Archive for April, 2010

David Karki

A large, well-known organization has a significant problem with a small minority of its members committing sexual offenses with minors under their supervision. When the offenders are discovered, they are – for the most part – lightly punished if at all and then quickly and quietly transferred elsewhere, to a location unaware of their criminal background and thus able to offend again.

Extracurricular.

What am I describing? The Catholic Church? The description is an accurate fit, but I’m actually talking about another organization:  U.S. public schools.

It seems as if hardly a day goes by where there isn’t a story in the news about another teacher being sexually involved with a student in their class. Perhaps surprisingly (or perhaps not), the offenders are increasingly female. And the punishment is often very soft, given the difficulty in firing union-protected teachers and getting jurors to see female offenders as true sex predators. Read the rest of this entry »

Candace Talmadge

The state courts, at least in the county where I reside, mete out much the same treatment to potential jurors as suffragists received a century ago. Officials offer glowing lip service to the importance of jury duty, similar to pompous lectures about women’s paramount domestic role. The hot-air distraction was/is designed to keep women and juries from recognizing their sequestered and powerless condition.

Gruel.

Juries powerless? Surely these panels’ decisions can be a matter of life or death sentences in capital crimes. True, but the maneuverings of attorneys on both sides of a case combine with rulings by the judge to keep jurors separate from a lot of background information that might actually help them.

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Lawrence J. Haas

Because an Iran with nuclear weapons remains but a prospect for the future, rather than a reality with which to grapple today, the United States and its allies can enjoy the luxury of procrastination rather than feel the urgency of action.

Of immediacy, by contrast, is the actual shooting war that’s underway between the United States and Iran on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan – yes, real war leading to real deaths for U.S. soldiers.

Same to you, buddy.

Iran’s quest for nuclear weaponry and its battlefield conflicts with the United States are but two sides of a geopolitical coin – for a Tehran that’s willing to kill U.S. troops in its push for regional hegemony begs the question of what it will do once it acquires the protection that a nuclear capacity would bring.

These Iranian initiatives are connected in another way. Washington’s strategy to blunt Tehran’s nuclear aspirations – a patient mix of offers of a new U.S.-Iranian relationship and the threat of stronger economic sanctions – has probably convinced U.S. officials to downplay the reality of on-the-ground bombs and bullets.

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Bob Batz

Some people are destined to go through life slowly.

What I mean is those people spend most of their lives waiting for this or that.

I’m one of them.

Any day now...

Every time I go into a grocery store, for example, I get in line behind someone who is there to buy $345 worth of lunch meat. To make things worse, that someone always wants the lunch meat custom sliced.

“I’d like the garlic bologna in one-eighth inch slices, the boiled ham in one-quarter-inch slices and the pickle loaf in three-eighth-inch slices,” the shopper tells the guy or gal behind the meat counter.

Invariably, as soon as the meat counter employee starts the slicer, the machine groans, creaks, emits a noxious cloud of black smoke and stops.

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Bob Franken

The VAT and the Flat: Bad ideas whose times have come. Again. It’s that tax season of our lives when we’re all miffed about what the IRS squeezes out of us, enforcing an absurdly complicated and grossly unfair set of rules. We’re feeling might victimized.

VAT and Flat taxes: Not the solution

TO THE RESCUE!!! Here they come…that cavalry of economists and other self-appointed experts, blowing not only their own horns, but trumpeting their simple plan to
A) Replace the foul system with one that’s fair and oh yeah,
B) Get themselves on cable news to talk about VAT and Flat.

The problem is that a Value Added Tax and a Flat Tax are both inherently UNfair. They appeal to the wealthy and their political enablers because their simplicity can hide a fundamental flaw: Everybody pays the same. Rich or poor. It’s the same old Regressive vs. Progressive debate with different sound bites.

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Brett Noel

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Large version for newspaper publication

Greyscale version for newspaper publication

Bob Franken

There could be several reasons the Republicans are cooling their jets and peeking out from their bunkers where they had dug in for another fight-to-the-death against anything Obama. It’s possible they decided this time to play along because it was good for the nation. Theoretically possible.

Not gunna support Obama. Not gunna do it.

More likely, they probably realize that an overt battle against financial reform could contribute to their deaths…they’d end up fighting for their political lives this time, not the president and his Democratic buddies.

One can only assume their consultants started screaming bloody murder when the GOP congressional leaders made it clear they were digging in again to oppose new regulation.

Their pollsters know their “No Way in Hell” position alongside the bankers and corporate titans could be overrun by the millions out there who are disgusted at how the All-Too-Free Market system has allowed unrestrained plunderers to abscond with their money. That explains why their usual solid wall defending the moneyed special interests is a bit porous. So this could well be a tactical retreat.

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Dan Calabrese

And so it begins with an innocuous enough sounding headline from the Associated Press: “Obama: No litmus test on abortion for court pick”

Here’s what’s coming, and I know this because it’s what comes every time we have a vacancy on the Supreme Court. As we watch the media’s coverage of the court battle (count how many times they use that word to describe it), you are going to see a maniacally disproportionate emphasis on abortion in all discussion of the likely pick, the eventual pick, the coming hearings, the potential future cases, etc.

They have nothing else to do.

Abortion abortion abortion. That’s all the Supreme Court does, you know. Decide abortion cases. OK, granted, it’s actually decided a tiny scant few in the past 37 years (two come to mind of any significance), but no matter.  There are no rulings of consequence the role of the federal government, the reach of regulation, law enforcement, privacy, handgun laws or anything else. You certainly won’t see the media asking Obama if he has a litmus test on the Second Amendment.

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Mike Ball

A couple weekends ago  I spent more time watching the Masters golf tournament on television than I like to admit. I guess I find it strangely comforting to see tanned, handsome, self-assured millionaire touring golf professionals occasionally shank a five iron into a sand trap.

Enough already!

To me the highlight of the weekend was Fred Couples making a serious run for the Green Jacket. I loved this because:

a). He is 50 years old and has more gray hair than I do

b). His name is “Fred”

c). In an elite sport where everything a player uses, wears, eats, drinks, or thinks about is computer engineered for maximum performance and endorsement value, this guy was playing the most prestigious tournament in professional golf wearing slip-on boat shoes with no socks.

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