Girl, 14, Drives Drunk; Parents Disabled

The Brits have been enjoying the spectacle of the family from hell, the Blacks, whose daughter Leighanne got arrested and then convicted for driving under the influence without a license. What’s the fuss, you ask? Leighanne is only 14, and this is her second driving offense.

The fair Leighanne is a bit young for driving and drinking, it’s true. But that is not why she became famous.

She got famous because of the forcible manner in which she expressed exception to her sentence: she shouted abuse at the magistrates and then threw a carafe of water over them, before punching the prosecuting counsel.

That’s more like it. And then her mother “mooned” the journalists attending upon this solemn occasion.

But that is not the point. The point is that, according to Ron Liddle in the London Spectator, her parents, Nora and Maurice, are both disabled.

Nora and Maurice are on benefits on account of his cancer and angina and her lung trouble and high blood pressure.

Oh well, Nora is 54 and Maurice is 62. Maybe they need to slow down a bit. It’s all perfectly harmless. But there are 2.7 million Brits on disability, around nine percent of the work force of 30 million. Only about 900,000 are unemployed. A pretty sickly lot, those Brits.

Here in the United States, things are far different. Out of a work force of 150 million a mere 8.1 million under 65 are drawing benefits under the Disability Income and Supplemental Security Income programs. That’s a mere 5.4 percent.

Let us put this in perspective. In Britland, there are about three times as many people getting money from the government for disability as there are people unemployed. In the ruthless United States, the ranks of the disabled are about the same as the ranks of the unemployed.

What does that tell you?

John Stossel and the Teachers, contd.

Remember John Stossel and his ABC-TV documentary, “Stupid in America?”
Remember how the teachers union demonstrated in front of ABC, chanting “Shame on You?” And remember how they invited John Stossel to teach at a public school so that he could find out what it was really like teaching kids?

And remember how John Stossel agreed to take the teachers union up on their offer?

A funny thing happened on the way to the classroom, writes John Stossel.

First of all, the union selected Beacon High School in New York, a special high school. “Ninety percent of Beacon's students graduate, while the average graduation rate for New York City public schools is only 53 percent.” OK. So the teachers union wanted Stossel to see the best of the schools, not the worst.

Then there were meetings. Lots of meetings. Finally they decided that Stossel could teach history and media studies. Then they had Stossel sit in a class with a “superstar” teacher who “seemed to teach 'victimhood in racist America' rather than history.”

Then it was all called off. They said that Stossel’s project “might be 'disruptive' and that it might 'set a precedent' that would open their doors to other reporters.” I’ll say.

Too bad. Letting cameras into schools would be a good thing. Taxpayers might finally get to see how more than $200,000 per classroom of their money was being spent.

And that is exactly why the education establishment does not want cameras in the classroom. It’s ok to stage a rent-a-crowd demo for the cameras down at ABC headquarters and shout “Shame.” But God forbid that TV watchers should actually get to see what goes on inside the classrooms for which they cough up five percent of their income.

What do you think, you mothers of America? Are you fed up enough yet?

Global Warming, Global Cooling, Natch

Conservatives love to recall how Newsweek heralded a new ice age back in 1975 just as the current warming trend was getting under way. Now the Washington Times has actually printed on line the article from thirty years ago, The Cooling World by Peter Gwynne.

There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production... The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now.

That must have got their attention back in the April 28, 1975 edition of Newsweek. The growing season in England had declined by 2 weeks between 1950 and 1975, and guess what: violent weather was a factor.

Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

You gotta love this stuff. An outburst of tornados means we are in for global cooling. But what about the devastating hurricanes of the 1960s. Don’t they get a mention? Then there are the experts.

Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras -- and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average.

Of course, Newsweek was deeply worried that nothing was being done about the looming crisis. “The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.” There’s a voice from the past. Remember the “planners?” Haven’t heard much about them lately. Not since the end of the Soviet Union.

Good Old Tom Delay

I first heard the name Tom Delay when working on Rick White’s campaign for Congress in 1994. Tom was obviously Rick’s goto man in Washington DC, for advice and no doubt for money.

Now he’s gone, but you can certainly say he had an impact.

And you can certainly say that the Republican Party is ruthless when it comes to tossing grannie from the train. Delay isn’t exactly a grannie, but he had certainly become Republican baggage.

Is that what Democrats mean when they say that Republicans are mean-spirited?

We don’t really know too much about Tom Delay. There have never been the usual fawning profiles that are routine in the MSM for rising stars and big hitters in the Democratic Party. So it’s good to read Tony Blankley’s appreciation.

Tom has served the Party magnificently over the last two decades — both as a principled conservative legislator, and as a shrewd and tireless political operator. And he has had the good judgment to exit on his own two feet. Both the Party and the country are stronger and better for all that Tom Delay has contributed.

But the fact is that nobody is indispensible. Tom Delay had become an embarrassment and so he had to go.

But we thank Tom for all he has done, especially since a lot of it has been the bare-knuckle stuff like the Texas reapportionment that a political party needs someone to do, but is embarrassed to admit to.

And I always liked him that people sneered for his being once a pest exterminator. Why would they think that? We need more pest exterminators in the Republican Party.

Let's Wish Katie Couric Well

Conservatives are understandably a bit sour about the accession of Katie Couric to the news anchor position at CBS News.

While liberals are doubtless agog at the big “first,” the first woman ever to become a major solo news anchor, to us it’s just same-old same-old. Another liberal face gets to read the news at a liberal news desk.

Yes, there’s a long conservativev rap sheet on the “perky” Katie Couric, and Lowell Ponte is up to the challenge of reading it out in full.

But let us hear it for Katie. She’s a liberal feminist, and she has reached the peak of her profession. Good luck to her.

Anyway, the liberal slant of the news doesn’t come from the on-air talent, it comes from the news organization itself. CBS News is a liberal news organization and it ought to have a liberal on-air anchor. And as a liberal news organization it ought to be first to have a solo woman news anchor.

The problem with CBS News and with the rest of the liberal news media is highlighted by Michael Barone. If you were setting up the news media from scratch would you staff it with people so that 90 percent adhered to one political party and 10 percent to the other? Er, no, you probably wouldn’t. Unless you were like the broadcast news executive in this exchange:

"Doesn't the fact that 90 percent of your people are Democrats affect your work product?" I asked.

"Oh, no, no," he said. "Our people are professional. They have standards of objectivity and professionalism, so that their own views don't affect the news."

"So what you're saying," I said, "is that your work product would be identical if 90 percent of your people were Republicans."

He quickly replied, "No, then it would be biased."

Really, we Republicans and conservatives shouldn’t be discouraged by this. When our adversary displays such a staggering blindness, we ought to be able to exploit it, all the way to the presidency, to majorities in both houses of Congress, and even to the Supreme Court.

By the way, let us credit Rush Limbaugh for the sobriquet “perky.” Rush’s epithet perfectly describes the reality of Katie’s talent. It is her attractive, female, woman-next-door qualities that have made her a success. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—unless you are a liberal.

Mexico's Shame

We’ve heard from the illegal immigrants. We are hearing from our noble senators. And ordinary Americans can always call into their local talk-radio show to voice their opinions about immigration.

But what do ordinary Mexicans think?

The chaps at TCSDaily wondered that too, so they got middle-class Mexican Marvin Duran Rodriguez to tell his side of the story. He goes right to the heart of it.

Down here, the usually unspoken truth is that the daily emigration northward is a source of deep national shame that the country we love does not provide conditions wherein much of the underclass can afford adequate educations, medical care or even sufficient nourishment for their families.

It’s easy for Mexicans to blame US abundance for their scarcity, and they do, but still “more than four out of ten Mexicans admit that they would rather live among the 'gringo capitalists.'”

Duran worries that a reform of immigration would precipitate a crisis in the Mexican economy, a real threat when you consider how important remittances from Mexicans in the US to their families back home are to the Mexican economy.

Our politicians know how crucial remittances from your country are, and this gives you the leverage needed to convince the government of Mexico that it must make the structural changes, both in terms of anti-corruption measures and market reforms, that we need in order to join America as a true North American partner.

We must hope that President Bush is privately pushing for just that.

Suppose You Were an Illegal Immigrant in Mexico...

Many commentators are shocked at the inhumanity of illegal immigration and undocumented workers. Mexican immigrants, they complain, are subjected to indignities that have no place in a just society.

Quite so. But just read what Mexico wrote into its 1917 constitution on the matter of foreigners, as told by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.. He’s reporting on a paper Mexico's Glass House (pdf) by J. Michael Waller.

In Article 33 of the constitution: "Foreigners may not in any way participate in the political affairs of the country." You mean, like take part in mammoth demonstrations and marches?

In Article 55 foreign-born Mexican citizens are banned from becoming federal legislators. Each must be “a Mexican citizen by birth.”

In brief, Waller writes:

• Immigrants and foreign visitors are banned from public political discourse.
  
• Immigrants and foreigners are denied certain basic property rights.
  
• Immigrants are denied equal employment rights.
  
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens will never be treated as real Mexican citizens.
  
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens are not to be trusted in public service.
  
• Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy.
  
• Private citizens may make citizens arrests of lawbreakers (i.e., illegal immigrants)
  and hand them to the authorities.
  
• Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process.

It’s nice to know just how advanced and civilized we Yanks are, after all.