The turning of the tide

This article - Steele gaining blacks' support highlights one of the problems that I see with the current media coverage of the fall election - they are telling the story based on old assumptions. They act like this will be 1994, that "all the same indicators are there".

Pardon me, but did they catch all of these "obvious indicators" the first time? I don't remember that - they called it a "temper tantrum" (Peter Jennings said that) and a fluke. 12 years later it's an obvious thing that everyone saw coming. 12 years ago, the contract with America didn't matter because noone really knew what it said - now the Dem's have to have one and there are articles written about it.

This trend of Republican African American candidates is a big story that people will start to look back at this first decade of the 21st century and say that's when it started. The problem for the Dem's is that there is no way to go for them with African Americans but down - how do you go up from 90%. And the fact is, all the ideas for moving minorities forward in our economy, etc. are on the Republican side. From Welfare Reform to Educational options to Empowerment zones in the inner city, like or not, we at least have a plan. The Welfare reform plan was even tried and it worked liked crazy - and had to be passed three times to get Clinton to sign it (now he takes credit for it of course).

The Democrat ideas are to complain and spend more on keeping minorities in poverty. Republicans are pushing programs for minorities to own their own homes - Dems are building new and prettier housing projects "now with yoga!". I think that many African Americans are waking up to realize that the Dem's shouldn't own their vote - the civil rights era is over and now they want to know that their kids are in good schools and that their 401k is going to be ok.

Watch out, Dem's. You might have to actually EARN the African American vote pretty soon.

Gee, I wish I had written this...

Andrew C. McCarthy on War on National Review Online

David

Justice and the Yates Jury

In RealClearPolitics - Articles - Yates Jury is Wrong Mark Davis displays a stunning lack of knowledge about mental illness and the Yates case in particular. The jury did not have to "magically know how coherent she was when she methodically drowned her five beautiful children on June 20, 2001", they had the advantage of medical testimony to show what state she was in. They did not have to judge from her current state (properly medicated) to know how she was then - unmedicated.

Everybody around her at the time KNEW she was very ill. Why else would her husband feel the need to have someone with her at all times (an effort that failed the day she killed the children)? Why else had she been hospitalized? She was only out of the hospital because her insurance had run out - not because she was well. No, if ever there was a case of 'not guilty by reason of insanity', this was it.

There is much to blame in this case - The husband for having more children with a woman he knew was ill and agreeing to home school them. The hospital and her doctors for putting her out when there was no question that she was not well and probably dangerous. But that does not justify convicting her of crimes which she committed while insane.

The great injustice here is not the verdict, but the fact that Harris County taxpayers had to shell out who knows how much money to prosecute (twice) a case that should never have come to trial in the first place. A "not guilty by reason of insanity" plea could have been had at the outset.

David