Tuesday Roundup: The Great Online Debate

The YouTube Democratic candidate debate was held last night at The Citadel in South Carolina, and was televised on CNN. Most news outlets seem to have made a bigger deal out of the questions than the answers, which explains why when it comes to actual analysis of the debate, I'm pretty sure I was watching a different debate than they were. It's a cold day in the Texas summer when the pundit I find myself agreeing with most is Roger Simon. (And I even laughed at some of his jokes. Of course, one of them was about him, but who's counting? I'm sure we'll be BFFs here soon.)

Not that anyone needs convincing any more that the White House was trying to polarize every one of its nonpartisan arms towards the Republican party, but today comes another example: the same sort of political briefings detailing Republican electoral strategy which were given to members of the General Services Administration in violation of the Hatch Act were also given to the U.S. diplomatic corps. The seven ambassadors cited in the Washington Post report have donated over $1.6 million to Republicans in the past six years.

Cindy Sheehan has apparently decided to kick off her campaign bid against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a disorderly conduct arrest. Sheehan, who has been vocal both in criticizing the President for our involvement in Iraq and Congress for not having impeached George Bush yet, was arrested in Rep. John Conyers' office along with 45 supporters after they spent an hour trying to get Conyers to push forward with impeachment.

The Dallas Morning News has a follow-up to the previous reports of issues in the Lubbock State School, tracking abuse cases in other state schools for the mentally retarded across Texas. Their numbers have Abilene and Lufkin's state schools as having the most confirmed cases of abuse, though it is hard to get a good picture of the problem without knowing how many total occupants there are at each school — is the percentage of problems fairly consistent, or are there some particularly common offenders? It's hard to say — just like it's hard to say what to do about the problem, when mentally retarded patients are being cared for in a group environment by understaffed facilities with often dedicated, always exhausted employees being paid fast-food wages to do work that can be frustrating and unrewarding due to endemic problems in administration and operations. But that's a whole other article, now, isn't it? The Chron also picked up this story, and reports that 9% of the 3,200 allegations of abuse that are reported each year are confirmed.

In another example of underfunding by the state government, bad news for those counting on the "B On Time" loan program Perry was so eager to tell everyone about: the "B" seems to stand for "broke," as in "we don't have any money to give you." UT and A&M have already started telling students that they're not getting the loans they expected. Some smaller schools saw it coming, and either put their students on a waiting list for loans or just flat didn't offer them, as they weren't sure the money would actually be there. A good call, from the look of it.

Finally today, It seems that Farmers Branch just can't stay out of the news. The Austin American-Statesman has a story on Tim O'Hare, the Farmers Branch councilman that has been at the forefront of the push to force illegal immigrants out of the city. From the article:

"The retail spots . . . for every two that went vacant, one would be filled by a Spanish-speaking business, then you . . . saw what was once a really, really, really nice neighborhood start to decline," O'Hare said.

The councilman apparently doesn't have a problem with the spots going vacant in the first place — indicating flagging small businesses in the area — and also has a problem with a different ethnicity revitalizing small business in the area. That makes for a declining neighborhood, from the look of it. Last I checked, isn't it a little difficult for an illegal immigrant to get a business license and open a storefront? I do believe you need some legal paperwork for that. So is your problem really just with illegal immigrants, Councilman? Because if you want to do something about those Spanish-speaking businesses, it seems like your quest is going to have to extend a bit farther. I think revoking the Equal Protection Clause takes a Constitutional amendment, so you have your work cut out for you. Good luck with that. Further in the article, the Statesman debunks O'Hare's claims of the "immigrant problem:"

Critics say O'Hare has no research to back up his claims that illegal immigrants are to blame for his city's perceived problems. Statistics show that the city's crime rate has been falling, property values have increased, and the state has given its schools the second-highest rating possible.