I just went due south a thousand miles to meet the lovely and wonderful Skyler Jane Lawrence who is even prettier than her picture, and who I suspect will turn out to bet every bit a pretty as older sister Kyley.
The South is an amazing place of 70 mph speed limits and clean roads. People seem to smile more south of D.C. Things happen that may seem funny to Northerners. The employees at a spotless Microtel in Walterboro, S.C. have orders to keep the lobbyTV tuned to either Fox News or the Weather Channel. The owner of a gift store on Jekyll Island — the one next to the “Rah” Bar — asks a woman she just met to watch her shop while uses the restroom.
And a billboard on I-95 a mile or so north of the Florda border asks in large letters “Who Is John Galt?”
So it is a horse race in the Pennsylvania Democrat senate primary. Showing why he’s not called Snarlin’ Arlen for nothing, the incumbent Specter, yesterday, released a blistering attack ad against challenger Congressman Joe Sestak (D-7) called “No Show Joe” in which he notes Sestak was “relieved of duty in the Navy for creating a poor command climate” and has the “worst attendance of any Pennsylvania congressman”.
Until this month , Specter, who is the party-endorsed candidate, had been leading the congressman handily in the polls.
Lower Merion Surveilled Students — Not a rare handful but 56,000 photos of Lower Merion students were taken by the school district’s laptop spy system over the last two years including those of the kids in various states of undress and in their beds.
Also, the websites they visited and online chats they made were also perused by district officials and appear to be the subject of faculty lounge gossip.
As the scandal runs its course probably one or two heads are going to roll at the Pennsylvania district in the Philadelphia suburbs but a whole lot of those tasked with educating the young and who think it quite appropriate to peek into their pupils privacy — for their own good, of course — will remain.
Meanwhile, at Maude Wilkins Elementary School in Maple Shade, N.J., a plan was cooked up to celebrate Women’s History Month by requiring third-grade boys to wear woman’s clothes to school for a day. Cheerleader outfits and poodle skirts were suggested.
The idea was killed by outraged parents but those who conceived and approved it remain.
In every state, children are indoctrinated not educated. They are given information that is often false and against their parents wishes. The propaganda is often not even subtle as this particular item handed out in a Texas classroom illustrates.
So what to do?
It’s time to start recognizing that education is too important to leave to those who are not interested in it, namely those who run our public schools. It’s time to start understanding that those who put roadblocks in the path of removing bad teachers are not interested in education.
And it’s time to start realizing that those who put roadblocks in the path of teachers who want to go beyond the work allowed by their contract are not interested in education.
The solution is to give parents the power to fire their teachers. This is the genius behind school choice. If teacher isn’t competent or fails to teach what had been contracted, the parent takes the voucher money and gives it to someone who does what is expected.
BTW, this gives the teacher the power to fire the student too, if you will. If the student is a bully who makes life miserable for the other customers, the teacher can and will tell the parent to take the voucher money and give it to someone else, perhaps a specialist in bullies.
America spends $972 billion on education. It’s time to stop wasting it and fire our public schools.
Lower Merion School District watches over student Blake Robbins
Philadelphia sports fans took another black eye when 21-year-old Matthew Clemmens reportedly purposely vomited on an 11-year-old girl at the April 14 Phillies-Nationals game. In this case the black eye was literal as can be seen from Young Mr. Clemmens mug shot and, with a nod to the presumption of innocence, well -deserved if the reports are accurate.
At least Mr. Clemmens had the excuse of being fat, drunk and stupid.
Clemmens, however, has inspired retrospectives of notable moments in Philadelphia sports fan history that should give some pause. Here is one from NBCPhiladelphia.
The second item describes an incident at the Dec. 10, 1989 Eagles-Cowboys game at Veterans Stadium in which the Dallas players were pelted with ice-balls made from snow the city never managed to get around to cleaning up from a storm several days earlier. Then District Attorney Ed Rendell bet a young fan $20 he couldn’t reach the field with one of the ice balls. Rendell lost the bet but he would go on to become the city’s mayor, the state’s governor and chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
So, Mr. Clemmens take heart. Dean Wormer’s famous bit advice may not apply to you and your future might be bright after all.
Pennsylvanians, please note. Mr. Clemmens is a resident of Cherry Hill, N. J. while Gov. Rendell is a native of New York City.
AP Anti-Pope Distortions — FirstThe New York Times, now Associated Press.
Once respected conveyors of information have now become archetypes of bigots.
TheNew York Times on March 25 accused Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, of intervening to prevent a priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, from facing penalties for cases of sexual abuse of minors. It was quickly shown to be false.
On April 9, AP put on the wires that the future Pope Benedict “resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children” in 1985.
Further, abuse cases at the time were the responsibility of the local diocese, in this case Oakland.
This means, IOW, that Cardinal Ratzinger had no authority to remove Kiesle from the ministry. That, however, doesn’t matter in this case because the Diocese of Oakland had already done so after he was after he was arrested in 1978 on misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct and received three years’ probation in a plea bargain. Kiesle, however, went on to do volunteer work which Oakland Bishop John Cummins kiboshed upon learning that he was doing so.
Kiesle was laicized two years after the controversial letter, on the eve of his 40th birthday which was in keeping with the then policy of not granting dispensations to priests under the age of 40.
Kiesle was convicted in 2004 of molesting a girl in 1995–note: this was eight years after his defrocking. He was sentenced to six years in prison. He lives today in California as a registered sex offender.
And has anyone ever wondered at why the same crowd that expresses so much outrage at Pope Benedict is equally outraged at the Boy Scouts policy of not allowing homosexual scout leaders?
Mechanical Failure Reportedly Not Cause Of Osprey Crash — The April 8 Bell Boeing CV-22 Osprey crash in Afghanistan was apparently not due to mechanical failure according the aviation website FlightGlobal.Com.
The crash occurred as the craft was landing in a wadi around 1 a.m. under brown-out conditions.
Killed were the pilot, a flight engineer, an army Ranger and a civilian. Others were injured.
The military has ruled out enemy fire.
The Osprey’s fuselage, cockpit,avionics, and flight controls are built at the Boeing Helicopter plant in Ridley Park with the rest of the machine being built by Bell Helicopter in Texas.
Mechanical Failure Reportedly Not Cause Of Osprey Crash
While the perception is that Wall Street is run by fat conservatives, the truth is that the strings are pulled by extreme social liberals who recognize that there are fortunes to be made working with government and, if done properly from their point of view, government policy can squelch up-and-coming competition.
They expect to always have their SUVs and top doctors and think it’s just fine that the rest of us make do with skateboards and overworked nurses.
So when Reid, who is behind in the polls in his re-election bid, tried to whip up some populist sympathy by blaming the nation’s economic problems on the banks and brokers he went a little too far and had his leash tugged.
Expect Reid and the rest of the Dems to listen. Goldman executives are staunch Dem supporters and gave four times more money to Obama than to John McCain.
So whatever bill that comes forth giving the government the power to run our banks, expect there to be a paragraph on page 973 or so that lets Goldman and the rest of the politically connected Wall Street Dems to make a bundle.
Allee Bautsch Beating Politically Motivated —  PatDollard.Com is reporting that New Orleans police have confirmed that the attack on Allee Bautsch and Joe Young was politically motivated.
The attack occurred, Friday night, after Miss Bautsch and Young were leaving a restaurant in New Orleans that had been the site of a Republican rally and was the target of picketing by Democrat Party supporters.
Miss Bautsch and Young, her boyfriend, were followed from the restaurant and badly beaten. Miss Bautsch suffered a broken leg and Young, a broken nose and jaw.
Miss Bautsch is the campaign finance director for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is a Republican.
Allee Bautsch Beating Was Politically Motivated Miss Bautsch is the campaign finance director for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is a Republican.
Commonwealth Court, today , ruled that Pennsylvania most move $800 million into the MCare Fund , set up in 2002 to help defray malpractice insurance costs for the state’s medical professionals. The vote was 4-1 with the dissenter Judge Dan Pellegrini, not citing law but expediency and class envy namely that the budget is now out of balance and the doctors will get money.
Money was transferred from the fund last fall to end the 101-day budget impasses and avoid making massive cuts in state spending.
Even with the transfer, a huge budget deficit — some estimate it at $1 billion — was looming.
And this doesn’t even take into account the soon-to-hit pension crisis .
Gov. Rendell has said he will appeal which would be to state Supreme Court.
With regard to Judge Pellegrini, I hope he is as comfortable with expediency when it comes to his own pension since some cold-blooded expediency in that matter might be the only that that keeps regular working folks from serious suffering.
Maybe Pennsylvania conservatives owe Rick Santorum an apology.
Many stayed home in 2006 setting the stage for Democrat Bob Casey to take the senate seat Santorum held since 1995. Some even actively worked against him.
And it was all because Santorum endorsed incumbent Arlen Specter over insurgent Pat Toomey in the 2004 GOP senate primary. Yes, children Arlen Specter was a Republican in those days.
Santorum has now revealed to Specter’s consternation that the endorsement was contingent on Arlen supporting President Bush’s judicial nominees.
Could this be something Santorum is making up? Well, Specter unequivocally supported Bush’s judicial nominees, a thing that is biting him in his butt now that he has switched parties.
Congressman Joe “The Red Admiral” Sestak has crept to within two points of the party — that’s Democrat Party — endorsed Specter in the latest Rasmussen poll to be the Dem’s senate nominee this November.
With 10 percent undecided, I think I’d actually put money on The Red Admiral in the May 18 primary.
