Opinion

Sharp Sticks

UPDATE: Big chill

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
07/02/09 12:05 AM

Last Friday, the House passed onerous cap-and-trade legislation to halt man-made global warming which a majority of House members apparently still believe will devastate the planet. The very next day, the London Telegraph reported that Canadian polar bear expert Dr. Mitchell Taylor was barred from a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialty Group in Copenhagen because his views on global warming are "extremely unhelpful." The real reason Dr. Taylor was told to stay home was his signing of "the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG". Dr. Taylor also says polar bears are actually doing just fine and, contrary to Al Gore, are not on the verge of extinction. But what does he know? He's only studied the critters for 30 years. It's not like he won a Nobel Prize or anything. "Meanwhile, the average temperature [of the Arctic] at midsummer is still below zero," the Telegraph reports, "the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping." Brrrrrrr. Here's the...

Card check is ‘stuck’ in legislative limbo

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
06/25/09 2:31 PM

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is in legislative limbo and that’s just fine with him, Rep. John Kline, R-MN, senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, told reporters during a media conference call today. There are more than enough co-sponsors of EFCA to pass it in the House, but many House Democrats who signed on to the bill don’t really want to vote for it, so they are waiting for the Senate to do something first. And since the bill’s backers don’t have 60 votes in the Senate, the Democratic leadership won’t bring it to the floor there either. “Democrats know this [legislation] is very unpopular with voters,” Kline said. “It’s stuck right now...and I’m happy to see it stuck,” he said, warning that “this certainly doesn’t mean it’s over.” Just a handful of Senate Democrats – including Diane Feinstein, D-CA, Blanche Lincoln, D-AR, Arlen Specter, D-PA, and Jim Webb, D-VA – are all that’s standing in the way, and they may be looking for a small change in the language as an excuse to get on board. "But there really isn’t a compromise position,” Kline said, and opponents of EFCA “should be very careful not to offer such a compromise.” However, legislative limbo is a far cry from what even Kline himself predicted last...

UPDATE: TSA responds to "Majority of TSA members at BWI, Dulles fail recertifiction tests," June 24

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
06/26/09 12:05 AM

TSA Statement: At TSA, our people are our highest priority. TSA will continue to work with unions to educate them on our standards and look forward to an exchange of information in the best interests of our employees. The union statements and figures recently released are inaccurate and we will work with them to correct false information. During the PASS 2009 performance period, TSA transitioned away from contractors conducting assessments to TSA employees conducting them. This was in direct response to a recommendation made by TSA’s employee advisory board, the National Advisory Council, last year. The assessments are now being conducted by people who know the screening procedures the best. All evaluators completed a rigorous training course in which they learned how to objectively and consistently evaluate an officer’s performance. The evaluators have been given the necessary tools to ensure fair and consistent evaluations are being conducted at all airports nationwide. The purpose of these evaluations is to ensure that officers have the necessary skills to protect the traveling public. We continue to implement new and innovative ways to train, test and motivate our workforce to perform at a high level. Under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA) of 2001, TSA is required to conduct an annual proficiency review of security officers to...

UPDATE: Is FAA blackballing veterans?

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
06/25/09 12:05 AM

Email from a retired USAir captain and former Air Force officer: “I applied several times to work for the FAA for various positions that I qualified for but I was turned down for various reasons. “There was a law that was concocted many years ago that stated if you were over the military rank of Major and or Lt Commander you would not be allowed to use your Veteran’s disability Preference points for job consideration. The DOT, OPM and DOL conveniently left off the last paragraph stating that if you were a retired Reservist this rule did not apply.... With the aid of two DOL vets...we were able to find out that the OPM/DOL were intentionally keeping me from being considered for ANY US Government positions that I applied for - and I mean any!! “The story even gets better. I applied for various FAA air carrier inspector positions...at various bases and was turned down... The former Adjutant General of the National Guard warned me that I needed to apply months in advance for any FAA position in this area... the FAA Administrator would not even hire him and that he had to get a job at [another state] office instead. “...I personally know that the FAA office is run by incompetent inspectors who are extremely weak Civil Service employees that have no clue what they are doing. Personally I think that my military and airline resume should have put...

Majority of TSA workers at BWI, Dulles fail recertification test

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
06/24/09 12:05 AM

Half of the Transportation Security Administration workers at BWI and an eye-popping 80 percent at Dulles International have failed mandatory tests that certify them to screen passengers, the agency reported. And while less than half of the TSA screeners at BWI flunked the baggage section of the test, a whopping 90 percent didn’t make the grade at Dulles. TSA employees believe that many of them are being intentionally failed on the Practical Skills Evaluation recertification test so that the agency doesn’t have to give them raises and bonuses. A letter send by the American Federation of Government Employees to Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano and House Homeland Security chairman Bennie Thompson calls for a nationwide investigation into test standards and the training of TSA screeners. One screener reportedly failed the body pat-down section of the test in Houston - even though she found all the items that would have triggered a security alarm – but passed after retaking the test and doing the same thing at BWI the next day. "If I failed because they do things differently at other airports, that's not right. Everybody needs to be doing the same thing," she said. Agreed. But the U.S. government has been at war with terrorists for eight years now. Shouldn’t we be far beyond such bureaucratic bungling by...

Update: “FAA is still ignoring the warnings”: Who the Aviation Subcommittee WON’T call to testify

06/16/09 11:56 AM

On Wednesday, June 17 at 10 a.m., the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security chaired by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-MN, will continue its hearing on: “Aviation Safety: The Role and Responsibility of Commercial Air Carriers and Employees.” Here’s who’s on the witness list: - Jim May, president and CEO, Air Transport Association of America;\ - Roger Cohen, president, Regional Airline Association; - Capt. John Prater, president, Airline Pilots Association, International; - Scott Maurer, representative of the Families of Continental Flight 3407. Here’s who’s NOT on the witness list: - Capt. Dan Hanley, who was medically grounded from United Airlines in 2003 after turning in a federally mandated report about pilot fatigue issues – the same issues the heads of both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board now consider to be a major factor in the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in Buffalo - which their agencies have been ignoring for six years. - Captain Newton Dickson, a former Continental pilot with thousands of hours of experience flying B 757s who was medically grounded five years ago for taking over the controls when the automatic system in the plane he was co-piloting malfunctioned and overshot its landing coordinates,...

UPDATE: Doped up foster child in Florida hangs himself. He was seven.

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
06/04/09 12:05 AM

Seven-year-old Gabriel Myers was found hanged in the bathroom of his foster home in Margate, FL. He had been taking Symbyax, an anti-psychotic medication. Here's the link: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20090602/COLUMNIST/906021041/2127?Title=In-another-tragic-death-another-lesson-for-DCF Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon confirmed that the agency had no parental or court permission to put Gabriel on this highly potent psychotropic drug, as the law requires. DCF didn't have any record of the boy's prescription, even though the drug's side effects include "increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents and young adults." Sheldon's subsequent investigation revealed that more than 2,600 foster children in Florida are being doped up - with one in six lacking the legally required consent forms. Children trapped in these state-run "child welfare" programs are being doped up to keep them docile and easy to manage while the adults in charge thumb their noses at the law and cash the checks. This is beyond disgusting. It's criminal....

Steele tries out tougher tone on Obama at the RNC’s state chairmen’s meeting

By: Chris Stirewalt
05/19/09 1:37 PM

Remarks of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele today at National Harbor: Once again, welcome to Maryland. Welcome to Prince George’s County, Maryland. This is my birthplace, the place where I raised my family and the place of my first leadership position in the Republican Party. It was a tough job – and the pay wasn’t very good. Most of my time was spent walking neighborhoods, licking envelopes, and making phone calls for the County Republican Party. You don’t know lonely until you announce: “Hi, I’m from the Prince George’s County Republican Party.” But, I learned a great deal; and it served as a foundation on my journey to becoming County Chairman, State Chairman and the first African American elected statewide. You are in the place where this incredible journey began; a place that is very special to me. Many of you may know this story, so forgive me for re-telling it, but it speaks to who I am and why I am particularly honored that you have chosen me to serve as your chairman. I was born about 20 minutes from here at Andrews Air Force Base and raised in our nation’s capital. I was adopted by my mother and father, a father who suffered from his addictions and his temper and who died when I was 4 years old. So, my mother Maebell raised me on the salary of laundry worker, having earned no more...

UPDATE: Al Gore's strange link to swine flu

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
05/08/09 12:05 AM

Not only does Al Gore stand to profit from a swine flu pandemic www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/SharpSticks/Al-Gores-strange-link-to-swine-flu-44006757.html, It may have been spliced together in a government lab. Acting Centers for Disease Control head Richard Besser says that the number of confirmed cases of swine flu is now up to 896 in 41 states. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.4292ad3a1989e9a21136c0c51cdca897.881&show_article=1&catnum=0 Four years ago, the CDC admitted it recreated the 1918 “Spanish flu” bug. In an Oct. 5, 2005 press release, CDC announced that using reverse genetics, they had “successfully reconstructed the influenza strain responsible for the 1918 pandemic...[and] determined the set of genes in the 1918 virus that made it so harmful.” http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel/r051005.htm And ecactly which flu strain would that be? A (H1N1) – the same one that’s now threatening to become a global pandemic, according to CDC and the World Health Organization. In reconstructing the Spanish flu virus, CDC collaborated with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory. Researchers said at the time that “the probability of the 1918 virus re-emerging from a natural source appears to be remote......

Al Gore’s strange link to swine flu

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
04/30/09 12:05 AM

Is swine flu some sort of genetically modified bioweapon? Before you totally dismiss the idea as some sort of crazy wacko conspiracy theory, consider the following: 1. Three vials of highly dangerous pathogens can’t be accounted for at the nation’s top biodefense lab, and some virus samples recently found there had not been inventoried. Fort Detrick disease samples may be missing --Frederick News Post, April 26, 2009 Fort Detrick is the site of the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, which couldn’t keep tabs on the anthrax that killed five people in 2001. FNP reports that criminal investigators from Fort Meade are “investigating the possibility of missing virus samples.... In February, USAMRIID halted all its research into these and other diseases, known as 'select agents’ following the discovery of virus samples that weren't listed in its inventory,” 2. “The Swine Influenza A/H1N1 viruses characterized in this outbreak have not been previously detected in pigs or humans.The viruses so far characterized have been sensitive to oseltamivir, but resistant to both amantadine and rimantadine." --World Health Organization’s Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response Report, April 24, 2009 3. Outbreaks of the “same [never been seen in nature before] virus” occurred almost simultaneously in...

If the shoe fits: the 'good' Germans

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
04/25/09 12:05 AM

Here’s an excerpt from Future of Freedom Foundation president Jacob G. Hornberger’s unsettling essay entitled: “How Hitler became a dictator” " For their part, the German people quickly accepted the new order of things. Keep in mind that the average non-Jewish German was pretty much unaffected by the new laws and decrees. As long as a German citizen kept his head down, worked hard, took care of his family, sent his children to the public schools and the Hitler Youth organization, and, most important, didn’t involve himself in political dissent against the government, a visit by the Gestapo was very unlikely. Keep in mind also that, while the Nazis established concentration camps in the 1930s, the number of inmates ranged in the thousands. It wouldn’t be until the 1940s that the death camps and the gas chambers that killed millions would be implemented. Describing how the average German adapted to the new order, [William] Shirer [author of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”] writes: “...The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of culture had been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and work had become regimented to a...

UPDATE: $2 million in foster care abuse case

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
04/21/09 12:05 AM

Hat tip to Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, for sending this article about long-time foster parents in Oregon who were paid $90,000 a year tax free - and kept children in cages in a filthy, darkened room they called “the dungeon.” But they won’t be prosecuted and the caseworkers who claimed to have visited the home 39 times won’t lose their jobs, either, even though documentation for the alleged visits somehow got “lost”. In fact, the only people who will be punished are these severely damaged kids, who will require care for the rest of their lives and, of course, Oregon taxpayers. From the SUNDAY OREGONIAN, PORTLAND, OR, April 5, 2009 Foster kids abused despite DHS checks | Twins in a Gresham home were allegedly kept in a bedroom By Aimee Green The Oregon Department of Human Services has agreed to pay $2 million into a fund for the future care of twins who were allegedly abused by their foster parents --the largest such settlement in the agency's history. According to the civil rights suit filed in December 2007 in U.S. District Court, Kaylie and Jordan Collins were kept in makeshift cages --cribs covered with chicken wire secured by duct tape --in a darkened bedroom known as "the dungeon." The brother and sister often went without food, water or human touch,...

The Good Friday Protest

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
04/10/09 10:25 AM

Pro-life leaders and activists will gather at noon today in Lafayette Park – right across the street from the White House - to denounce Notre Dame’s decision to invite President Barack Obama to speak at the university’s May 17 commencement. Similar protests are being held simultaneously in Dallas, Los Angeles, and Fort Wayne. The Notre Dame invitation has sparked a surprisingly strong backlash both on the nominally Catholic campus and off, galvanizing opposition to the Obama administration’s aggressive abortion agenda. In less than three months, Obama has: - Abandoned the Mexico City policy, which forbade non-profits receiving government funding from supporting abortion efforts in other countries; - - Ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to rescind the “conscience clause” that protects medical personnel who refuse to refer or participate in abortions, or dispense abortion-inducing drugs, from legal retaliation; - - Lifted the Bush administration’s ban on embryonic stem cell research, despite a scientific breakthrough that makes such research unnecessary. - - Nominated Dawn Johnsen, a woman who called mothers “fetal containers” in an amicus brief as head of the White House Office of Legal Counsel. Last December, one pro-life leader told me that the Obama...

UPDATE: The continuing foster care fiasco

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
04/06/09 1:04 PM

Do as we say,,,not as we do in the world's largest insane aslymum aka California: From the Sacramento Bee: “Dozens in CPS have criminal records,” March 22 “Drug possession, domestic violence, repeatedly driving drunk, assault with a deadly weapon – any one of these charges or convictions could lead child protective services workers to remove children from a home or force a parent into counseling. “But all of those crimes and many others appear in the backgrounds of employees of Sacramento County's Child Protective Services, a Bee investigation has found....” Link: http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/1719235.html And these lunatics are making life-atlering decisions about children?...

UPDATE: Pitchfork Rebellion: Dulles Rail tax district challenge

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
04/03/09 11:20 AM

A hearing challenging the constitutionality of the Dulles Rail tax district and another Fairfax County transportation tax will be held at 2 p.m. today before Judge Jane Marum Roush in Courtroom 5B of the Fairfax Circuit Court, 4110 Chain Bridge Road, Fairfax. I personally can’t wait to hear how Judge Roush creatively evades and ignores the law again this...

Pitchfork Rebellion: Dulles Rail tax district challenge

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
04/02/09 4:55 PM

Tomorrow, (April 3) General Counsel PC attorney James Markels will appear before Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Jane Marum Roush to challenge the constitutionality of the special tax district created to fund Fairfax County’s share of the Dulles Rail boondoggle. It should be quite a show. Markels will argue that not only does the special tax district violate the Virginia Constitution, but so does Fairfax County’s general transportation tax because both taxes are being imposed on commercial and industrial properties, but not residential property as well. Under the state constitution, all real property must be uniformly taxed except for very specific exceptions spelled out by the General Assembly. Which obviously didn’t happen this time. Besides the constitutional argument, case law in Virginia is clear, Markels told me. If the purpose behind imposing a particular tax benefits everybody - as transportation improvements clearly do - everybody must contribute, not just a particular subset of taxpayers. So requiring businesses, but not homeowners, to chip in for Dulles Rail and other transportation improvements in Fairfax County is unfair, he claims. On behalf of his client, a landowner in Tysons Corner, Markels will ask Judge Roush to order the county to stop collecting both taxes and refund what it’s already collected to taxpayers, including about $110...

UPDATE: The continuing foster care fiasco

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
03/31/09 12:05 AM

After a foster care surge in New York City, guess what happened? Homicides of children known to the system went up 50 percent! Read the details and...

‘In 2008, everybody sucked’

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
03/20/09 12:03 PM

That’s how Media Research Center (mrc.org) president L. Brent Bozell III summed up both candidates, their respective political parties and the “thousands and thousands of putrid nonsense” that passed for media coverage of last year’s presidential election at his group’s 2009 DisHonors Awards dinner held at the Washington Hyatt Thursday night. This was no self-congratulatory repast, but a curmudgeon’s smorgasbord that nourished the soul as well as the body. Four top media darlings – Chris Matthews, Bill Weir, Bill Maher and Ted Turner – were carved up and eaten alive. (Hat tip to Turner for his winning cannibal imagery.) If Bozell deftly kebabed the mainstream media for their “collective man-crush” on Barack Obama (“Including Bush-Cheney-Halliburton in a story about pedophile home-schoolers makes them happy, but when covering the Messiah, they levitate.”) radio talk show host Monica Crowley gleefully barbequed Obama himself, as well as the big-time reporters who cover him, over the hot coals of her derision: On Obama: “This man’s got teleprompters everywhere. It’s a non-stop ‘ich bin ein’ cue card...Messiahs don’t need teleprompters. And when covering national politics, reporters oughtn’t to need kneepads.” On MSNBC’s Chris Matthews:...

UPDATE: More pitchforks

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
03/17/09 12:30 PM

This from Dr. Richard Cordero, whose Judicial Reform Website (http://judicial-discipline-reform.org) deals with many of the issues raised by Virginia’s Pitchfork Rebellion, particularly the almost total unaccountability of federal judges and their immunity from punishment even when they flagrantly violate the rules of judicial conduct: “Will the next meeting of the Judicial Conference of the U.S. on March 17, 2009, at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. deal with the issue of judicial unaccountability and self-exemption from discipline resulting from the judges' concerted circumvention of the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act and its Rules of application? “De facto guaranteed immunity from accountability and discipline for the exercise of judicial power over people's property, liberty, and even lives, as shown by the official statistics on the judges' disposition of complaints against them, has given rise to institutionalized coordinated wrongdoing in the federal judiciary.” According to Dr. Cordero, “Judicial wrongdoing tolerated in one instance gives rise to the mentality of judicial impunity that triggers generalized wrongdoing and weaves relationships among the judges of multilateral interdependency of survival where any subsequent unlawful act is allowed and must...

UPDATE: Instead of GT, how about an M for mediocre?

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
03/16/09 1:59 PM

There’s a controversial pilot program now running in Montgomery County to eliminate the popular gifted and talented program. Today (March 16) there will be a presentation by the MCCPTA Gifted Child Committee at Carver auditorium, 850 Hungerford, Rockville, at 7:30 p.m. Below is a copy of a letter sent by a parents’ group, the Gifted and Talented Association of Montgomery County, to the principals of the two schools running the pilot - Burning Tree Elementary Principal Nancy Erdrich and Georgian Forest Elementary Principal Aara Davis-Jones - as well as Kay Williams, director of MCPS Department of Accelerated and Enriched Instruction, asking a number of pertinent questions. It will be interesting to see how they answer them. Ms. Erdrich, Davis-Jones and Williams: As you know, the global screening and gifted and talented (GT) identification process has assumed an outsized importance in the debate regarding gifted and talented education, as it is currently focused through the revision of Policy IOA. Your schools are seen as tests of the efficacy of GT identification, and of GT instruction generally. Therefore, we look forward to your presentations Monday, March 16, We hope that you will reflect on the pluses and minuses of dispensing with GT identification, and inform us of the gifted and talented programming that continues at your schools...

UPDATE: Over the moon for Cook

03/12/09 10:18 AM

The razor-thin victory of Republican John Cook over Democrat Ilyrong Moon in Fairfax County Chairwoman Sharon Bulova’s old district is giving giddy Republicans renewed hope that they are not obsolete after all. Democrats have heartburn, but Maalox won’t help them now. Bulova personally endorsed Moon, a 10-year School Board member, to be her successor (or more accurately, seat warmer) on the Fairfax County Board as the Braddock District supervisor. The district has been a reliable Democratic stronghold for years (Bulova kept her seat warm for 21 years), so Cook’s win after being outspent five to one by her heir apparent is an embarrassing rebuke of the new chairwoman by her own former constituents. Cook ran an issue-based campaign that focused on the blunders made by the Democratic-controlled board under former chairman Gerry Connolly, including the refusal to enforce zoning laws and the expenditure of “millions and millions of dollars” to purchase public housing units. When asked at a pre-election forum for three specific program areas each candidate would cut from the county budget, now $650 million in the red, Cook immediately listed public housing (which resurrected one of the most disastrous policies of Lyndon Johnson’s failed “Great Society”), outrageous taxpayer subsidies of people earning $90K per year, and the...

Over the moon for Cook

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
03/10/09 12:05 AM

Tuesday's special election in Fairfax County's Braddock District to fill the seat of newly elected Board Chairwoman Sharon Bulova is a contest between Harvard-educated School Board member Ilyrong Moon and King's Park Civic Association president John Cook. Even the WaPo has endorsed Cook, an attorney (GW Law) who has spent the last few years fighting lax zoning enforcement and helping to close numerous illegal boarding houses in his suburban neighborhood made possible by former Chairman Gerry Connolly's refusal to do anything about illegal immigration - with Bulova's silent acquiesence. Now that home values have plummeted, foreclosures are destroying what little equity remains for responsible homeowners who have their life's savings invested in their property. So what has Fairfax County done to help them? Nothing! Worse, the county spent millions of dollars to buy a large apartment complex in Annandale and turned it into a massive public housing project using these same taxpayers' money. Moon was one of the School Board members who decided that spending more than $100 million for an administrative building in Merrifield was a good idea. In a recession. When commercial property values are tanking. When thousands of kids still attend classes in shabby Connellyville trailers. Cook also wants the Police Dept. to start reporting crime stats by neighborhood, eliminate the...

UPDATE: Pitchfork Rebellion: Where are the judge complaints? and Attorney who bucks system jailed in LA

03/05/09 4:29 PM

A member of the Pitchfork Rebellion found this little tidbit in the Virginia Code, which states that the Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission (JIRC) has to keep track of all complaints filed against members of the judiciary and publish them every year: § 17.1-905. Annual report. On or before December 1 of each year, the Commission shall publish a report detailing the activities of the Commission for the prior year. The report shall include the number of complaints filed with the Commission; the number of complaints originating from attorneys, judges, court employees, or the general public; the number of complaints dismissed based on (i) failure to fall within the jurisdiction of the Commission, (ii) failure to state a violation of the Canons of Judicial Conduct, or (iii) failure of the Commission to reach a conclusion that the Canons were breached; the number of complaints for which the Commission concluded that the Canons of Judicial Conduct were breached; and the number of cases from which the staff or any member of the Commission recused himself due to an actual or possible conflict. (1997, cc. 914, 921, § 2.1-37.8:1; 2001, c. 844.) In related news, Richard Fine - a veteran lawyer in California who filed two lawsuits against judges of the Los Angeles Superior Court for receiving "bonuses" from Los Angeles County - has been jailed in...

This says it all: When Obama speaks, markets tumble

02/27/09 12:05 AM

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (www.frc.org) has been keeping a list of the stock market reaction to President Barack Obama's attempts to pull the U.S. economy out of recession. Apparently nobody's drinking the Kool Aid. Bottom line: If he really wants to stimulate the economy, President Obama would stop talking. According to Perkins: "When the President speaks, the market listens... and crumbles." * November 5, 2008 (Wednesday after Election Day): -486 (5.0%) * January 9, 2009 (one day after Obama speaks at George Mason University on "need" for $800 billion stimulus package): -143 (1.6%) * January 20, 2009 (Inauguration Day): -332 (4.0%) * February 10, 2009 (one day after Obama declares that without a stimulus, "an economy that is already in crisis will be faced with a catastrophe"): -382 (4.6%) * February 17, 2009 (market opens for the first time after Congress passes $787 billion stimulus on February 13; Obama signs bill into law, declaring, "The stimulus lets Americans claim destiny."): -298 (3.8%) * February 19, 2009 (one day after Obama announces potential mortgage relief plan): -90 (1.2%) * February 25, 2009 (one day after Obama's first speech to the full Congress): -80...

BREAKING NEWS: Supervisors just say no to Gatehouse

02/23/09 4:35 PM

It took the Fairfax Board of Supervisors about five minutes to drive a stake into the cold marble heart of the Gatehouse II project, rejecting the School Board’s cockamamie decision to spend $130 million (with interest) for another administrative building in Merrifield. Chairman Sharon Bulova said the expense couldn’t be justified, considering the fact that County Executive Anthony Griffin’s proposed $3.3 billion budget contains an almost 4 percent decrease in spending and the county still faces a $650 million shortfall. A School Board press release says FCPS will not pursue the acquisition “at this time” – but repeats the same baloney about how buying a commercial building that is decreasing in value every day will somehow “reduce overhead costs and redirect them to the schools.” “We understand that the volatility of the current economic climate presents very serious challenges to our community and the fiscal uncertainties continue to mount,” said School Board chairman Dan Storck. “However, this was a creative solution that would have significantly reduced our administrative costs and enabled us to serve children better.” Months ago, FairfaxCAPS posted a detailed financial analysis of this outrageous misuse of school funds on its website (www.FairfaxCAPS.org). Storck and FCPS Supt. Jack Dale must...

UPDATE: Finch flap now before VA Supreme Court

02/19/09 11:33 AM

The pitchfork rebellion over the reappointment of Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Gaylord Finch to another eight-year term is not over, despite a thumbs up by the Northern Virginia delegation and an almost certain vote in his favor by the Courts of Justice Committee chaired by Del. Dave Albo, R-Springfield. Liz Haring, a Leesburg mom who is currently appealing Judge Finch’s ruling in her custody case, filed a petition with the Virginia Supreme Court Wednesday, asking the commonwealth’s highest court to stop legislators from proceeding with Finch’s reappointment process. In documents filed with the court, Haring points out that state law requires that “the Supreme Court, or its designee, shall transmit a report of the evaluation in the final year of the term of each justice and judge whose term expires during the next session of the General Assembly to the chairmen of the House and Senate Committees for Courts of Justice.” Haring alleges that Linda Birtley, who heads the Judicial Performance Evaluation office at Virginia Commonwealth University, submitted JPEs for other judges on Aug. 28, 2008 – but curiously not one for Judge Finch. The petition argues that absent Finch’s JPE, which is required by the Virginia Code, Albo and his fellow COJ members have no legal authority to recertify him. Haring also asks that the evaluation done by...

UPDATE: 'Another legal kidnapping in Arlington'

02/12/09 12:04 PM

Here’s an AP story about two Juvenile Court judges in Pennsylvania who have been charged with accepting kickbacks for sending teens to privately-owned juvenile detention facilities: Judges Accused of Jailing Kids for Cash Luzerne County judges Michael T. Conahan, 56, and Mark Ciavarella, 58, are accused of taking payoffs from privately owned juvenile detention facilities in exchange for sending teenagers to these prisons between 2003 and 2006. They have been charged with fraud. Children were locked up for extremely minor offenses such as writing prank notes and lampooning a school vice-principal on a website. Judge Ciavarella was especially harsh - he sentenced 25% of teenagers in his courtroom to detention centers. Statewide, the rate was only 10%. Ciaverella wrote: “I have disgraced my judgeship. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish,” in a letter to colleagues. The judges are expected to plead guilty and be sentenced to...

UPDATE: Real pitchforks in Richmond

02/10/09 4:18 PM

The letter below was delivered to members of the Virginia General Assembly by an ad hoc group that calls itself The Pitchfork Rebellion - which is opposed to the reappointment of two Circuit Court judges. The group stormed down to Richmond today with real pitchforks. To Whom It May Concern: This letter is to convey our serious concerns about the process by which judges are selected in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the condition of our judiciary. We are a group of citizens from across the Commonwealth of Virginia. We have come together to oppose the re-appointment of Judge Finch to the Fairfax County Circuit Court and Judge Hauler to the Chesterfield Country Circuit Court. As dutiful citizens, we have attempted to follow this process as closely as possible as well as actively and meaningfully participate in the process. However, we have been, for the most part, shut out of the process and deliberately silenced. We decry Judge Hauler’s attempt to quell public opposition to his re-appointment by means of a $5.35M lawsuit against his former clerk and his recent written threat to sue his neighbor Brenda Stewart, who has also spoken out publically against him. We are gravely concerned that Judge Finch apparently lied to the Courts of Justice Committee during his second judicial interview on January 10, 2009 when asked about the landmark school re-districting case...

Dear PETA: Welcome to the hood

02/11/09 12:05 AM

Here’s a copy of a letter sent to Dupont residents by the Center for Consumer Freedom: February 9, 2009 To Whom it May Concern: You may not know this yet, but you’re about to get a new neighbor in the Dupont Circle area. Last week the building at 1536 Sixteenth Street, NW was sold to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In a city with as much controversy as Washington, it’s hard to imagine that any new resident could raise the bar. But trust me: This group is different. PETA president and co-founder Ingrid Newkirk describes her group’s goal as “total animal liberation”—the complete abolition of meat, milk, cheese, eggs, honey, zoos, aquariums, circuses, wool, leather, fur, silk, hunting, fishing, and even pet ownership. In a 2003 profile of Newkirk, The New Yorker pointed out that Newkirk has had at least one seeing-eye dog taken away from its blind owner. PETA also opposes all medical research that requires the use of animals, including research aimed at curing AIDS and cancer. PETA’s president is on the record saying: “Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we would be against it.” Given what it stands for, it’s not surprising that PETA represents a vanishingly tiny fringe of American society. Still, it’s not unusual for ordinary people to be unsure about how to act...

UPDATE: A tear-stained face in the other crowd

02/05/09 3:24 PM

This AP story fills in the details about a case I mentioned in my Jan. 28 column about the killing of another infant born alive in a Florida abortion clinic. The mother has filed a lawsuit. Here’s the...

UPDATE: Another pitchfork

02/04/09 4:25 PM

I recently received this email from Arlington resident Mark Young: Thank you for your article regarding the judge imposter called Finch. I know Ron Jagannathan and Wes Smith well, have attended some of their hearings including some before this "judge" - and acted as Wes' court reporter in his federal court case in which he sued most of the judges in Prince William County. These men, like myself, are good, decent, law-abiding citizens who've been raped of our rights before this and numerous other judge imposter/traitors and have spent years living Kafkaesque nightmares pursing justice. The same type kidnapped my three kids in 1989 in Newport News and later continued their evil deeds in Williamsburg. My kids are grown, but only one keeps in touch because the judge imposters in my case refused to act on evidence of brainwashing by their mother. I will continue fighting for justice for myself, my children, and all other victims of the organized criminals in our family courts until I die or we obtain justice. God bless you for believing we are not just venting sour grapes over losing. When fit parents are before a court of law, there's no reason for the parents and their kids not to come out winners. These counterfeit judges intentionally create and perpetuate business for lawyers, psychologists, social workers, etc. This is human trafficking, kidnapping, extortion...

UPDATE: More pitchforks against Judge Finch

02/05/09 12:05 AM

More people are speaking out about the treatment they received at the hands of Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Gaylord Finch, who is up for reappointment by the Virginia General Assembly. The following statement was sent to members of the Virginia Courts of Justice Committee by a former Fairfax County resident who now lives in Chicago: Please vote against Judge Gaylord Finch when you cast your vote. My husband and I lost our infant son to the SARS viral infection in 1975. We were devastated. In November 1983, we lost our five-year-old daughter Rebecca to Judge Gaylord Finch’s judicial tyranny. When a parent's parental rights are terminated, it is the equivalent of the death sentence. It is also the most cruel and unjust punishment to both a parent and a child. When it is done to a parent, it is as good as saying the parent is dead in the eyes of state, even when there is no death certificate issued with our names on it. To the child, it really is cruel. Because the state is creating essentially a "legal" orphan. Judge Finch ignored the recommendation of the child development experts who had evaluated our little girl. Judge Finch violated our due process rights, terminated our parental rights, and allowed the state to put her up for adoption. This was against the law since we were fit parents and it was also contrary to Rebecca’s best interests. The...

Sharp Sticks: Friends of Gerry ...or FOG

02/03/09 12:05 AM

One of freshman Rep. Gerry Connolly’s campaign contributors is Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who lives in Alexandria, according to FEC documents. Connolly’s constituents might be interested in this Jan. 30 story from Investor’s Business Daily, which reports that Awad was caught on tape meeting with members of Hamas in an attempt to disguise payments to the terrorist group as “charitable” contributions: Beware Of CAIR Homeland Security: You'd think the Council on American-Islamic Relations would be savoring the results of an election that favors its agenda. Instead, it'shaving to do major damage control. Over the past several months, the Washington-based pressure group has suffered a series of punishing blows to its reputation as a self-proclaimed "moderate" voice for Muslim-Americans. In the latest setback, a "Dear Colleague" letter sent out to every House member warns lawmakers and their staffs to "think twice" about meeting with CAIR officials. "The FBI has cut ties with them," the letter says. "There are indications" CAIR has links to Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group. The letter, signed by five Republicans, including the head of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus, is attached to an article by a homeland-security news service. It...

UPDATE: Pitchfork rebellion against Judge Finch

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
01/27/09 2:25 PM

According to Virginian Lawyers Weekly: “The Northern Virginia delegation had asked the House and Senate Courts of Justice committees to withhold certification of [Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Gaylord] Finch for reappointment until it can give further consideration to his performance.” Chairman Del. Dave Albo said Tuesday that no vote on Judge Finch’s reappointment is currently scheduled. In Fairfax County’s clubby legal circles, this is pretty astounding news. Most members of the General Assembly are lawyers who don’t want to jeopardize their livelihoods by voting against a judge they might have to appear before in the future. Unless there’s some sort of egregious misconduct involved – or a public outcry – the vast majority of judges are rubber-stamped back onto the bench year after year.

More on Gatehouse

By: Barbara Hollingsworth
01/21/09 10:05 AM

Regarding my Jan. 19 column, “Fairfax School Board’s Gateway drug,” this from an ESOL teacher in Fairfax County: "You should see the Gatehouse 1 building. I was there the other day for a class and it is so luxurious it made my head spin!! It even has this state- of-the-art parking lot that indicates the location of available parking spots. Unbelievable. “Meanwhile, at my school I can't even get a relacement printer cartridge. This coming, of course, after the e-mail from [Supt. Jack] Dale to all employees saying how wonderful we all were to support the no pay raise! Huh?? I guess he forgot to ask anyone I know. “People in the FCPS administration are so, so detached from the realities of the classroom it is pathetic.” And some corrections and clarifications to my column from eagle-eyed Examiner readers: 1. Graham Road Elementary was supposed to be renovated with a 2005 bond referendum that was approved by voters, but the Fairfax County School Board subsequently decided to renovate the Devonshire Center and move the Graham Road kids there instead. This reversal angered many Graham Road parents, who have filed a lawsuit against the School Board. 2. Instead of spending $73 million on extensive renovations to Gatehouse II that include a health spa and an indoor/outdoor cafeteria for Dale and his staff, it will only be $65.8 million....

Pitchfork rebellion against Judge Finch

01/14/09 12:05 AM

A lot of Virginians are coming out of the woodwork and demanding that the General Assembly refuse to reappoint Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Gaylord Finch. The complaints are coming close to critical mass. Virginia and South Carolina are the only two states in which legislators appoint judges. Partisan fighting between the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-controlled state Senate delayed many nominations last session. But Virginia lawmakers also have the power to deny a judge reappointment if he/she fails to live up to expectations. A bill submitted by former delegate and current state attorney general Robert McDonnell created a panel to review judges’ performance of circuit, general district, and juvenile and domestic relations judges. It went into effect for the first time this year. Legislators are supposed to rate judges by their record on the bench instead of just rubber-stamping them for another term. And they’re getting an earful from irate defendants who feel their rights were violated by Judge Finch. One man claims Judge Finch refused to enter a final order in his case – for four years !– leaving him in a legal no-man’s-land. Another reportedly told the FBI that Finch routinely hears criminal cases in which the defense attorney is his golfing buddy and a frequent houseguest. A former Fairfax County resident told members of the...

Sharp Sticks: No more 'dumbing down'

01/13/09 12:05 AM

State Del. David Poisson, D-Loudoun, plans to introduce a bill in Richmond that would require all of Virginia’s school districts to use a uniform 10-point grading system. Why? I usually stick up for parents, but on the subject of grade inflation, I’m with Fairfax School Superintendent Jack Dale, who says he will keep FCPS’ strict(er) grading policy even though many other school systems are moving towards lowering their standards. To earn an “A” in Fairfax County, students have to master 94 percent of the material, compared to 90 percent in some other jurisdictions. The four points determine whether a student’s performance is considered excellent or just very good. It also affects their final grade point average, which colleges take into account during the admissions process. Thousands of parents of FCPS students complained they were at a disadvantage when competing with kids from school systems that hand out more A’s, but a 128-page, $30,000 report found no clear evidence of that. However, since GPAs do affect merit scholarships and entrance into collegiate honors programs, FCPS says it will tack on an extra half-point for taking an honors class, and a full point for taking an AP or IB class onto the student’s GPA. This is only fair, since students in those classes do a lot more work than their peers in regular classes, and...

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