Mid-Del school dilemma
To close or not to close. That’s the question in eastern Oklahoma County, where school officials in the Midwest City-Del City district are considering whether to some schools to save money, address safety concerns and enrollment declines. A task force of community members and school district staff offered up eight scenarios for the school board to consider. They range from doing nothing to closing two elementary schools and a middle school. At a town hall meeting last week, no speakers supported closing schools. Imagine that. School board members have many interests to consider in deciding if and how to act. Oklahoma City’s decision to close some schools as part of MAPS for Kids wasn’t exactly popular. But what’s popular and what’s right isn’t always the same thing.
Read the proposed scenarios here.
Stevens verdict increases GOP woe
Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’ conviction Monday on corruption charges almost certainly ends his nearly 40 years in the U.S. Senate and further fuels Democratic hopes of reaching a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority there. Stevens, 84, wanted a quick trial on charges he lied about free home renovations performed by an oil contractor. He hoped to beat the rap with enough time before Election Day to defend a Senate seat he has held since December 1968. That was dashed by the jury’s verdict. Even before the conviction Stevens was only even with Democratic challenger Mark Begich. His new status as convict means Alaska’s seat is all but in the bag for Democrats looking to increase their Senate majority. Stevens made a career of bringing federal dollars to Alaska. But he was widely seen as increasingly arrogant and one who had stayed in Washington too long. With Alaska likely gone and GOP incumbents in Minnesota, North Carolina and possibly Georgia in tough races, Democrats have a reasonable shot at reaching a 60-vote majority that would let them pass bills without worrying about Republicans using Senate rules to block work on objectionable legislation. What already was a strong Democratic year got stronger.
Radical, defined
The latest buzz on the campaign trail involves Barack Obama’s comments during a 2001 radio interview about advancing redistributionist policies legislatively or through the courts. Related to that, at one point Obama observed the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren “wasn’t that radical.” Depends on your point of view. Conservatives recall the Warren Court for expanding rights for suspected criminals and kicking prayer out of the public schools — fairly controversial at the time, even radical.
The rest of the story
An Associated Press dispatch over the weekend brought forth the news that the Anchorage Daily News, Gov. Sarah Palin’s hometown newspaper (or pretty close to it) endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president. One implication to be drawn is that, omigosh, the McCain-Palin ticket can’t win the endorsement of the largest newspaper in Alaska, the state Palin governs. The paper’s editorial noted Palin’s impact as John McCain’s running mate, “but it does not overwhelm all other judgment” — that McCain is the “wrong choice for president.” The rest of the story, either omitted by AP or trimmed from the version published in USA Today, is that the Daily News endorsed Democrat John Kerry four years ago — making the newspaper a liberal island in sea of conservatism that basically adores Palin. Nice to know.
Addition by subtraction
No shock here: Former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan has endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president. Earlier in the year McClellan published a tell-all book about his stint as President Bush’s spokesman that surprised many who worked with him — raising concerns McClellan didn’t bring up while employed at the White House. Part of the McClellan back story is that he was nudged aside as press secretary when the White House became concerned about his effectiveness in his job. McClellan’s nod to Obama prompted syndicated columnist Mona Charen to observe on National Review Online’s “the corner” blog that the life-long Republican’s defection to the Democrats has “simultaneously raised the mean IQ of both parties.”
The weight of coverage
The old saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.” A few months back John McCain complained he wasn’t getting as much news coverage as Barack Obama. The good news for McCain: Since the two party conventions, the amount of McCain coverage is about the same as coverage of Obama. The bad news: Most of it has been negative. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism studied the six weeks after the conventions and through the final presidential debate. It found unfavorable stories about McCain outnumbered favorable ones by more than 3-1. Obama fared better. The center found coverage of the Democrat was 36 percent positive, 35 percent neutral or mixed and 29 percent negative. Meanwhile, McCain was hammered, with almost six in 10 stories decidedly negative. Just 14 percent were positive. Hard to argue that kind of tone disparity isn’t a factor in the overall race.
Man no stranger to DUI charges
Eight strikes and you’re still not out. At least that’s the case for Jeff W. Laughlin of Lexington, who in the past 22 years has had eight felony convictions for driving under the influence and yet remains a free man. Laughlin’s luck may be running out. He now faces two more DUI charges in Cleveland County, where Assistant District Attorney Greg Mashburn says, “I would think that prison would be the only option for this defendant.” Laughlin’s attorney says his client spent some time in prison years ago and has gone through rehab. Laughlin, 46, told The Oklahoman’s Nolan Clay that he’s not a drunk anymore. “Just for the record, there won’t be any drinking and driving, or taking any kind of drugs and driving, or taking any drugs whatsoever. That’s a thing of the past for me,” he said. Laughlin spoke one day after appearing in court on the latest DUI charge, stemming from a rollover accident last week in which the Highway Patrol found pills and an open can of beer in the van. Prosecutor Mashburn said DUI is the only crime that can result in multiple convictions but no time behind bars. “It may strike the public as odd,” he said. He’s right about that.
Palin-Fey: Comic twins
Sarah Palin got her “Saturday Night Live” shot last weekend, helping boost the show’s ratings to a 14-year high with some 17 million Americans watching. The Republican vice presidential nominee was part of two smart skits with the SNL crew, head-bopping and shoulder-shimmying during an uproarious rap performance by cast regular Amy Poehler. The second actually had Palin and actress Tina Fey, who has portrayed Palin in previous weeks, brush by each other ever so briefly. Palin said the cast was kind to her and that she had a good time. Asked by People magazine about Fey’s depiction of her as a bubble-headed former beauty queen, Palin said it was OK. “That’s funny, I play her bubble-headed, too, when I imitate her.” Touche.
Prison cell phones a problem
The head of South Carolina’s prison system, Jon Ozmint, wants to be able to jam cell phone signals so inmates who get their hands on such phones can’t use them. Seems simple enough, but it isn’t. The Associated Press reports that the federal Communications Act prevents states from interfering with federal airwaves. The FCC can give federal agencies the OK to do so, but not state and local authorities.”It’s just hypocrisy beyond the pale of reason that the big, bad federal government goes, ‘Oh, well, we can use this technology, but your poor little states can’t use the same technology to protect your citizens,” Ozmint told AP.
He blames use of contraband cell phones for most of the state’s prison escapes. In a high-profile case in Maryland, a Baltimore man who identified a shooting suspect was gunned down after the man he fingered used a cell phone from prison to order the hit.
Here in Oklahoma, prison spokesman Jerry Massie says cell phones are found frequently behind bars. The Department of Corrections has unsuccessfully sought legislation in recent years to make it a felony to smuggle or possess cell phones in prison. The agency is trying to contract for training dogs to detect the phones, Massie says.
The AP interviewed critics of Ozmint’s proposal who said you can’t contain jamming technology to just a few buildings, or that jamming might affect internal radio communications. Others say jammers could easily be angled in a way that allows someone standing outside to make a call, if needed.
Ozmint’s frustration is obvious. “As long as you have human beings in prison as inmates and employees, and as long as there are human beings on the outside of those prisons, you’re going to have contraband in prison,” he said. “This is a threat that can be absolutely eliminated.”
Nebraska’s about-face
It didn’t take long for Nebraska lawmakers to realize the huge mistake they made with their safe-haven law. Intended to protect unwanted children, the broadly written law wound up providing an out for parents – some from other states – who didn’t want to deal with unruly or high-maintenance kids. Some as old as 17 wound up being dumped at Nebraska hospitals. One widowed father of 10, overwhelmed and out of work, left nine of his children at one Omaha hospital. Now that state’s governor and legislators have agreed to rewrite the law so it applies to infants up to 3 days old. The statute has had “serious, unintended consequences” and “needs to be changed to focus on infants,” Gov. Dave Heineman said. No kidding. It’s hard to believe the powers that be didn’t see this coming when they wrote the original bill. Heineman doesn’t want to call a special session to fix it, but says he could change his mind if the out-of-state dropoffs continue. Read more about the law here.
