WonderfulPessimist.com

Pravda Minnesota has done it again. This time, they’ve found a way to condone murder if it means making GOP legislators look bad.

I’m speaking, of course, about they way they’ve sneaked editorial opinion into their coverage of a new law proposed by a pair of Republican legislators who are proposing “Emily’s Law,” a measure that would allow children as young as 13 to stand trail as adults, if the charge against them is murder or a similar violent felony.

Although reporter David Chanen didn’t ignore the actual crime that inspired the legislators - the brutal murder of two-year-old Emily Johnson by a 13-year-old boy - Chanen made sure to find quotes from some radical sorts who would like to continue the practice of letting kids who commit murder off with a slap on the wrist, so they can be free to kill again later in life.

Here’s how he slipped it in:

Opponents argue that teens younger than 15 aren’t psychologically mature enough to understand the consequence of their actions and that the adult correctional system isn’t equipped to handle them.

“It is irresponsible public policy to introduce legislation like this,” said Barry Feld, a criminal procedure and juvenile justice professor at the University of Minnesota. “How can you send kids to prison for life who can barely tie their shoes?”

So, forget about the horrible loss suffered by the parents. There’s a chance to make a couple Republican lawmakers look heartless, so forget poor Emily. Let’s just toss mud on the GOP, even if it means condoning murder when those who commit it are kids, also. Heck, if the Strib found how Subway spokesman Jarrod was a conservative, they’d question his weight loss and be calling for a diet trial to ensue.

I wonder if Pravda Minnesota would have argued for such mercy for a teenage Hitler? It frankly wouldn’t surprise me, if there was a way for them to make the GOP look bad in the process.

While Democrats are busy criticizing the war effort and the troop surge that they were calling for a couple months ago - until Bush decided to do it, that is - the US-backed Iraqi forces are busy ignoring all that ruckus and accomplishing things of substance. For example, according to an MSNBC report, “al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Ayyub al-Masri was wounded and his aide, identified as Abu Abdullah al-Majemaai, was killed” in recent action in Iraq.

This comes hot on the heels of news that Moqtada al-Sadr may have fled Iran as word of the upcoming troop surge hit the news wires. But of course, the Democrats insist the troop escalation is doomed to failure, even though the mere threat of it is starting to produce results.

Sounds to me like there are some liberals who might be better off selling Ellijay real estate than making political predictions.

With the exception of U.S. Representative Michelle Bachmann and RINO Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota overwhelmingly voted for bigger, more intrusive government last fall by helping the DFL pretty much run the board. Now, it’s here, so no complaints from the peanut gallery that voted for this, OK?

Minnesota government has been welcomed into your cars now. According to a PioneerPress report, Minnesota is now poised to be a backseat driver to each and every Minnesotan in the following ways:

1) The age for legally-mandated car seats for children is being raised from the rather common-sense mark of age four, to the fairly over-reaching age of eight, regardless of the height and weight of the child in question. The fine: $50 out of your diaper funds, moms and dads!

2) Let’s ignore the folks doing 90 mph on the shoulder of interstates, meth dealers and drunk drivers… and focus on pulling people over ONLY for not wearing their seatbelt. Current law says an officer can only add on a “not wearing seat belt” penalty if a driver is pulled over for another reason. Now, forgetting to buckle up is reason enough to make you late for work. The fine: $25 for each unbuckled person in the car.

3) Don’t bother buying a Bluetooth headset for your Blackberry or your Moto Razr. If the DFL gets their way, even hands-free cell phones will result in a speeding fine being DOUBLED if the driver was using a cell phone during a speeding incident, except for certain emergency calls. Current law only prohibited drivers 18 and under from using a cell phone while driving.

Welcome back to the nanny state! Next up, fines for being too old to suck your thumb, even if you banged it with a hammer moments before! It’s called the Diet Review Act of 2007!

A student who claimed to have seen a 6-3 man dressed in a Batman costume run across school grounds, leap a fence, and disappear into the woods resulted in a 45-minute lockdown of three Cave Creek schools north of Scottsdale, Arizona, earlier this week.

Quicker than you could say, “Holy caped crusader!” cops were at the scene searching for… wait for it… Batman. The gullible administrators who bought the kid’s story defended their over-reaction like so in an Associated Press story:

Nedda Shafir, a spokeswoman for the Cave Creek Unified School District, said putting all the schools on lockdown was a precautionary measure. “We didn’t want to take any chances,” Shafir said. “We just don’t want to put anyone at risk.”

Shafir is clearly not up-to-date on her comic books. Batman, as it turns out, is a good guy. Yet the spokeswoman showed not concern over school staff members like lunch lady Poison Ivy, speech therapist The Penguin, grounds maintenance worker Clayface, AEA union negotiator Harvey “Two-Face” Dent, third-grade art teacher The Riddler, Principal Selina “Catwoman” Kyle or physical education teacher The Scarecrow.

Shafir described these district employees as “model school staff, and fine, upstanding, dues-paying members of the Arizona Education Association as well as the national NEA.

Superintendent The Joker could not be reached for comment on this story, but did issue a press release inviting reporters covering the alleged Batman sighting to “gather around the flag pole” this Tuesday for an event that he promised would have concerned citizens “dying with laughter and leaving with smiles on their faces… forever!”

Sounds like fun. Toss in a Celtic cross and what more could you ask for?

Putting the jokes aside for a second, Wonderful Pessimist wonders if a certain Batman-spotting youth might have been ill-prepared for a test when he made the report of seeing “Batman” run across school grounds.

Shame on the administrator who fell for it.

Confessing hatred of any kind is not an action that creates allies and friends - or at least not the type most civil people would want to hang around. But that didn’t stop former Miami Heat player Tim Hardaway from sticking his foot in his mouth recently.

Shortly following a confession by retired NBA player John Ameachi that he is homosexual, Hardaway sounded off in an interview with a Miami-based CBS affiliate.

“First of all I wouldn’t want him on my team,” Hardaway said in the interview. “Second of all, if he was on my team I would really distance myself from him because I don’t think that’s right and I don’t think he should be in the locker room when we’re in the locker room. Well, you know, I hate gay people. I let it be known I don’t like gay people. I don’t like to be around gay people. I’m homophobic. It shouldn’t be in the world, in the United States, I don’t like it.”

Apparently, being paid millions and traveling the nation during his pro career has done nothing to make Hardaway wiser for the experience. Even if there are certain folks you feel more comfortable around than others, letting that discomfort brew into hatred is stupid. While admitting that hatred might make Hardaway honest, such honesty, in this case, is not a virtue. Perhaps it’s time he stopped being a public figure and went into selling energy pills for a living.

At least Poland recognizes the role Ronald Reagan played in delivering the world from the evils of communism. While liberals in America still shudder at the mere mention of his name, citizens of Katowice, in southwestern Poland, have proposed erecting a statue to the memory of the conservative, anti-communist stalwart, according to Breitbart.com.

The statue of Reagan would replace a statue of Soviet soldiers who drove out the Nazi forces of Germany at the end of World War II, and would rename the city’s Freedome Square to Ronald Reagan Freedom Square.

Contrary to Brietbart.com’s report, Reagan did not serve as US President from 1980 to 1988; considering that US presidents are sworn in and leave office in the January following any election year, his actual term of office was 1981-1989.

City hall spokesman Waldemar Bojarun said the city would consider the issue and that he had enormous respect for Reagan, but that the cost of the change could be prohibitive… and estimated cost equivalent to $168,000 in US dollars.

If the Reagan memorial does not occur in Katowice, there are already separate plans to erect a Reagan memorial in Warsaw, Poland, the country’s capitol. While so many at home are still working hard to besmirch the memory of Reagan, it’s interesting that there are those in Europe who still recognize the important role he played in winning the Cold War between communism and capitalism, totalitarianism and freedom.

While conservatives and liberals battle each other over immigration issues like conducting a DNA test for immigration, gay marriage, and how big a plane Nancy Pelosi should jet around in, one has to wonder where the next big vision for our country will come from, once anti-terrorist George W. Bush leaves office.

NOTE: Image of Ronald Reagan is courtesy and (c) Breitbart.com and AFP.

From Al Gore’s claims that scientists are being “paid by the Bush administration” to deny a human cause to global warming, to the all-too typical charge that any scientist who comes up with contrary evidence is being “paid off by the oil industry,” science has never been more politicized than it has been lately.

However, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman stepped way over the “decency and good taste” line this week when she compared global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers.

I realize that in the ivory tower, free-wheeling world of liberal media elites, no parallel is off limits as long as it serves to further the liberal agenda. But this comparison is a step too far.

Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League should look into this and issue a scolding, at least, if not demand an outright apology. Here’s the direct quote:

“Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.” - Ellen Goodman

That’s hate-speech if ever I’ve read it, and completely insensitive to Holocaust survivors. And yet there are those, like Goodman, who say that the hate speech is coming from global warming skeptics? I think Ellen Goodman should give up writing and sell kids furniture or something, if this is the level to which her demonization of folks who don’t see things her way has sunk.

It’s trendy among some these days to praise Iran for their so-called “intellectual honesty” in “reinvestigating the historical accuracy of the claims and scale of the Holocaust.” Iran’s Holocaust-deniers conference in December of 2006 even drew some oddball Jewish scholars to the conference.

Yet that’s nothing more than a mask to the antisemitic hatred of Holocaust deniers. That was made clear on February 1 at a San Francisco hotel, when famed author Elie Weisel, whose memoir, Night, recalling his experiences surviving the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi Germany, won him a 1986 Nobel Prize for literature, was attacked by a man who’d been stalking him, apparently for weeks, and is a Holocaust denier.

According to a report on Examiner.com, the suspect accosted Weisel with the intent to get him to “admit” that is memoir, Night, was fictitious. However, when Weisel began screaming for help the assailant fled the scene.

In a disturbing development, a poster to the antisemtic Web site, ZioPedia.com, identifying himself only “Eric Hunt,” took credit for the attack, bragging out it and his intent. The San Francisco police are investigating and admit that “Eric Hunt” is the focus of their investigation.

Hopefully, Weisel can recuperate someplace safer, soon; perhaps at an Orlando vacation rental location. One would hope that he’d be safer there.

San Francisco is the home district of Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.