but said he was not talking about Jackson specifically.

...

On NBC's 'The Tonight Show' Friday, Mesereau said Sneddon had a 'personal vendetta' against Jackson and 'mischaracterized the case from day one.' He said Sneddon had been searching for accusers since a previous case fell apart after the boy's family accepted a multimillion dollar settlement from Jackson.

'It was like an open casting call on Michael Jackson. The best they could come up with was this family, which we thoroughly discredited from A to Z,' Mesereau said."

The fact is that, despite criticism by Sneddon or his media lackeys like Nancy Grace and Diane Dimond, the jury in the Jackson case did a very good job. They were thorough and careful and, while they were not all entirely convinced that Jackson had never had inappropriate contact with young boys, they fairly concluded that there was at least the required reasonable doubt present regarding the specific allegations which they were charged to consider.

The real questions now are how much taxpayer money was wasted by Sneddon in his long pursuit of Michael Jackson and how many real crimes in Santa Barbara count have either not been prosecuted or have been pled out because the prosecutor's office was focused on this pursuit of Jackson? How many Santa Barbara county residents have been victims of criminals either left on the street or put back there due to Sneddon's person priorities?

Virginia is the Roach Motel

2005-06-17T16:14:00.000-04:00

Millions of dollars of taxpayer money have been spent on the "Virginia is for Lovers" motto. But former residents of the state associate Virginia more with the slogan for the Roach Motel; you can check in but you can't check out. More specifically, Virginia is happy to have you as a new state resident but is unwilling to let go of your wallet if you try to relocate to another state.

Schinder's say "jump", Bush asks "how high?"

2005-06-17T15:57:00.000-04:00

From the Washington Post

"Bobby Schindler, Schiavo's brother, said Friday his family believes more questions were raised than answered by the autopsy report and that a new legal review is appropriate.

'Anything that can shed some light on the cause of Terri's collapse is going to be welcomed by our family,' he said from Bloomington, Minn., where the family is speaking at an anti-abortion convention.

But the request was immediately criticized by some lawmakers.

'Enough is enough,' said Democratic Sen. Ron Klein. 'I don't want to see it on TV any more, I don't want to hear politicians talk about it. Let her be at peace.'

Bush acknowledged in his letter that an investigation may be difficult.

'I understand that these events took place many years ago, and that you may not be able to collect all the relevant records and physical evidence. However, Mrs. Schiavo's family deserves to know anything that can be done to determine the cause and circumstances of her collapse 15 years ago,' Bush wrote. 'The unanswered questions may be unanswerable, but the attempt should be made.'"

==================================================================================

Bobby Schindler, of course, is trying to capitalize on his sister's death to generate income for him as a spokemodel for the most extreme faction of the "right to life" movement. His actions bring to mind that of Mark Klauss who turned the death of his daughter Polly into a profit center.

So, although Bush more or less admits the futility of attempting to investigate something from years ago with no ability to ascertain any additional facts, he makes clear his total fealty and obligation to the Schindler family.

If the Schindler's can show an ability to control Jeb Bush like a trained lapdog, it will increase the publicity they can generate and their resultant income from taking bizzare and fringe positions. A Bobby Schindler that makes stupid statements that no one listens to will soon be out of work; if the same stupid statements cause immediate actions by the governor of an important state, he will soon be getting large sums of money.

Note to Jeb Bush; there are 17,000,000 residents in Florida and only a few members of the Schindler family. Please start to do the job you are paid to do and quite being a puppet to special interests. You are wrong if you think it will help you be elected to higher office. Notice that your brother the President has backed away from the Schindlers; most probably due to the fact that he is beginning to realize how extreme and irrational they are.

no need to trouble the Schindlers with facts

2005-06-17T06:54:00.000-04:00

To most people, the release of the autopsy on Terri Schiavo brings an end, albeit a sad one, to the whole issue. The positions taken by Michael Schiavo were found to be correct and the rulings made by the courts appropriate. Even Senator Bill Frist, while not apologizing for offering a contrary "diagnosis" on the Senate floor during the debate on private legislation regarding Schiavo, at least now says it was not a "diangosis" (after all, he didn't charge for it) and he accepts the scientific results.

"That severe damage is responsible for the autopsy's most startling finding: that Schiavo was blind.
The nerve cells that would process messages from Schiavo's eyes were dead, Nelson said. Her eyes could open, close and make reflexive movements, but she could not see.
It's not certain how long Schiavo was blind, but based on doctors' statements, it appears unlikely she could see anything in a 2002 videotape, often seen in news clips, in which she appeared to follow a balloon and her eyes seemed to focus on her mother."

But facts such as those quoted above are not of interest to the Schindlers. Terri's brother Michael, attempting to launch his media career as a spokemodel, states that the family still believes they were right and that Terri was not in a vegetative state and was only stopped from recovery by her husband. If scientests and doctors say she was blind, they are wrong and the Schindlers have the heavily edited videotape to prove it. After all, this is the video that connned the Bush brothers and the United States Senate!

As far as Jeb Bush is concerned, he has decided to launch another investigation into the circumstances surrounding Schiavo's original medical problem 15 years ago. I'm sure this will be another productive use of the state's resources. Although Jeb Bush presumably represents millions of Florida residents, it appears that when the Schinders want something, no matter how stupid, they get it and they get it right away! To the Schinder's, Bush is no more than a puppet whose strings are all to easy for them to pull.

2005-06-17T06:53:00.000-04:00

To most people, the release of the autopsy on Terri Schiavo brings an end, albeit a sad one, to the whole issue. The positions taken by Michael Schiavo were found to be correct and the rulings made by the courts appropriate. Even Senator Bill Frist, while not apologizing for offering an contrary "diagnosis" on the Senate floor during the debate on private legislation regarding Schiavo, at least now says it was not a "diangosis" (he didn't charge for it) and he accepts the scientific results.

"That severe damage is responsible for the autopsy's most startling finding: that Schiavo was blind.
The nerve cells that would process messages from Schiavo's eyes were dead, Nelson said. Her eyes could open, close and make reflexive movements, but she could not see.
It's not certain how long Schiavo was blind, but based on doctors' statements, it appears unlikely she could see anything in a 2002 videotape, often seen in news clips, in which she appeared to follow a balloon and her eyes seemed to focus on her mother."

But facts such as those quoted above are not of interest to the Schindlers. Terri's brother Michael, attempting to launch his media career as a spokemodel, states that the family still believes they were right and that Terri was not in a vegetative state and was only stopped from recovery by her husband. If scientists and doctors say she was blind, they are wrong and the Schindlers have the heavily edited videotape to prove it. After all, this is the same video that connned the Bush brothers and the United States Senate!

As far as Jeb Bush is concerned, he has decided to launch another investigation into the circumstances surrounding Schiavo's original medical problem 15 years ago. I'm sure this will be another productive use of the state's resources. Although Jeb Bush presumably represents millions of Florida residents, it appears that when the Schinders want something, no matter how stupid, they get it and right away!

Schiavo case -- end of the line?

2005-06-15T16:59:00.000-04:00

"An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner's office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused."

So, with a high degree of fanfare that must surely disappoint Governor Bush, the medical examiner has essentially determined that Michael Schiavo (and the entire state and federal court system) were correct regarding his wife's condition and her parents and the meddling legislative and executive branches of both state and federal governments were wrong.

Will this be the end of the tale? Perhaps not. The Schindlers, perhaps expecting this result had already complained about not being able to have an autopsy conducting by their own "experts". They did not accept the diagnostic results showing that their daughter's brain was half gone so why would they be more convinced by physical evidence? After all, the Pope was on their side but, of course, he is now dead.

Perhaps the Schindlers will appologize to Michael Schiavo for all of the bogus allegations. Perhaps Governor Bush will appogize to the citizens of Florida for wasting tax dollars. Perhaps Senator Bill Frist will apologize for claiming he could make an expert medical diagnosis from a selected Internet video segment of a woman seeming to follow motion now that we know that the woman was blind.

Perhaps all of this will come to pass. Probably on the day that pigs begin to fly and Tom Sneddon appologizes to Michael Jackson and the citizens of Santa Barbara county.

Michael Jackson gets justice!

2005-06-14T11:42:00.000-04:00

While Tom Sneeden holds his head in his hands due to his failure to successfully persecute Michael Jackson, his biggest media "cheerleader" Diane Dimond still has plenty to say.

"HE WALKED out of court a free man, not guilty on all counts. But Michael Jackson is so much more than free.

He now has carte blanche to live his life any way he wants, with whomever he wants, because who would ever try to prosecute Michael Jackson now?

Twice now, once in 1993 and again in 2003, authorities tried to make a case against the former King of Pop and failed."

The fact is that it is unlikely that Sneeden would have ever brought such a weak case against someone that he did not have a personal jihad against. What Dimond characterizes as a case based on folks working "double overtime for over a year" was acutally a bag of garbage as, despite all of the taxpayer money spent, absolutly no physical evidence was ever obtained and the state was unable to produce any credible witnesses against Jackson. And Dimond has almost as much hate for Jackson as Sneeden, despite the fact that he has been her meal ticket for some period of time.

The jury got it right. Is Jackson's behavior off the curve? Absolutely. The jurors (at least some of them) seemed to also believe that it strains credibility that he has not been involved in some sort of illicit behavior with at least some of the boys that have shared his bed. But the case was about whether the state had made a credible case regarding the specific allegations that were brought and, in that arena, the state's case was so weak that it was obvious to outside observers that it deserved to fail.

This case is at least as much about prosecutorial abuse as it is about anything else. Sneeden had an evident dislike for Jackson for years and the bizzare British documentary that discussed Jackson sharing his bed with boys was apparently the last straw for him. Seeing that evidently convinced him to bring a case no matter how sloppy or how weak. It is good that he has lost his bogus case and it is too bad that so many "journalists" have been unable to control their own personal dislike for Jackson's lifestyle to fairly report what has happened here.

an overly-luxurious lifestyle made him do it

2005-06-09T10:12:00.000-04:00

While we are used to hearing criminal activity blamed on such things as a poor upbringing, lack of education, or even consumption of Twinkies., Russell Crowe has blamed his assault of a New York hotel clerk on the effects of a lifestyle that was so luxuriant that Mr. Crowe was unable to control himself.

"Crowe had flown from New York to Manchester and back in less than a day to catch his friend Tszyu's world title fight. Once back in New York he went to a bar for a few drinks.
Crowe then tried to call Danielle (his wife) in Sydney just after 4am New York time but could not reach her from his $3905 a night hotel room. Frustrated, he is alleged to have gone down to the hotel lobby and, after a heated exchange, hurled the phone in the direction of Mr Estrada. "

It is unclear why Mr. Estrada was the target of the attack; the story doesn't suggest that Mr. Estrada had anything to do with Crowe's inability to make his phone call.

Should one expect to be able to immediately and successfully plane a phone call from a $3,905 hotel room and, if not, is a physical attack on a random employee of the establishment in order? That is a question most of us will never be in a position to answer. Perhaps a jury of "his peers" will have to answer it for Mr. Crowe although it is likely that some sort of deal with be struck. In that regard, it would probably be better for Mr. Crowe if he had less or nothing to say about the incident.

first the wrist slap then the reward

2005-06-06T22:42:00.000-04:00

Last week a Washington state court's meted out a mild slap on the wrist to two individuals who were caught voting twice in last November's election. The consequences for this rarest of prosecuted crimes was a fine of the same magnitude as a speeding ticket.

This week, another state court in Washington rewarded all of the felons, double-voters and other illegal voters in Washington state (who risked the imposition of minor fines) by confirming their selection of Christine Gregoire as governor. Since the margin of separation between the two candidates was only 1/13 of the number of illegal votes and statistical analysis showed the illegal votes were strongly for Gregoire, it is clear that the illegal voters selected the governor.

Gregorie has already abandoned a number of pre-election campaign promised but, given the type of folks who elected her, why not?

Jeb Bush lies in the Schiavo case

2005-06-04T22:10:00.000-04:00

The facts are finally starting to dribble out regarding Governor Jeb Bush's outrageous actions in the Terri Schiavo case. Documents whose release by the Department against Children and Families (DCF) was forced by court order further document the dishonesty of Bush's motives in the case.

"As the day approached in which Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was to be removed, Gov. Jeb Bush claimed there were new and compelling allegations of abuse or neglect that the state Department of Children and Families had to investigate.
That effort led to a dramatic showdown between the governor and the Pinellas-Pasco circuit judge who ordered Schiavo's feeding tube removed on March 18. Bush and DCF continued to seek its reinsertion, claiming the 30 or so new complaints had to be probed.
But documents released by DCF Friday reveal few fresh allegations that Schiavo was abused or neglected. Investigators wrote that there were 'no indicators' of abuse in any of the cases."

As expected, DCF is still defending its actions.

"Asked what in the complaints prompted the state's action to intervene, DCF spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez said in a statement:

'We are required by law to pursue all allegations of abuse and neglect thoroughly and expeditiously. DCF received new allegations, as well as several alleged similar complaints, which we were obligated to investigate. However, the department was prevented from having additional diagnostic tests performed to better assess Ms. Schiavo's level of functioning and responsiveness.'"

note to Jeb Bush -- please don't run for president

2005-06-04T21:58:00.000-04:00

The St. Petersburg Times has reported that former President George Bush has suggested that his son Jeb consider running for President. Thankfully, so far Jeb has said no.

"Gov. Bush, who has repeatedly said he won't run for president in 2008, was asked Wednesday about his father's remarks. 'Oh, Lord,' he said, laughing. Shaking his head, he added: 'I love my dad.'
Asked if he would run, he simply shook his head no."

The fact is that, despite some good works, Governor Bush has shown a remarkable insensitivity to the rights of individual Floridians. In recent months, Bush deployed the Gestapolike Department against Children and Families (DCF) against Terri Schiavo to deny her the right to death with dignity and, more outrageously, against a minor in an attempt to deny her her right to an abortion after a pregnancy caused by a rape.

Here is a frightening through -- Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton.

making the punishment encourage the crime

2005-06-03T20:10:00.000-04:00

In Washington state, the Democratic candidate was "elected" governor only after a second recount managed to result in finding enough additional votes to change the result of the initial tally and first recount. And "finding" votes was literally one of the things done in King County, as democratic a stronghold in Washington state as Cook County is in Illinois.

But Republicans have taken the election to court and activists have been doing the kind of review of the voting that the election officials apparently have not bothered with. The reviews have identified items such as illegal voting by felons, votes cast by deceased individuals, etc. Illegally voting in Washington state can result in jail time so one might hope that the increased scrutiny and availability of serious sanctions might discourage that kind of activity in the future. But the penalties imposted in the two cases that have been brought so far for multiple voting are so minor that they will most probably serve to increase the incidence of this kind of infraction.

"Doris McFarland, 83, and Robert Holmgren, 59, each admitted in King County District Court that they forged the signatures of and cast ballots for their recently deceased spouses.

Each will have to pay $490 in fines and court fees but they won't spend any time in jail. Multiple voting is a gross misdemeanor that can carry up to a year in jail and a $5,000 fine."

So, in Washington state, you might get a more serious consequence from speeding that from voting fraudulently in an election.

Michael Jackson -- not guilty

2005-06-02T22:39:00.000-04:00

It is always difficult to form an educated conclusion about a criminal case without being on the jury and hearing all of the evidence instead of only those portions that are of interest to the media. The overcoverage of the Michael Jackson molestation case combined with the amazing weakness of the government's case, however, makes it possible to come to a reasonable conclusion regarding that case and that is that Mr. Jackson should be found not guilty on all counts.

In a criminal case, the prosecution bears the burden of proof, "beyond a reasonable doubt" is the standard that is used. In a case such as this with no direct physical evidence whatsoever, the credibility of witnesses is critical. In the Jackson case, the accuser and his family have been shown to be professional grifters and con artists. It is hard to believe that a responsible prosecutor would proceed on a case based on this category of witness. But this prosecutor is Tom Sneeden who has, for many years, had a personal vendetta against Michael Jackson. And, as prosecutor, he has a substantial amount of discretion to bring a criminal case, even in circumstances like this where is case is so weak. It is hard to believe this case would have been brought against anyone who was not some sort of personal enemy of the prosecutor. Perhaps Sneeden's animosity towards Jackson is so great that he is willing to risk the remains of whatever sort of reputation he still has in the hopes that he can "get his man". Sneeden seems to share towards Jackson the same kind of burning hatred that Dan Rather has towards George W. Bush and it has arguably affected his judgment.

It goes without saying that an adult man sharing his bed with young boys is not conventional behavior. Yet that act alone is not against the law in Santa Barbara county (where Jackson lives) and Jackson should not be presumed to be guilty of something that is illegal simply because he does things that, while not against the law, are quite unconventional.

cashing in on watergate

2005-06-02T20:57:00.000-04:00

The news that "Deep Throat" has been identified has re-energized the old hate-Nixon crowd -- a group that surely thinks fondly of the days when the Democratic party had an almost complete lock on power in Washington (except when they ran candidates for President who were unelectable). Deep Throat, now identified as Mark Felt, was their hero, the man who brought down Nixon.

In the glare of reality, Mark Felt does not seem to be quite so much the hero. His initial motivations appear to have stemmed more from the fact that he was unhappy at being passed over for promotion as anything else. Now that it is safe for him to come out, the statute of limitations for any criminal conduct associated with the leaks being long passed, it appears that Mr. Felt (and his family) would like at least a piece of the huge amount of money that was made over the years by the franchise spawned by the whole "Deep Throat" operation.

In From the New York Times

"On Wednesday, word came that the family of Mr. Felt, the ailing, 91-year-old former No. 2 official of the F.B.I., had sought payment in vain for his story after failing to reach a collaborative agreement with Mr. Woodward - not only from Vanity Fair, but also from People magazine and HarperCollins Books. They are apparently still determined to claim their share of the story that helped make Mr. Woodward a famous millionaire. "

It is not clear to me why Woodward would not be willing to find some way to pass along a bit of money to Felt and his family. The value of Felt to Woodward would have to be measured in the 10s of millions of dollars if not more (and the value to the Washington Post operation would be many times more). Without Felt there would have been no Deep Throat franchise and without that franchise where would Bob Woodward be? But while Woodward had apparently made plans to make one final windfall from Deep Throat (upon Felt's death), he has perhaps forgotten that without Felt he would not have had the opportunity to write and promote all of his other works.

The Huffington Fantasy

2005-05-11T22:04:00.000-04:00

Leave it to Arriana Huffington to publish a story that is so ridiculous and nonsensical that only someone without a brain could possibly be conned into believing it.

Here is an extract of the document written by Jim Lampley

"At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election. John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite. You can look it up.
People who have lived in the sports world as I have, bettors in particular, have a feel for what I am about to say about this: these people are extremely scientific in their assessments. These people understand which information to trust and which indicators to consult in determining where to place a dividing line to influence bets, and they are not in the business of being completely wrong. Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.
And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted. What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil."

My first thought was to wonder why anyone would publish a story like this only a few days after the sports bookmakers were completely wrong on the Kentucky Derby. Lampley's logic could be used to "prove" that Bellamy Road actually won the Derby and it was only due to blind track judges and a compliant media that Giacomo was declared the winner. After all, only once in the history of the Derby had a horse with greater than 50-1 odds won the race and that was so long time ago that it was probably not even true.

Of course, in the six months since the election, the exit pollsters have been busy trying to fix their sampling and reporting procedures so that their figures better reflect the actual poll results in the future. Of course, Lampley would prefer to throw out the election results themselves since he apparently doesn't agree with them.

It is even more ridiculous to suggest that the media were somehow complicit in covering up a theft of the election. The media were so pro-Kerry that Dan Rather's use of blantantly forged documents to disparage the President was widely publicized; much more so than the facts that had to be forced out by the blogsphere. Rather's willingness to donate whatever reputation for integrity he had to the Kerry cause is but one example of how committed the mainstream media were for a Kerry victory.

I'm sure there are a lot of us out here who have voted Republican only to be disappointed in many respects. A lot of us are looking for some credible alternatives. John Kerry was not one.

laughingstock

2005-05-04T19:09:00.000-04:00

Perhaps Texas will replace Florida as a national laughingstock. Certainly this action by one house of the Texas legislature, to restrict "overtly sexually suggestive" cheerleading will go a long way.

no grace at all

2005-05-04T17:51:00.000-04:00

I have seen the Nancy Grace show a couple of times on CNN and was always taken aback by what a strongly opinionated yet ignorant person she is. I've never stayed tuned in for long because the show is simply too offensive to take in more than small does.

Ms. Grace does not come across as anyone likely to have any kind of substantive background so it was a bit of a surprise to see that she had previously held a position as a prosecutor. What was perhaps less surprising was to see here where she has been cited numerous times for ethical violations.

Television is a wonderful thing for some people. Dr. Phil, for example, gets to practice pychology (and get paid a huge amount of money) without having to bother with the indignities of a license and being responsible for what he says (thanks to the show's disclaimers). It looks like Nancy Grace is similar; she gets to act like a lawyer and not to worry about any ethics. I'm not sure if Grace gets the same kind of big bucks that Dr. Phil gets; she seems to be too offensive to be able to get a good audience but then there is Michael Savage...

punishing the victims

2005-05-04T17:26:00.000-04:00

Recent legislation passed by the Florida legislature and signed by Governor Jeb Bush ups penalties for individuals found guilty of molesting young children. It is hard to know at this point if the legislation is good or bad -- the media-induced frenzy to pass another law after two recent cases of previously-convicted individuals killing young girls was enough to eliminate any possibility of reasoned debate and the published media summaries of the bill contained few details.

But count on Jeb Bush to mete out punishment to even the victims of abuse if they happen to survive. The hand of Bush is evident in the recent effort by the Gestapo-like Department Against Children and Families (DCF) to require the victim of a statutory rape remain an ongoing victim by carrying the resultant pregnancy to term. Fortunately, the Florida courts have thwarted the DCF effort to deny this crime victim her rights under the state Constitution.

This is the second occasion in the last few months that the courts have had to stop the Governor, acting through the DCF, from eliminating the rights of vulnerable individuals. The first time was, of course, the Terri Schiavo case where the governor attempted to step in to deprive Terri of her right to stop the futile intervention that had kept her existing in a persistent vegetative state for over 19 years.

In the Schiavo case, the DCF had argued that it needed to take Terri into custody (and deny her her rights) while it investigated over 50 anonymous claims of abuse. Some time after Terri's death, the DCF was forced to reveal that it had found the abuse claims to be completely without merit. In the instant case, DCF had apparently argued that its authority gave it more control over the affected minor than her parents would have had and that its Gestapo-like powers overrode the girl's constitutional rights.

The DCF is a frightening operation that has been found again and again to be working against the interests of Florida citizens. Governor Bush, howver, has found it a useful tool as he attempts to impose his personal views on any Florida resident who acts in ways contrary to the governor's beliefs.

delayed reaction

2005-04-16T10:29:00.000-04:00

Many people were outraged by the way the Republican party attempted to gain a political bonus by taking advantage in the Terri Schiavo case. Terri Schiavo was not able to reverify her opposition to be maintained alive by artificial means that had been established by the courts and reviewed ad nauseum for over five years.

The outrageous behavior included an attempt by Florida governor Jeb Bush to marshall a groups of armed agents to literally kidnap Schiavo from the hospice were she was staying. That attempt was apparently only thwarted when the governor's men realized they were likely to be outnumbered by local authorities who had been prewarned and were ready to enforce the rule of law.

For their part, congressional Repulbicans rushed through a private bill in an attempt to stop Terri Schiavo's wishes but the federal courts stood up and found no basis for additional delays.

Where were the democrats when all this was going on? Well, there was principled opposition by some democratic house members but not one democratic senator attempted to stop this outageous Federal intrusion into a purely private dispute.

Now comes Howard Dean who, apparently after reading the polls, has decided this should be an issue for his party:

"Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Friday that his party would wield the Terri Schiavo case against Republicans in the 2006 and 2008 elections, but for now needed to stay focused battling President Bush on Social Security."

Well Dr. Dean, where was Hillary Clinton and John Kerry when the Senate was passing through the inappropriate private bill? We are told that a single senator can delay a pice of legislation but the senate version of the odious Schindler private bill (named for Terri's parents who ironically led the fight to deny their daughter her rights) was passed in the middle of the night with not even a roll call. Maybe the democrats should develop the principles before the fact rather than after everything is done and the polls are out.

Clinton is right this time

2005-04-08T14:37:00.000-04:00

"President Bush on Friday said that attending the funeral of Pope John Paul II was 'one of the highlights of my presidency' and made clear that he disagrees with former President Clinton's assessment that the pontiff leaves a mixed legacy.
'I think John Paul II will have a clear legacy of peace, compassion and a strong legacy of setting a clear moral tone,' Bush told reporters on Air Force One as he flew from Rome to the United States just hours after the funeral. He said he wanted to amend his remarks to add the word 'excellent.'"

Where was George Bush when all of the revelations about the widespread pedophilia amount Roman Catholic preists and the cover-up by church higher-ups became publically known? I've read that the Pope was busy at the time opposing the war in Iraq. A bit strange since not only did the bishops and cardinals work for the Pope, he actually had appointed most of them!

Schiavo vs. Schindler

2005-04-07T09:40:00.000-04:00

Whatever waffling I may have felt in my mind about the two sides in this case, I think the way they handled themselves after Terri's death speaks volumes.

I couldn't help but notice that the Schindlers invited the news media to come to their funeral for Teri while Michael Schiavo wouldn't even mention when or where his funeral for her might take place.

That definitely speaks to the motives of the two parties and of course, if there was any doubt remaining, justice was definitely done and may Terri rest in peace now knowing her wishes were finally honored, no thanks to her parents.

special treatment

2005-04-01T09:56:00.000-05:00

The fact remains that, if you are well-connected, you can pretty much get away with stuff that would result in some serious consequences for most people.

So, a few months after the election, Sandy Berger, certainly a well-connected Washington insider, is going to have to take a little tap on the back of his hand for the theft and destruction of classified documents.

The loss of his security clearance for theee years is meaningless since, as a John Kerry advisor during the election, it is unlikely he is going to be considered for a goverement position during the remainder of the Bush administration. As far as the $10,000 fine, it is a pittance to him.

The event in question occured in 2003 but did not become publically known until the midst of the election campaign a year later. In fact, this matter looks like something that would have just have been swept under the rug in normal times. In this case, one has to suspect that Berger's up-front participation in the Kerry campaign during a time he knew he was under criminal investigation was probably was led to the issue being publicized and what ultimately led to his little punishment. Perhaps he can ask Teresa Heinz-Kerry to reimburse him for the fine and legal costs he incurred due to her husband's campaign.

grifters and petty criminals invading Florida

2005-03-29T06:54:00.000-05:00

One of the problems with the Schindlers and the publicist-driven efforts to deny their daughter her wishes is that it has attracted a throng of grifters and criminals to Pinnelas Park. Looking at the statistics as reported below, only about 10% of the criminal arrests have been of Florida residents.

"Forty-six demonstrators have been arrested since Schiavo's feeding tube was removed, Forseth said. In all but one case they were charged with misdemeanor trespass outside the hospice, he said. Of those, five were from Florida, with the remainder from states such as California, Texas, Minnesota, Ohio, South Dakota and Pennsylvania. "

And at least one of the individuals who allowed their child to be arrested turns out to be a registered sex offender -- was the DCF on the case here or does being a supporter of Jeb Bush's position get one a DCF-Gestapo waiver card?

Democratic Hypocrisy

2005-03-28T09:35:00.000-05:00

Throughout this whole Terri Schiavo ordeal (it's certainly been an ordeal for those of us forced to watch this circus in the news), I've been bothered by what seemed to me to be a lack of anything coherent coming from the Democrats. Yesterday's Miami Herald had a reader rant section on the politization of the Schiavo case and I noticed that all of the comments they printed were complaining about how the Republicans were manipulating the Schiavo story and/or bizarre references to the war in Iraq and our soliders dying over there (the reader rant column does often read like the nutcase column....). Nothing was mentioned about the Democrats and how they have attempted to politicize the issue. I have suspected they are but haven't seen much about it and then saw the link to this article on Drudge this morning and it really resonated with me.

some interesting sites with information on the Schiavo case

2005-03-27T18:42:00.000-05:00

Most of the media coverage of the Schiavo situation suggests that there some sort of relatively balanced "content" exists between Michael Schiavo and the Schinders and that it is perhaps just happenstance that every single one of the court decisions made has been against the Schindlers. The Associated Press articles, in particulare, seem to be present information in a format that the publicists for the Schinders would not be uncomfortable with.

Here are two sites that give a pretty good background and perspective on the facts in the case.

http://www.footballfansfortruth.us/archives/000872.html

http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html

King of corruptions thinking about quitting U.N. -- good riddance

2005-03-27T15:26:00.000-05:00

So the revelations about all of the corruptions and scandal going on under his reign at the United Nations are finally starting to bother Kofi Annan. Most individuals in his position would have been troubled long before now but better late than never.

This creates an interesting opporunity for Bill Clinton who, it is said, has his eyes on this position. How many other official positions could BIll Clinton step into and actually represent an improvement in ethics over the previous office-holder?

Impeach Jeb Bush!

2005-03-26T13:13:00.000-05:00

The story cited below, if true, demonstrates a lack of respect for the law by Governor Jeb Bush that can only be corrected by removing him from office. Whatever happens to Terri Schaivo will not change the fact of the Governor's misconduct and impeachment is an appropriate solution.

"Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo wasn't to be removed from her hospice, a team of Florida law enforcement agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted - but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Miami Herald has learned."

Whether or not one agrees with the string of consistent court rulings regarding the Schiavo case, any thinking person is going to be more comfortable leaving that kind of determination to the court system which is designed to ferret out facts and keep it out of the political process where the influence of lobbyists and publicists is much greater than that of facts. In this case, the governor has let his official acts be influenced by lobbyists and publicists who have played on his religious beliefs. This is simply not acceptable in a free society.

The Florida democratic party has itself been on life support for the past few years; maybe the outrageous conduct of this out-of-control governor will cause them to spring back to life.

too much of a good thing

2005-03-26T06:33:00.000-05:00

Recent news stories suggesting that anonymous calls to Florida's Department against Children and Families were part of the justification for Jeb Bush's aborted attempt to kidnap Terri Schiavo in order to deny her last wishes. Only a few anonymous calls were apparently necessary to motivate Jeb, a man who seems more and more to be bought and paid for by the Schindlers -- probably no "real" calls were even necessary, given Bush's desire to please the Schinders at almost any cost. But it looks like some folks are going overboard.

"Hundreds of protesters trying to keep Terri Schiavo alive are calling the Florida Department of Children & Families hot line each day, and officials are concerned they could be jamming the line for people who are trying to report abuse unrelated to the case.

'The Department of Children & Families appreciates the concern expressed in a number of heartfelt calls to the abuse hot line on behalf of Terri Schiavo's well-being. Inadvertently these callers may be putting other neglected, abused and vulnerable citizens at risk,' said DCF spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez on Friday. "

Of course, this begs the question as to what percentage of calls on a regular basis are vindictive and totally bogus calls like the Schindler-inspired calls and what percentage end up identifying actual "neglected, abused" citizens. As far as "vulnerable citizens at risk", I'm assuming we all fall in that category as long as Emperor Jeb Bush holds office. After all, if the Schindlers can buy him off, so can anyone else; maybe someone who wants to have your rights taken away!

opportunities and nut cases

2005-03-25T08:39:00.000-05:00

Although the Terri Schiavo situation is unfortunate, there are plenty of folks around who already benefiting from the whole situation.

Terry Randall, for example, is basking in the publicity associated with the case and Terri Schiavo's brother has already hinted at launching a media career a la Mark Klauss once his sister dies. Another big winner is Tom Delay who has been successful in diverting attention away from questions regarding his ethics. The same can be said for the Roman Catholic church which is happy to issue daily pronouncements regarding Terri, something they have nothing to do with, while their silence continues regarding the decades of pedophile priest attacks on young people, something the Church not only had control over but was responsible for.

It is not clear whether Terri's parents, the Schindlers, are idiots who are just too stupid to interpret the obvious regarding their daughter's medical condition or whether they are opportunists basking in the publicity and planning to cash in. We'll have to see but I'm thinking they are getting addicted to being in the spotlight.

Now we come to the total nut cases that let themselves be aroused and manipulated by the likes of Randall and the Schindlers. " A man was arrested after trying to steal a weapon from a gun shop so he could 'take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo,' authorities said. "

And then we have Jeb Bush who has pretty clearly been manipulated by the Schindlers almost as much as the guy who was trying to steal a gun. Bush, of course, was not going to personally dirty his hands but was instead going to send his Department against Children and Families thugs to kidnap Terri. Althought that plan was halted before it could be implemented by the courts, the news stories report that Jeb is still looking for other ways to deny Terri's rights. At least the time around, the legislature is apparently unwilling to again be a pawn to the Schindlers. Jeb's term as governor can't end soon enough as far as I am concerned. I hope that others remember Jeb's lack of respect for the law if he runs for public office again in the future.

recall Jeb Bush

2005-03-24T22:42:00.000-05:00

"Bob and Mary Schindler held onto the slim hope that Gov. Jeb Bush would somehow find a way to intervene or a federal judge who had turned them down before would see things their way. But Bush warned that he was running out of options."

To watch the way Jeb Bush has behaved over the past 18 months, you would think he had been bought and paid for by the Schindlerr family and was dedicated only to serving them instead of the millions of other Floridians. He has shown a total disregard for separation of powers. He has attempted to insert himself and the jack-booted thugs at the Department against Children and Families who serve him into personal matters that have been finally adjudicated by the courts and all possible appeals exhausted. He deserves to be recalled and thrown out of office before he does even more damage to the rights of state residents.

I hope that Floridians remember the lack of respect that Jeb Bush has shown for the law and, at a minimum, make sure he is never again provided with an elective office from which to practice his mischief. If he wishes to solely represent narrow special interests and not the broader public good, he should become a lobbyist and not pretend to be serving the public.

Jeb goes postal

2005-03-24T08:16:00.000-05:00

The closest thing we have in Florida to Hitler's Gestapo is the Department against Children and Families (DCF). Among other things, this agency maintains secret non-reviewable lists of people against whom secret allegations have been made, much in the style of the local official thugs in Kafka's The Trial. DCF officials have also been implicated on numerous occasions in neglect of those unfortunate to be put in their charge; a level of negligence that would surely lead to criminal charges against normal civilians.

So what use would a self-styled conservative governor like Jeb Bush have with an agency with the frightening track record of DCF? Well, it turns out that having a bunch of thugs on the payroll is just fine for a governor who has designs on dictatorial (as opposed to gubenatorial) power.

Perhaps Jeb doesn't realize that each attempt that he makes to go outside and above the law makes him appear smaller and vindictive. Maybe this will please the small mob of rabble-rousers who are willing to throw out all of the laws and rules that govern society in order to achieve their ends but it scares the vast majority of thinking people who don't want government thugs interfering with the most personal of decisions.

"Maintaining there is new evidence suggesting Schiavo ``may have been misdiagnosed,'' Bush and the Department of Children & Families invoked a statutory process that typically allows DCF to intervene in abuse cases."

Stupid tricks that might now work

2005-03-21T22:18:00.000-05:00

Although the Congress passed a private bill in haste and with total regard of any sort of conscience in an attempt to deprive Terri Shiavo of the right to have her last wishes honored, they left the actual dirty work to the Federal judiciary. Given that the state case has dragged on for seven years and the new law offers an opportunity to completely review all of the facts that had already been adjudicated, the Congress must have fully expected the new law to just cause more delay.

But that strategy might not be working too well. To issue an injunction or temporary restraining order, a judge must make a finding that the moving party would have a substantial likelihood of ultimately prevailing. In this case, although the Federal courts would not be abiding by the decisions previously handed down by Florida state courts (although how knows about all of the appeals into Federal courts which have been rejected), they would have to consider the same set of facts which strongly favor Terrii's rights over those of her parents to control her.

But rewarming over the same old arguments that have been rejected before looks like it isn't going to work. "But the judge told Gibbs that he was not completely sold on the argument. 'I think you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that you have a substantial likelihood' of the parents' lawsuit succeeding, said Whittemore, nominated by former President Clinton in 1999. " (I'm not sure what Clinton has to do with this as Hillary certainly did nothing to stop Terri's parents from interfering with her rights).

So what is next for the Schinders and their scheming allies. Perhaps a writ of mandamus demanding that the court rule in their favor. Perhaps a bit more editing of those tapes that have of Terri to show her speaking and asking President Bush personally for help.

challenger to democrats -- earn my vote!

2005-03-19T20:17:00.000-05:00

It looks like the Republicans in Congress have gone off the deep end in their zeal to placate a vocal minority and trample Terri Schiavo's constitutional rights.

Their first effort, a bizzare misuse of the Congressional subpoena power, was promptly batted away by the courageous local judge who has endured endless litigation on this case.

But now the Congress is working on odious legislation that, depending on which version you look at, with either be a private bill to deny Terri her constitudional rights or a much larger piece of legislation that will broadly deny rights to many as well as federalize a vast array of private decisions.

But if the Republicans think that they are responding to a large grass roots effort, they are sadly mistaken. Instead, polls show that a large majority of Americans believe that Terri's own wishes not to be kept alive in a persistent vegetative state should be honored over the wishes of her parents to have her kept alive artifically to be some sort of showcase for their own needs.

Where are the Democrats? Why aren't they standing up against the outragous behavior of the Republicans? Give us a reason to support you and we might do it.

amateur neurology

2005-03-18T19:20:00.000-05:00

One would hardly consider neurology to be an appropriate do-it-yourself pursuit. The typical neurologist is highly educated and trained in evaluating and understanding conditions of the brain, certainly one of the body's most complex organs.

But the Terri Schiavo case has brought out hundreds if not thousands of amateur neurologists who believe their own observations, typically based solely on a review of a heavily edited videotape, are superior to those of the highly education neurologists who have actually examined Terri Schiavo and reviewed the medical evidence related to her condition.

One example of the silliness afoot here is Peggy Noonan, a Wall Street Journal writer. Ms. Noonan does not mention any credentials or previous experience she has in the area of medicine or neurology but evidently she doesn't feel that kind of credentials are of any value in assessing Terri Schiavo's medical condition.

"At the heart of the case at this point is a question: Is Terri Schiavo brain-dead? That is, is remedy, healing, physiologically impossible?

No. Oddly enough anyone who sees the film and tape of her can see that her brain tells her lungs to breathe, that she can open her eyes, that she seems to respond at times and to some degree to her family. She can laugh. (I heard it this morning on the news. It's a childlike chuckle.) In the language of computers she appears not to be a broken hard drive but a computer in deep hibernation. She looks like one of those coma cases that wind up in the news because the patient, for no clear reason, snaps to and returns to life and says, 'Is it 1983? Is there still McDonald's? Can I have a burger?'

Again, life is mysterious. Medicine is full of happenings and events that leave brilliant doctors scratching their heads."

So what is wrong here? The fact is that Terri Schiavo is not "brain dead" but is in a "persistent vegetative state". In the condition she is in, those parts of the brain that control higher functions (that make us human beings) have died and been replaced by fluid. This has been confirmed by diagnostic scanning. She does not have an injury to her brain -- there is something else in the space where her brain used to be. The fluid that has replaced her higher brain is no more likely to convert back to brain tissue than a person who has had a limb amputated is likely to grow another one to replace it. A chameleon can regrow a tail that is lost but a human being cannot grow back an arm or a leg and a human being cannot grow back a brain.

So, what about the video tape? As was brought out in some of the neverending court cases, the video tape found on the web site was extracted from many, many hours of tape in an attempt to show something that is not real. Terri Schiavo does not have the ability to track things with her eyes but her eyes do more randomly. Under the basic facts of probability, Terri's random eye movements will, given enough observations, track some other object completely by chance.

mischief afoot in tallahassee?

2005-03-17T20:13:00.000-05:00

So, the question of the hour is whether the Florida legislature, along with a duped and willing Governor Jeb Bush will again contravene the wishes of Terri Shiavo and prolong her existence in a persistent vegetative state?

Last time around (about 18 months ago), the legislature passed a hastily and poorly conceived private bill that was declared unconstitutional. This time, member of the Florida House are afoot with much more mischief, crafting another private bill but in the form of a broader measure that would deny the rights of many more Floridians. The governor, turning a deaf ear to Michael Shiavo's request that he actually consider the facts in this case, is ready to sign anything put in front of him.

The media, anxious to show this to be a real two-sided dispute have consistently published with a slant favoring the position of the Schindlers, Terri's conniving and controlling parents. In the view of the media, the option of the 19 or so "experts" collected by the Schindlers is considered to be equivalent to the actual medical specialists and experts that have examined Schiavo and concluded her condition offers no hope for recovery. The media generally don't mention that the Schindler "experts" are mostly charlatans and grifters, none of whom have actually examined the patient or read her medical history. The bottom line is that brain areas that have turned to fluid are not going to grow back and be restored to function any more than an amputated limb is. Perhaps the Schindlers really are clueless enough to believe what they say but no competent expert has agreed with them. The courts who have actually reviewed the evidence have consistently rules against the Schindlers. Their attempt to lobby the legislature to pass another bad private bill is based on their knowledge that the legislature (and this governor as well) are unlikely to consider any actual facts before going ahead.

Another wild card in the case is the insertion of Florida's gestapo-like Department against Children and Families. Generally operating with no effective oversight, this is a scary group of misfits, evidently anxious to curry favor with the governor.

running for higher office?

2005-03-17T18:08:00.000-05:00

We seem to be seeing a lot of Citrus County Sheriff Jeff Dawsy on the Tampa television stations, conducting various press conferences on the Jessica Lunsford case. Since the case has dragged on for three weeks, it hardly seems like something that Dawsy would be particularly proud of. In addition, the press conferences don't seem to be particularly enlightening, essentially revealing only information that was already available.

Jeff Dawsy was recently re-elected Sheriff with a quite impressive vote total running against two opponents.

Is Jeff Dawsy using the tragedy of the Jessica Lunsford disappearance to garner some major media market publicity in preparation for a later launch for higher office? Dawsy seems to like to spend taxpayer money on expensive high-tech equipment and it not clear whether the taxpayers of semi-rural Citrus County are going to want to buy all of the "toys for boys" that Dawsy seems to crave. As far as Dawsy's plans for higher office, we will find out for sure later but remember that you saw it here first!

When not to hire a publicist?

2005-03-16T09:15:00.000-05:00

The case of Terri Schiavo is the poster child for the importance of having good publicists on the payroll. If you thought that six years of consistent losses in every court system that would take a pleading would spell the end of the legal struggle you would be wrong because having a good publicist opens up a whole new front; the legislative and executive branchs. Remember that the legistlative and executive branches are completely susceptible to the kind of lobbying and manipulation that is the strength of publicists -- no need to attempt to manipulate the facts to influence Governor Bush or the members of the Florida legislature; they don't care about them!

But this article is not about when to hire publicists but when you don't need to. Take Tom Sneddon, for example, the Santa Barbara county district attorney who is carrying on a jihad against Michael Jackson. At one point, he had hired a publicist but that plan was dropped due to public outcry. Instead, it appears that Sneddon has a "special friend" in the media in the form of Diane Dimond, Court TV's "reporter" on the Jackson case.

But even with anti-Jackson partisans in the media, Sneedon's case looks pretty weak. I don't claim to have any knowledge of how prosecutors select the cases to pursue but I have to think that this one is a poor one by any measure.

PC wolves on the prowl take on one of their own

2005-03-15T21:20:00.000-05:00

"In a sharp and unexpected rebuke to University President Lawrence H. Summers, members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) voted that they lack confidence in his leadership this afternoon."

It is one thing for political correctness bigots to attach campus republicans and other conservatives but now they are after one of their own, Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University and an individual with spotless liberal credentials. Ouch! -- maybe Summers will start to understand what it is like to be a consevative in a place like Harvard.

AOL keeps the spirit of P.T. Barnum alive

2005-03-13T17:59:00.000-05:00

American Online (AOL) has done a remarkable job of keeping P.T. Barnum's adage that "there is a sucker born every minute" alive and well in these modern times.

In the early to mid 1990s, it was AOL that came up with the brilliant stragegy of not only pricing its Internet service much higher than all competitors but also providing a much more unwanted email, telephone, and web-based advertising to those premium-paying customers than their competitors (who charged less for service) did. Adding insult to injury, AOL also charged premium rates to advertisers who were anxious to reach the gullible AOL subscriber base.

The con caused AOL's stock price to go so high that they were able to purchase Time Warner, a company with real assets. Of course, the legitimate "magic" didn't quite last that long so AOL executives had to phoney up some numbers to make the Time Warner deal pass the sniff test. But not to worry, the deal was done and all of the AOL principles handsomely paid out before Federal investigators figured out the scam

But the AOL customer base has been eroding and AOL has even had to reduce the amount of advertising blasted to the remaining paying customers. So what is the company to do? Apparently, the answer is to further exploit the AOL customer base by making use of the intellectual property contained in instant messages. Is this going to work? Remember P.T. Barnum.

Can Howard Dean hide his records?

2005-03-12T20:04:00.000-05:00

While most everyone has forgotten Howard Dean's refusal to release records from the period he served as Vermont governor, the wheels of justice have been slowly turning and, so far, not to Dr. Dean's benefit.

A recent court ruling suggests that Dean cannot arbitrarily seal 86 boxes of documents for 10 years but must instead identify each document for which he is requesting privilege and why. Ouch!

Remember the media stampede over George W. Bush's military records, a stampede even after he had authorized the military to release all of them. How different things were for the democrats opposing Bush. Howard Dean would not release his records as governor nor would John Kerry release his military records. In fact, the demand for Bush military records was so great that it led to the production of the forgeries that led to Dan Rather's downfall.

what's not to like about Ward Churchill?

2005-03-11T17:19:00.000-05:00

Ward Churchill has become a darling of the liberals in this country but how long will it last?

A little background. Churchill is a professor at the University of Colorado (CU). He became a darling of the liberal establishment by writing a piece accusing the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks of somehow being at fault for their own fate and being the equivalent of Nazis. Even more endearing to liberals, Churchill has claimed himself to be an American Indian. But as more and more facts have come out, it is unclear how long Churchill can remain a favorite of any but the most extreme liberals.

Conservatives found Churchill's comments blaming the 9/11 victims for their own cowardly murders to be patently offensive. His claims that the victims were equivalent to Nazis was the kind of comment that could only appeal to liberals as far left as the moveon crowd, who, after all, had attempted to popularize comparing George W. Bush to Hitler. Churchill immediately became a wanted speaker on liberal campuses but, at the same time, conservatives were asking why someone like this should be drawing a paycheck from a taxpayer-funded organization and, even worse, beginning to look into some of Churchill's other activities.

First, Churchill critics found that Churchill was not an American Indian at all although he had apparently claimed so when he got his position at CU. It is hard to understand how someone could keep their job after misrepresenting their ethnicity to a liberal quota-encouraging institution like a university but I guess attacking the 9/11 victims has tended to immunize Churchill from the kinds of things that would happen to most other people (particularly conservatives).

Next, it was discovered that Churchill had copied a piece of copywrited artwork and sold prints of the pirated material. When caught, Churchill claimed that he had received approval from the artist he had copied who, fortunately for Churchill, is no longer alive to make any comments on the matter.

Now, however, Churchill had been found to have plagiarized another professor's work and has apparently also made threats to his victim. In this case, the victim of Churchill's plagiarism is still alive.

"The CU Board of Regents ordered the review [of Churchill's work] after the public outcry over an essay Churchill wrote comparing victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to notorious Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann. Since then, Churchill has come under fire for some of his other writings and speeches, his scholarship, his claim of American Indian ancestry, and even his artwork."

So, will the review panel be willing to take tough action against Churchill or will this turn out to be more like a CBS-style review panel? Even liberals who still love Churchill despite his flaws shouldn't shed any tears for him since, even if he loses his job, he is likely to find employment in some George Soros-funded enterprise if not with Osama bin Laden himself.

another frivolous lawsuit bites the dust

2005-03-10T21:39:00.000-05:00

With just a week remaining until Michael Schiavo can once again attempt to implement his wife Terri's wishes to not be kept alive by artificial means in a persistent vegetative state, her nutty controlling parents, their politically motivated allies, and the group of charlatans and hucksters that surround them are doing everything possible to keep the game going.

Today, the judge in the case blew away a politically-motivated attempt by the inept state Department [against] Children and Families (DCF) to slow the wheels of justice.

"A judge ruled Thursday that the state's social services agency cannot delay the removal of the feeding tube keeping brain-damaged Terri Schiavo alive. ... Circuit Judge George W. Greer ruled that the agency's attempt to get involved at this point was inappropriate and "appears to be brought for the purpose of circumventing the court's final judgment ... in violation of the separation of powers doctrine."

The story, posted on local6.com contains the usual slant suggesting that most of the story was written by publicists employed by the Schindlers (Terri's parents) who have shown a willingness to resort to any lengths to deny their daughter her wishes. Calling Terri "brain-damaged" is quite an understatement since where her brain used to be has been replaced by fluid.

the Terri Schiavo case

2005-03-10T06:49:00.000-05:00

Don't count on the mainstream media in Florida to provide unbiased facts regarding the Terry Schiavo case. In most cases, they seem to be getting the material they are promoting directly from the publicists working for the Schindlers, Terris' parents.

Recently, the Schindlers have been able to get favorable media publicity regarding their claim that there exist "medical experts" who dispute the diagnosis of persistent vegetative state. Bloggers have filled in critical facts here when the Florida newspapers and television stations have failed to do so.

"These experts seem very impressed with the own CVs, but as Amp notes, none of the affidavits addresses the implications of Terri's cerebral cortex having been destroyed and replaced by fluid. (As evidenced by several previous brain scans.) Nor does anyone attempt to defuse the observation that Terri's movements can be explained by non-conscious processes but not by higher brain activity because she doesn't actually have those higher brain centers anymore. "

Privileges of the wealthy

2005-03-08T20:34:00.000-05:00

One thing about rich people is that they can style themselves as experts on anything they want and the various minions who serve them will always be suitably impressed. For example, Barbara Streisand, a very wealthy entertainer, has styled herself as a policy expert and none of the liberal democrats who enjoy here money are inclined to criticize her. One might think that someone who inherited money (as opposed to earning any of it) would be less likely to fall into such a situation.

Teresa Heinz Kerry (called THK) below has done nothing other than marry well to entited her to a fabulous amount of money and, having that much money, she can make a complete fool of herself and no one close to her will utter a peep.

So now comes By Joel Connelly of the very liberal Seattle Post-Inteligencer to praise Teresa.

"What made Teresa Heinz Kerry so refreshing to some voters, and threatening to others on the 2004 campaign trail, is summed up when THK talks about her speech to last year's Democratic convention: 'Nobody told me what to do,' she told a Saturday fund-raiser here. The implicit afterword: Nobody better try."

And why would anyone interfere with her making a fool of herself? The folks at Newsweek wrote a rather revealing piece after the election talking about the drinking and general strange conduct. Brother Connelly characterizes the Newsweek piece as "a gossipy, superficial book"

But "THK" knows even more than we thought. She complains about Catholic prelates attempting to practice their religion. But even more interesting is the fact that she has evidently become an expert on voting machines and computers stating that

"Two brothers own 80 percent of the machines used in the United States," Heinz Kerry said. She identified both as "hard-right" Republicans. She argued that it is "very easy to hack into the mother machines."

We can all certainly be thankful that we don't have that kind of loose cannon as First Lady.

Loss of a fellow aviator

2005-02-27T09:47:00.000-05:00

The man involved in this accident was someone I had flown with. He was pleasant and would always exchange a few comments when he came by to pick up the airplane he was renting. He loved to fly and he enjoyed sharing the experience with others, on occasion bringing relatives and friends along.

I went with the owner of the flight school to the crash scene on Wednesday. We were unable to fly in as the weather was still below minimums. I won't ever forget what I saw there and knowing the individual involved added an additional dimension to the sight of twisted and broken metal. Representatives from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration were on hand to investigate the accident. All of us who fly owe our thanks to these folks as their efforts to understand what goes wrong when an accident occurs are critical to reducing the risk of flying for all of us.

Aviation is unforgiving of errors.