The ongoing kerfuffle over Florida moving its primary elections ahead of those in Iowa and New Hampshire has started me thinking again about getting rid of the state financed political party primaries. The Democrats have threatened not to seat any Florida delegates at its convention if the state follows through with moving its primaries up to January 2008. It appears that there is an issue about who owns the primary elections. The Democrat Party apparently thinks it should have some control over when they are held in each state but the states run and pay for the elections. I fail to see why we need primary elections.

Political parties are private organizations. Tax payers should not be expected to pay for their candidate selection processes. I've even read that the tax payers are subsidizing the party conventions to the tune of about 50 million dollars each. That should obviously stop. Each party should run and fund its own process of selecting the candidate that it wants to appear on each state's general election ballot -- or have all of them on the ballot. If they want that process to include a statewide referendum of registered party members, they can run it and pay for it themselves. They can even let convicted felons, illegal immigrants and Canadians vote if they so desire -- or restrict voting to dues-paying party members.

Each state should hold its general election in early September with a runoff in early November. The September election should include all candidates that qualify in the state. That is, all Democrats, all Republicans, all Libertarians, all Greens, all independents and all anything (that qualifies). It should be the responsibility of each party to decide, as described above, which candidate(s) it wants on the ballot. The runoff election will be held if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the votes cast. The runoff ballot will include only the two candidates that receive the highest numbers of votes -- even if both belong to the same party or both are independents.

Most likely each political party will want to winnow its field of candidates down to one to avoid splitting its vote in the general election. For example, the Democrats aren't going to want two or more candidates in the general election when the Republicans have only one. But, a Republican or Democrat rebuffed by the party may elect to run as an independent. Remember Joe Lieberman in last year's election in Connecticut.

I'm for anything that stands a chance of reducing the influence of the two major parties. That's my opinion. What do you think?

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Yep, the nanny state is on the job; it saved me from myself today. I ventured out with reckless abandon (at least I learned later that it was with reckless abandon) this morning on a trip to the local Lowe's Home Improvement store to purchase a couple of doors for the new garage I'm building. But that's not the reckless part; the reckless part was that I intended to purchase and install doors with those nice sunset style windows across the top. But that is not going to happen. The Lowe's clerk informed me that the state doesn't allow them to sell garage doors with windows, and the state doesn't allow me to install them. Silly me. I thought that how I decorated my garage doors would be pretty much up to me and my wife.

Why am I not allowed to have windows in my garage doors? Because I live in a designated 130-140 mph hurricane wind zone. I live about 25 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico in Northwest Florida. Some bureaucrat has decided that it's too dangerous for me to have the windows. Never mind that in my 67 year lifetime there have never been hurricane winds of more than about 110 mph where I live. Never mind that my garage is not even attached to my house. Never mind that no one is going to seek refuge in my garage during a hurricane. Never mind that well over half the garage doors in my town have windows. Never mind that it is alright with the state if I don't even put doors on my garage. Never mind that it is alright with the state if people build carports with no walls. Never mind that it is alright with the state if I climb to the top of a tall tree to ride out a hurricane. Somehow the state has decided that it is just too risky for me to have that attractive row of windows across the top of my garage doors.

I tried to figure out the lobbying angle with this prohibition. Most building restrictions result from some trade group or company lobbying the legislature or the bureaucrats for rulings that will benefit them. But it's not clear how that would play here; garage doors without windows cost less than doors with windows. I suppose it could be the insurance industry wanting to avoid some window replacement costs.

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In a column at FoxNews.com Lis Wiehl discusses a case in which New York City School Chancellor Joel Klein fired John Halpin, a construction supervisor who has worked for the Department of Education for 21 years, for repeatedly leaving work early. Halpin was fired because his employer-supplied, GPS-equipped cell phone ratted him out. The phone documented that he left work early 83 times in about five months.

Questions that taxpayers in New York City should be asking: Why does Joel Klein need GPS devices to ensure that his employees are getting their jobs done? Where was Halpin's supervisor while the time cheating was going on? What about Halpin's performance on the job? Are the Department's managers measuring productivity or just the amount of time spent on the job?

If an employee has to be tracked using an implanted device to keep him or her on the job, I would say that employee is most likely not really needed. One notable exception might be when the job primarily involves traveling from point A to point B, such as driving a long-haul truck. Even then it should be relatively easy to determine if cargo is being delivered on-time and to the right place.

I don't buy the argument that employers are entitled to invade the privacy of their employees in any way they see fit. You won't be able to convince me that the NYC Schools are only monitoring their employees during working hours. I'll bet that some functionary has gleefully noted that Jack's phone and Jill's phone seem to be in the same place for a couple of hours after work two or three times per month.

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FoxNews.com has an update on the saga of deported illegal immigrant Elvira Arellano and Saul, her American-born son. Yesterday Saul participated in a demonstration to lobby Congress to help bring his mother back to the USA.

Meanwhile, Elvira says her son will move to Mexico and start schools next month. Together, she vows they'll continue their immigration crusade, but from the other side of the border.

Now let me understand this. She doesn't like our laws but she very very much wants to come here. And she is willing to leave her son in our hands for a few months. She apparently doesn't think Mexico is a fit place to live and raise her son, but I don't hear of any crusade that she plans to wage against the Mexican government.

I wonder if she believes that all Mexicans should be allowed to move here or just her and Saul. Is she capable of understanding that if the floodgates are opened our country will be swamped with people looking for work and she might soon find that it's no easier to make a living here than in Mexico?

If the hordes of Mexicans entering the USA legally and illegally focused their energy on reforming their own government instead of ours, they would achieve a better outcome for all of us -- especially in the long-term. There is no large difference between the USA and Mexico in terms of per-capita land area and natural resources. The working class lives better here than the working class in Mexico because our socio-economic system is more conducive to individual prosperity and our government is less corrupt. If they will get rid of their corrupt government and open up their markets, Mexicans can prosper at home.

I hope they will decide to fix things down there before some American president decides to send in the troops and fix it for them. After all, what ails Mexico now seems to be affecting us more than what ailed Iraq before we sent the troops in there.

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The AP reports that an Iranian military official, General Mohammad Alavi said:

One of the issues enemies make publicity about is their cruise missiles. Now, we possess the necessary systems to confront them (cruise missiles).

OK Mo, but do you really expect to prevail in that confrontation? A six-year-old child can confront a heavily armed policeman.

Alavi also warned that Israel was within Iran's medium-range missiles and its fighter bombers, while maintaining that Israel was not strong enough to launch an aerial attack against Iran.

If you were really smart, Mo, you would reconsider the fighter-bomber thing. You should take a moment to think about how long it has been since fighter-bombers have been effectively used against the US or one of its allies. Then you should contemplate the reason for that.

I'll give you a clue: There aren't enough women and children up in the sky for the fighter-bombers to hide behind. Now you take it from there.

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How much longer will we allow Al Sharpton to intimidate officials around the country? Sharpton doesn't seem to be concerned about guilt or innocence; to him, charging any black with a crime is unfair. He wants to force an O.J. outcome to any trial involving black on white crime.

CBS News has a report on the march planned for today in Jena, Louisianna:

With as many as 50,000 demonstrators expected here by the busload from across the country, businesses, schools, even government office buildings in this small, central Louisiana town will remain closed all day, reported (CBS News Correspondent Byron) Pitts.

The Reverend Al Sharpton helped organize the march in support of six black teenagers jailed and charged in the beating of a white classmate last December. Five are charged with attempted second-degree murder. The sixth defendant's case is under court seal because he's a juvenile.

Sharpton told The Early Show that the case against the six black high school students is a "raw disparity of justice."

"We didn't bring race in it," Sharpton told CBS News. "Those that hung the nooses brought race in it."

The nooses that Sharpton refers to were hung in a tree at the high school by three white students months before the beating. The students were briefly suspended from school.

There seems to be no evidence that the black teenagers are being treated more severely than anyone else charged with the same crime. The best I can tell, Sharpton believes that their crimes should be excused because someone hung some nooses in a tree several months before the crimes were committed. He clearly intends more than just bringing attention to the black teenagers' cases. Bringing 50,000 demonstrators to a town of 3,500 is meant to intimidate local and state officials. (Why the state officials are allowing this to happen is another good question.)

Sharpton's mission is to fan the flames of racial conflict around the country to extend his wealth and power. Has he ever stood up for a black charged with a crime against another black? I don't have to ask if he has ever stood up for a white charged with a crime against a black.

Update: I learned a little more of the circumstances of the Jena situation. It seems there was enough blame to go around, but the authorities came down harder on the black kids. I still don't think the state should have allowed Sharpton to bring in hordes of people to cause even more trouble. I think the local officials would have eventually sorted it all out fairly. Do you believe for one minute that, say, New York would allow some white supremacist to bring in thousands of people to protest the prosecution of white kids for assaulting a black kid?

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Now the AP is reporting that a white supremacist web site has essentially called for the lynching of the six black kids accused of beating up a white kid in Jena LA. Both Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are calling for state and federal protection of the kids and their families.

I agree that they might need protection now that Jesse and Al have stirred up the hornet's nest (although one family member said she didn't feel threatened). No reasonably intelligent adult believes that Al and Jesse didn't realize beforehand that their over-the-top actions would incite the opposing hate groups. It is exactly what they wanted. And, yes, I consider Jackson's and Sharpton's organizations hate groups.

What is unfortunate about this whole thing is the system appeared to be working. Yes, the original charges -- of attempted murder -- against the black kids seems a bit severe. But only one kid has been tried so far. He was convicted of aggravated second degree battery, not attempted murder. And his conviction has been overturned by a state appeals court. Four of the other kids charges were reduced when they were arraigned several months ago. The sixth kid was booked as a juvenile and his charges are sealed.

I can think of no good reason that Jackson and Sharpton needed to do more than provide good legal representation for the kids and moral and financial support for their families. Holding a press conference in Jena with the family members standing behind them might have been a reasonable thing to do. But bringing in thousands of demonstrators to overwhelm a tiny town was not the kind of help they needed.

Clearly, obtaining justice for the Jena-Six was not Jackson's and Sharpton's primary objective.

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In today's alarm sounded by the glowarmists,* they try to raise concern that some of our historic sites could be swamped by rising sea levels. They say that the seas are going to rise about a meter, but they don't know how long it will take. Some say 50 years, others say 100 years, and still others say 150 years.

Sea level rise is "the thing that I'm most concerned about as a scientist," says Benjamin Santer, a climate physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

"We're going to get a meter and there's nothing we can do about it," said University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver, a lead author of the February report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Paris. "It's going to happen no matter what - the question is when."

Why is Santer so concerned about it if there's nothing he can do about it. Perhaps he's just a worrier. Or, perhaps he just disagrees with Weaver. Anyway, if there is so much disagreement amongst all these experts, why should we be concerned about it?

Even John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a scientist often quoted by global warming skeptics, said he figures the seas will rise at least 16 inches by the end of the century. But he tells people to prepare for a rise of about three feet just in case.

Williams says it's "not unreasonable at all" to expect that much in 100 years. "We've had a third of a meter in the last century."

In other words, the sea has been rising since way before you were born and since before most of your ancestors were born. But now the glowarmists want you to lose sleep over it.

Here's a simple test to determine if you should be concerned enough to give this more than passing interest. Is your home or other property that you own sitting less than one meter above the current sea level? If so, you should start worrying about rising sea levels within about 30 years. If not, don't waste your time or energy. Most likely you have more important things to worry about than helping to maintain the flow of research dollars to climate scientists.
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*global warming alarmist

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Burt Prelutsky, one of my favorite writers, in a column on Townhall.com, starts out talking about fat people and ends up talking about Congress. A couple of University dudes have conducted a study that...

"...suggested that obesity often spreads through a social network, a pattern of contagion usually associated with such diseases as influenza and AIDS."

Instead of transmitting germs, though, these folks infected each other with their perceptions of weight. For example, a man attending a family reunion notices that his brother has gained weight since last Christmas and concludes that it’s okay to be heavy.

Nothing was said about the possibility that the fat brother, noticing that his brother is still slender, might conclude that it's not okay to be heavy and decide to go home and start a regimen of diet and exercise. That is, if the study authors are right, why shouldn't we expect the fat brother to be slender and the slender brother to be fat at the next family reunion?

Prelutsky suggests that this social network thing might be what causes all members of Congress, no matter how different they start out, to eventually resemble one another. He says that:

So far as I’m concerned, contempt of Congress shouldn’t be a crime, it should be an obligation.

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A problem we face is that we rarely find a great leader who can get elected. The best candidates for president are not likely to be willing to do what they have to do to get elected. This is why we mostly get shallow bozos like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for our presidents. I believe that Ronald Reagan was an exception to this recurring dilemma. And I don't believe Fred Thompson is an exception. In fact, there are no exceptions in the 2008 race at this time.
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There is a basic difference between Western countries and countries like Iraq. Western countries want law and order above most all else. We are willing to bend quite a lot to avoid violent confrontations and to preserve our orderly system of government. We prefer to work out our differences through the political or judicial processes. Sure, there are a lot of Iraqis that would prefer law and order. But the problem is that there are too many that don't.

There was a lot of violence in our past but we managed to reach where we are today in just a few hundred years. The Mesopotamians and other Iraqis have been there for thousands of years and they still can't coexist peacefully.
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Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, has boasted that the United States was being defeated in Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts. I hope he knows the difference between defeat and cutting losses. Sometimes a cost-benefit analysis indicates that you should give up certain pursuits, but it doesn't mean that you couldn't succeed at some cost.

I hope he understands that, even if we pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq, we can still destroy both of them and Iran without breaking a sweat -- if we become sufficiently motivated.
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A popular argument against allowing the use of cheap Mexican labor in America is that the taxpayers are paying for their healthcare and other social services.  The biggest problem though is not the use of cheap Mexican labor.  It is the fact that government provided healthcare and other social services exist in the first place.
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For what it's worth, my favorite columnists are: Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Burt Prelutsky, Jonah Goldberg, Paul Greenberg, David Limbaugh, Debra Saunders and Diana West. I used to like Pat Buchanan but lately he seems to have flipped his lid. You can find all of them at Townhall.com.

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