The World Around You

My wife and I had a Kevin Smith weekend last weekend, watching Chasing Amy, Mallrats and Dogma. I’m a huge Smith fan and was thrilled to find out he will be making a follow-up to Clerks, entitled “The Passion of the Clerks”.

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I’m proud of the stance the Mobile Register takes today regarding form letters to the editor. The conclusion is especially well said,

We treasure letters from our readers who take the time to put their own thoughts on paper or e-mail and attach their names to them. Letter writers give vitality and perspective to opinion pages and play an important role in any newspaper.

But since some of you evidently missed the grade-school lesson about copying, we want to be clear about how we view copycats.

When you submit for publication a letter you did not write, you are cheating. Further, you are trying to take valuable newspaper space from readers who think for themselves and have something original to say.

Can I get an Amen?

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Mary Orndorff has a good piece this morning on the Alabma delegation’s thoughts on the protests during the Republican National Convention.I was impressed with one young Republican’s reaction to the protesters in NYC

Delegate Billy McFarland Jr. of Tuscaloosa applauded the protests as a sign of a healthy democracy.

“It’s good they’re here. They have every right to say what they believe,” said McFarland, who is president of the Young Republicans in Tuscaloosa. “They care enough about America to voice their concerns.”

It gives me hope for the future. Of course, we need hope, because right now we have leaders like State Rep. Gerald Allen.

“It would have been wonderful to see 250,000 protesters showing their support for our country and our president in this time of war,” Allen said. “For them to get ugly and disrespectful, I have no regard for them.”

First Gerald, if they were showing their support it wouldn’t be a PROTEST. Second, I’m sorry if you have no regard for a quarter of a million Americans who believe strongly enough in something to take to the streets and exercise their constitutional right to assemble. Gerald also didn’t seem to have gotten the memo from the President that he doesn’t believe we can win the war on terror, so if we cannot assemble peaceably in a time of war it appears that Allen believes we should never assemble again. Wouldn’t that be convenient for him?

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Alabama once again got some attention from the national press. NPR covered the Jefferson County Sheriff Mike Hale’s “cell phone posse” on Morning Edition today. You might remember I mentioned this story earlier, wondering when the national press might pick up on it.

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It appears that there will be very strict security regarding signs at the RNC. However, I do wish one state representative had been able to see his idea to fruition,

Each member of the state delegation received a red, white and blue sign proclaiming “Alabama is Bush Cheney ‘04 Country,” though security measures prevent the delegates from taking them inside Madison Square Garden.

Still, the signs were a hit, and made it easier to spot buses hired to carry the group from event to event.

State Rep. Greg Albritton, a delegate from Excel, said “I wanted to make my own that said ‘Redneck Republicans.’”

That’s exactly the image I want to see on national television. An entire delegation of Alabama Republicans waving their signs proudly declaring themselves to be rednecks. I would have laughed for days.

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Those on the other side of the equation should think long and hard about why the Alabama Republican delegation is so satisfied with their “position in the party”, as one delegate says.

Specifically, the platform is solidly anti-abortion, which goes a long way toward quieting dissent from the Alabama delegation. The strong opposition to gay marriage also scores points within the group.

However, this year’s sticking point for Alabama could have been the Ten Commandments. Despite some delegates who wanted the party to officially endorse the idea of protecting government displays of the commandments against legal challenge, the issue never even got to the table. Instead, Waggoner’s amendment regarding the power of federal judges gives examples of when that power has been misused, such as prohibiting the display of the commandments on government property.

“My best guess is there was probably an effort made not to have anything controversial,” said Alabama delegate Terry Butts from Crenshaw County.

It’s nice to know that there is no controversy in the Republican party on gay marriage and abortion. Especially considering the number of speakers at the convention who are pro-choice.

To me, it really refutes the image the Republicans are trying to portray to have the platform worded in the way it is and then say they have a “big tent”. Of course, the Democrats try to put a moderate face on their party as well, but at least the platform reflects this desire rather than directly refuting it.

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The Examiners of Public Accounts found some disturbing things going on within the prison system in a recent audit.

The Examiners of Public Accounts released separately an audit of the Department of Corrections and a special audit of the department’s Decatur work-release facility. The audits flagged problems with work-release operations in Decatur, Birmingham and Loxley.

The audit of the Decatur facility specifically criticized an old policy that allowed Department of Corrections employees and their relatives to hire work-release inmates. The audit found that the majority of inmates were not paid promptly, some were not paid at all and inmates were sometimes checked out for days at a time without a job to do.

The department ended the policy last year because of the potential for abuse and security problems, spokesman Brian Corbett said.

Corbett said two employees still owe inmates money for work, and the department is trying to correct that. One owes $1,500, and the other owes $700, he said. One employee is paying on an installment plan. The other is serving overseas in the military.

One of the audits noted that work-release inmates were charged $3 co-pays for inmate-initiated use of medical services, $5 for round trips to work and $25 for drug tests if they failed.

“It appears that the Department of Corrections does not have specific legal authority to charge these fees,” auditors wrote. The report recommends that in the future, the department charge inmates only fees authorized by law.

It appears that many of the issues raised have already been addressed, but I would hope they have gone further and determined what allowed the violations to occur in the first place.

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Governor Riley announced his support yesterday for a doubling of the number of state troopers. The Governor and Department of Public Safety Director Mike Coppage also announced an effort to crack down on speeders on Alabama’s roads today.

Riley said Alabama has the “dubious distinction” of speed being the cause for 40 percent of highway fatalities. The national average is 31 percent. The Mississippi average is 26 percent and Georgia’s is 20 percent.

In the crackdown that begins today, certain interstates and highways will be targeted for patrol. They include I-20/59 from Birmingham to Mississippi, I-459 and I-65. Portable speed detectors will be placed along the roads and message boards will warn motorists in Birmingham and Mobile, said DOT Director Joe McInnes.

Roads targeted for patrol were selected after studying highway fatality statistics from the Alabama Department of Transportation.

“There will be no speed traps,” Riley said. “This is not about increasing a town’s revenue. This is a coordinated effort to slow people down.”

So, you should definitely think twice about speeding on the interstates today.

UPDATE: Lawmen stopped 75 speeders and issued 105 citations in the crackdown yesterday.

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Roy Moore announced plans today to release a book entitled, “So Help Me God” next year.

“It is time that the American people awake to the true meaning of separation of church and state and our unique relationship to God as a nation,” Moore said in a statement.

Finally, something on which we can all agree. Yet, somehow I don’t think Roy is the one to explain this particular item to the public at-large.

UPDATE: Mac is encouraging us to starve Roy Moore.

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Our fine Governor is a wonderful man who is trying to do the right thing, but his speech yesterday demonstrated a lack of knowledge of our US Supreme Court.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley told a Republican breakfast that President Bush’s re-election will change the U.S. Supreme Court, described by the governor as “very liberal.”

Riley joined GOP activists Saturday in Florence for a breakfast held by a group called the Shoals Concerned Conservatives. About 350 people attended, the TimesDaily reported Sunday.

Riley said because the next president could appoint up to three Supreme Court justices, the coming years could be a turning point for the Republican Party if Bush is re-elected.

“This is the greatest opportunity we will have to return to the value set that makes us unique in the world,” Riley said.

I’d love to see Governor Riley call Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and William Rehnquist “liberal”.

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This story helps show the value of ratings of legislators. You can rate a legislator according to any scale you choose, and that’s exactly what this man did.

Retired engineer J. Elbert Peters is pushing for government accountability in his own way: He’s grading state legislators.

On Aug. 15, the 71-year-old Huntsville resident released his scores for all 140 state legislators based on votes they took on various bills of his choosing.

Auburn University Montgomery political science professor Bradley Moody recommends you take Peters’ report — and reports like his — with “not just a grain of salt but several grains of salt.”

The report card reflects the preferences of one individual: its author.

Peters said, “It’s hard to be completely fair, but I was as fair as I could be.” He says he’s anti-tax and a “social conservative.”

The bills he chose for his list included legislation allowing the display of “In God We Trust” in schools, a bill to increase tobacco taxes and the two major budgets for education and running the government.

According to Peters, the correct vote on both budgets and tobacco taxes was “no,” and the In God We Trust bill’s correct vote was “yes.”

Peters rated 30 votes in each chamber for the 2004 session, a session in which 2,159 measures were introduced in the House, 1,221 in the Senate.

Moody said that ratings based on such a small sample are “oftentimes very unfair to a legislator.”

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I told you earlier in the week about Sheriff Mike Hale’s Posse in Jefferson County. Well, one of the instructions given to the cell phone posse was to report any dog barking, because “dogs bark for a reason”. Yeah, dogs bark for all kinds of reasons and I’m not sure we need even more law enforcement reporting to false alarms based on these kinds of things. I’m not saying you should never report a dog barking, but I hope the instructions included incessant barking.

I also have a concern that this cell phone posse will become the paranoid posse,

When a person starts to enter a convenience store where he frequently shops and the normally friendly clerk won’t speak, the person should step back out, go to a safe distance and watch to see if anything unusual is going on that made the clerk reluctant to speak.

A person loitering around an ATM machine late at night and strangers taking items out of a house in your neighborhood should also be reported.

Hallmark said lawmen would rather have help deterring crime than have to investigate a crime.

“If it prevents a crime, we have both done our jobs,”

Terrorism-fighting tips included being suspicious of packages arriving with excessive postage, no return address or suspicious stains on the outside. Envelopes or packages left on the front steps with no cancellation marks also should also be considered suspicious and reported.

I hope the media continues to follow this story, whatever the outcome of their efforts.

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Ted at Crooked Timber has a brilliant analysis of the White House press conference yesterday based on a question posed by Atrios.

McClellan also says “the President thought he got rid of all of this unregulated soft money activity when he signed the bipartisan campaign finance reforms into law.” Incredibly, he seems to be making the argument that Bush doesn’t understand the laws he signs. Even I know that campaign finance reform did nothing of the sort.

But let’s take McClellan seriously for a second. Are we supposed to believe that Bush thought he was signing away the right of Americans to engage in “unregulated soft money activity”? I mean, we Timberites pay money for our bandwidth. We engage in political speech. And we’re completely unregulated.

Did Bush think that he was outlawing this?

This statement from McClellan deserves further reporting and analysis.

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Now that no one remembers this story, the military releases their report. A refresher for everyone,

A US general who provoked outcry by describing the “war on terror” as a Christian campaign against Satan broke Pentagon rules, an inquiry has found.

Top-ranking intelligence officer Lt Gen William Boykin made the remarks at several church gatherings last year.

The Pentagon report has yet to be officially released but leaked copies of it have been seen by the media.

It says Lt Gen Boykin violated rules by failing to show he was speaking in a personal, rather an official, capacity.

The deputy undersecretary of defence for intelligence generally wore his military uniform when he addressed the evangelical church audiences.

And how about this for a tidbit at the end of the story.

The probe says Lt Gen Boykin did not seek adequate clearance before making his remarks.

But it advises the army to bear in mind that he asked military lawyers about his speeches beforehand and was not advised against making them, according to the Associated Press news agency.

He is being censured for things he cleared with the top brass in the first place! Unlucky for him I guess.

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The Mobile Register does an admirable job this morning of laying out the bungled mess that the release of test scores was this year by the State Department of Education. The schools should not have been surprised, but the public certainly had a less than full knowledge of how the new procedure would work.

To be fair to the State Department of Education and in way of explanation to the public, welcome to the world of No Child Left Behind. This bungled mess is precisely what has resulted from this well-intentioned, but seriously misguided law. The requirements and deadlines of the law, deadlines which the state still did not meet, have resulted in a mess in a whole lot of areas. Teachers are confused, administrators are confused, state level administrators are rushed and confused, federal level administrators are not offering much help either. I deal with this law every day and I tell you, it is a mess and now the public is getting to see it too.

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If I were Mayor Bobby Bright, I would be extremely upset after learning this morning that a large cash cow for the city, the Buckmasters Expo will be leaving the city next year, maybe for good. It appears that the city did not even have an opportunity to compete. North Carolina had two cities that made pitches and the event will be moved to Greensboro, NC next year. I have never attended, nor would I ever attend, but it is a big event for the city to lose and it’s disappointing that Montgomery was not even given a chance to compete.

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US Representative Artur Davis and Montgomery City Councilwoman Janet May appear to be on the outs.

U.S. Rep. Artur Davis is urging Montgomery law enforcement authorities to prosecute City Councilwoman Janet May for theft in the latest turn of a bizarre legal fight concerning a campaign debt.

May accused the lawmaker of failing to pay $4,000 in consulting fees for work she did for his 2000 campaign, which he lost in a primary to former Democratic Rep. Earl Hilliard. May sued Davis in small claims court in 2000 and won. As a result, Davis’ checking account was garnished — meaning the court ordered money taken from his account.

Davis, D-Birmingham, then used a provision of the law that let him pay twice the amount of the judgment plus court costs to remove the garnishment and reopen the case. A certified check made out to May’s consulting company for $8,559.44 was issued from Davis’ campaign account to be held in circuit court.

May said the circuit court told her to pick up Davis’ check last fall and she was unaware that she had done anything wrong.

“I thought (the lawsuit) was over when I got the check,” May said. “I don’t want anything that doesn’t belong to me.”

But Davis says the case wasn’t over and urged Montgomery County District Attorney Ellen Brooks to prosecute May for theft because she deposited the check.

The whole thing sounds really fishy to me. It sounds like a clerical error on the part of Montgomery Circuit Court for turning over the check. How would May have even known the check was there if her version of events were not true? If the court called her to pick-up the check and she did, was she in the wrong?

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The story of Leroy Richardson is deeply disturbing. He took kids who may have been in trouble, but were not convicted or arrested for any crime and put them in chains and locked them in cells ata a DYS facility. He also had a co-conspirator with the Birmingham City Schools,

Christie Lyons-Odukwe, a Birmingham City Schools social worker who referred some children to the program, testified at Richardson’s hearing. “She said she was aware of the use of shackles on the `free world juveniles’ as well as being locked behind the fence, and she didn’t see any harm since the `free world juveniles’ were locked in a cell,” according to a summary of hearing testimony.

Kenneth Wasmund, chief operating officer for Birmingham schools, said that until Thursday, he was unaware the Birmingham children had been shackled and locked in a DYS facility. But he said he planned to inform Superintendent Wayman Shiver and begin an investigation.

Richardson told the personnel board that Lyons-Odukwe “recruited” school children for the “Scared Straight” program.

But in her testimony, she told the board she and Richardson decided to do it together. She previously worked at DHR and at DYS’s Chalkville campus for girls.

Leroy also committed an untold number of violations of the Ethical Rules of Psychologists. What happened to these kids was wrong, especially in light of the evidence of the ineffectiveness of so-called “Scared Straight” programs. This should not have happened and I hope that additional charges are forthcoming.

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If you haven’t seen this movie yet you should definitely check it out.

They also have the Exorcist, Titanic and Alien at the 30-second Bunnies Theatre.

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Indiana Governor Joe Kernan, who is running for re-election, said yesterday that he supports the Colts staying in Indy, but that there is little the state can do to help.

Kernan said he hoped the team and the city of Indianapolis are able to reach common ground on a new lease agreement for the RCA Dome. Owner Jim Irsay said several months ago he would like a new agreement in place by the end of this year.

“I don’t want to see the Colts move. I hope they stay in Indianapolis,” Kernan said. “I know the mayor (Bart Peterson) is working very hard in order to make that happen.”

Asked what role the state should play in the process, Kernan replied, “We’ve not been asked to be a part of any of the discussions and certainly (with the state’s) financial circumstances, we’ve got our own challenges.”

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At least one of the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” may not be so truthful. According to the Washington Post today.

In newspaper interviews and a best-selling book, Larry Thurlow, who commanded a Navy Swift boat alongside Kerry in Vietnam, has strongly disputed Kerry’s claim that the Massachusetts Democrat’s boat came under fire during a mission in Viet Cong-controlled territory on March 13, 1969. Kerry won a Bronze Star for his actions that day.

But Thurlow’s military records, portions of which were released yesterday to The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act, contain several references to “enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire” directed at “all units” of the five-boat flotilla. Thurlow won his own Bronze Star that day, and the citation praises him for providing assistance to a damaged Swift boat “despite enemy bullets flying about him.”

This documentation proves the man is a liar. Either he lied to get his own bronze star, or he’s lying to smear John Kerry.

So when does he issue an apology? I hope it is soon, for the sake of his own credibility, which is now non-existent.

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RSA boss David Bronner continues to put the pressure on the union employees of US Airways. He says in this morning’s Birmingham News,

“The unions can save it if they want to,” said Bronner, chief executive of the Retirement Systems of Alabama, the airline’s largest shareholder, whose $240 million investment last year rescued the carrier from bankruptcy. “But if I wanted to put more money into this industry, I’d buy the planes and start over.”

US Airways, the country’s seventh-largest carrier, has a 50-50 chance of avoiding another bankruptcy, Bronner said. A filing would erase the investment the RSA made in hopes of rehabilitating the airline and turning it into an economic magnet that would attract aerospace manufacturing and repair companies to the state.

He is trying to bring this investment back from the brink of failure. We shall see if the desperation tactics work or not.

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Jefferson County Sherriff Mike Hale thinks he has come up with a brilliant scheme to combat terrorism in his jurisdiction.

Sheriff’s officials on Saturday will teach the first “Sheriff’s Phone Posse” class. Deputies will instruct residents how to recognize criminal activity and identify terror threats.

“It’s like a high-tech neighborhood watch,” sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Randy Christian said. “We’ll basically teach them what we teach our officers.”

Christian said deputies will teach the volunteers to be more observant when it comes to signs of crime. For example, he said, they may not recognize that a knocked-out left rear window could be the sign of a stolen car.

The program is similar, he said, to federal authorities training truck drivers as lookouts.

“We want to give them the confidence of knowing that we really do want their information,” Christian said. “The truth is, we do want to hear about it and be able to check it out for ourselves.”

So, the next time you’re in Jefferson County and someone is eyeing you and talking on their cell phone, they may just be reporting your activity to the authorities as “suspicious”.

By the way if you aren’t familiar with the federal grant program training truckers to be lookouts, it’s called Highway Watch. I am certain it has been highly successful in thwarting terrorism.

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The Montgomery City Council voted last night to enact two sales tax holidays in Montgomery. My initial reaction when this idea was proposed was that it was purely good PR by the council and the Mayor and they certainly are putting a shiny face on it.

“We’re moving forward on this issue,” Cook said afterward. “All that is left before us is to just go out and spend some money and buy some things.”

Cook, though he refrained from involvement in setting specific tax-relief dates, was pleased about having one before the Fourth of July.

“Not only will it be Independence Day for us, our nation, it also will be independence day from taxes for the city of Montgomery,” he said.

Councilman Tim Head afterward said, “The people of Montgomery are going to be very excited to finally be able to get some tax relief.”

Mayor Bobby Bright afterward said that losses of revenue from the tax breaks would cost $250,000 per day. But he said the city can afford its share of the sales tax breaks.

“It’s one of those issues that no one opposes, quite frankly,” he said.

No Bobby, it’s one of those issues that no one has the guts to oppose. I don’t fault them for covering their butts on this one, but it is not real tax relief and it is not sound policy. All you’ve done is create a situation where the retail establishments will be madhouses on the day in question and ghost towns in the days before and after. People are going to put off big ticket purchases until that day and citizens from all over the region will come to Montgomery to buy on that day. What is yet to be seen is whether the sales tax collections for the year will go up or down. Will the amount of additional money spent make up for the lost revenue. It probably won’t and the Mayor will be telling us how we don’t have the funds to do this or that.

Oh wait, he was doing that last night. At the same time he was standing behind the tax holiday, he was bemoaning the fact that he would not be able to provide the resources to the schools to continue an extremely successful reading program. What is wrong with this picture? The city doesn’t have the money for this program, yet we’re going to give up at least $500,000 in tax revenue for some good PR. It’s just a little disconcerting to me.

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