† Life Imitates “A Law Abiding Citizen”: The recession and the intractable level of joblessness that resulted has drained state coffers of tax receipts. Instead of cutting bloated state government budgets by making tough choices, as newly-elected governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) is demanding of state legislators and town councils, CA and other states are emptying their prisons, reports The New York Times:

 

In the rush to save money in grim budgetary times, states nationwide have trimmed their prison populations by expanding parole programs and early releases. But the result - more convicted felons on the streets, not behind bars - has unleashed a backlash, and state officials now find themselves trying to maneuver between saving money and maintaining the public’s sense of safety. …

 

“Early releases have been a problem in Los Angeles County since the 1980s, after a federal judge ruled that overcrowded conditions in the nation's largest county jail system amounted to cruel and unusual punishment for inmates,” reports the Los Angeles Times:

 

Freeing some early was meant to be a temporary fix but has continued ever since, ebbing and flowing over the years.

 

The practice increased dramatically earlier this decade, when budget cuts prompted Baca to close jail facilities, allowing some inmates freedom after serving only 10% of their time. A 2006 Times investigation found that nearly 16,000 inmates released early were rearrested for new offenses while they were supposed to be in jail. Sixteen were charged with murder.

 

Over the last few years, sheriff's officials began reopening shuttered jail areas and lengthening the time inmates served.

 

But now, amid the troubled economy and state budget crisis, Baca said the department again needs to make major cuts. …

 

The department is considering $128 million in cuts over the next 16 months from its nearly $1.3-billion general fund budget.

 

Much of the savings - about $58 million - would be achieved through reductions in overtime, and Baca said that will inevitably require shutting some parts of the jails.

 

"You cannot cut dollars from the budget and keep facilities open to the level they were before the cuts," he said. "At some point, the integrity of the system starts to break."

 

“Integrity” is an interesting choice of words when describing a state penal system that opens the jailhouse door after an inmate has served only 10 percent of his or her sentence.

 

† The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II: Aside from being a caffeine addict, The Stiletto has another reason to patronize Starbucks: In those states permitting people to openly carry firearms, the company has a “long-standing policy of complying” in the belief that its baristas “could be harmed if the stores were to ban guns,” reports The Wall Street Journal:

 

Starbucks Corp. and some other chain stores in the U.S. are finding themselves caught in the middle of a firearms debate, as gun-control advocates go up against a burgeoning campaign by gun owners to carry holstered pistols in public places.

 

The "open carry" movement, in which gun owners carry unconcealed handguns as they go about their everyday business, is loosely organized around the country but has been gaining traction in recent months. Gun-control advocates have been pushing to quash the movement, including by petitioning the Starbucks coffee chain to ban guns on its premises.

 

Businesses have the final say on their property. But the ones that don't opt to ban guns - such as Starbucks - have become parade grounds of sorts for open-carry advocates. …

 

In 29 states, it's legal to openly carry a loaded handgun, without any form of government permission. Another 13 allow an unconcealed loaded handgun with a carry permit, according to opencarry.org, which is a loosely organized Web forum for the movement. …

 

Supporters are spreading in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and other areas. Some are making lists of "OC-friendly" locales, and encouraging boycotts of businesses with no-weapons signs. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Home Depot Inc., Best Buy Co. and Barnes & Noble Inc., are designated as "open-carry" friendly in some online forums or say they abide by existing laws. "Our practice is to comply with local and state laws," said Best Buy spokeswoman Sue Busch Nehring.

 

Starbucks takes the view that, "The political, policy and legal debates around these issues belong in the legislatures and courts, not in our stores."

 

† Always Remember And Don’t Ever Forget (second item): It was a particularly bad week to be a Turk. On Wednesday, a panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave short shrift to Harvey Silverglate’s contention that his clients’ First Amendment rights were violated by education officials in MA removing Web sites pushing Turkish propaganda denying the Armenian Genocide from teacher curriculum guide in Griswold v. Driscoll. The next day, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 23 to 22 to send H. Res. 252 affirming that the Armenian Genocide is a historical fact (text) to the full House.

 

Matt Lewis of Politics Daily notes that bipartisanship is “elusive” in Washington, D.C. - except when it comes to the symbolic resolution for the U.S. to recognize the Armenian Genocide (as, BTW, 20 other countries and 43 of our 50 states already have):

 

The resolution's supporters include a diverse and bipartisan group of more than one hundred members, including Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Niki Tsongas (D-Mass.). …

 

Should the resolution pass the committee, its advocates would then push for an April floor vote, hoping to coincide with the vote with "Armenian Genocide Recognition Day" on April 24. But the resolution also has significant - and bipartisan - opposition. A letter urging congressional colleagues to reject it on the grounds it will complicate sensitive relations with a NATO ally was recently sent to the House Foreign Affairs Committee by Reps. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) and Kay Granger (R-Texas). …

 

Efforts to pass the resolution probably got a boost this past Sunday when CBS' "60 Minutes" aired a segment heavily sympathetic to the Armenian case. The "60 Minutes" segment also included an embarrassing interview with former Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy, who, in references to "death marches," said: "Well, I don't think that it was anything comparable to Auschwitz. This was only deportation. And things happened on the road." …

 

So why should America take a stand? For one thing, many scholars believe the Armenian genocide inspired Adolph Hitler, who noted in 1939 that the world seemed to have forgotten the fate of the Armenians. Silence, in other words, became complicity - and helped set the stage for the Holocaust.

 

President Ronald Reagan sought such moral clarity. Just as he pointedly called the Soviet Union an "evil empire," Reagan did not mince words on this issue. Upon his death, the Armenian National Committee of America noted: "We will remember President Reagan as the last U.S. President to properly commemorate the Armenian genocide."

 

As in 2007 when the “Armenian Genocide Resolution” also cleared the committee, Turkey withdrew its ambassador to the U.S., reports The Associated Press. Given Turkey’s increasing belligerence towards Israel (second item), this time the Jewish state and its friends in the U.S. are refraining from lobbying against passage (last item) of the resolution. Writing on the JTA blog “Capital J,” Ron Kampeas explains:

 

[T]he pro-Israel community is hanging back and telling the lawmakers, "Do what you feel is right. We're not spending political capital on the Turks this season."

 

I honestly did not get the sense that anyone in the pro-Israel lobby is eager for this resolution to pass; just that they did not feel motivated to burn themselves by helping to kill it.

 

Kampeas also notes that in 2007 six of the seven Jews on the committee voted in favor of the resolution (“The single Jew who voted against was Robert Wexler of Florida, who was a friend of the Turkish lobby”) despite “agonizing” over their votes “because of Turkey's good relations (at least then) with Israel.” Three of them - Adam Schiff (D), Howard Berman (D) and the late Tom Lantos (D) represented CA, a state with a large population of Armenian-Americans. But why did the other Jews on the committee vote in favor of the resolution? Because it was the right thing to do:

 

American foreign policy - and this is something we wonks forget - is driven, perhaps to a greater degree than in any other country, by conscience. By moral choice. …

 

Yesterday's vote might not have been in U.S. interests, according to a "realist" foreign policy read. It probably was not in Israel's interests, despite the recent coolness between Israel and Turkey. …

 

American support for Israel has never had a purely "realist," or self-interested, cast - and via Goldblog, Walter Russell Mead at the American Realist makes this case better than I ever could. The support has been, mostly. a moral choice, whatever you make of the morality.

 

And whatever one makes of the wisdom of the vote yesterday - or in 2007 - I remember feeling immensely moved as seven Jewish members voted not in the "realist" interests of the State Department or the Pentagon or of Israel; but in the interests of never again denying that a genocide occurred.

 

† Now Is Not The Time To Talk About Race: “It sounds like a cheesy Hollywood movie,” reports The Washington Post [contextual video links added by The Stiletto]:

 

White college girls from Arkansas go to a national step dancing competition - a dance form that is a hallmark of black fraternities and sororities - and, gee whiz, win the whole darned thing! Boy, are the black sorority sisters steamed!

 

But wait!

 

In the final reel, five days after the results set off a national ruckus, show organizers say they discovered a "scoring discrepancy." They say the second-place sorority from Indiana University, the pink-and-green Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation's oldest black sorority, is also a winner! Each team gets $100,000 in scholarships!

 

The only problem with this eye-rolling scenario is that … it actually happened. And the Feb. 20 national finals of the Sprite Step Off competition in Atlanta, in which the all-white Zeta Tau Alpha team from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville won what sponsors billed as "the largest Greek stepping competition ever," is scheduled to be broadcast at 3 p.m. Sunday on MTV2. …

 

When the team finished - to wild applause - emcee Ryan Cameron, a local radio personality, rushed onstage: "Whoa! Wow!" Then he playfully admonished the sold-out crowd of 4,600 fans, nearly all of them black, not to be so surprised that the evening's only white contestants were that good.

 

"Close your mouth! Close your mouth!" he said with a laugh. "Stepping is for everybody. If you can step, you can step."

 

But later, when it was announced that the Zetas won, the feel-good vibe evaporated. Large sections of the crowd starting booing. Then Internet and radio-call-in warfare broke out when the videos were posted on YouTube. There were allegations of cultural theft and reverse racism, not to mention race-based taunting and name-calling.

 

† Service With A Snarl: Evergreen Entertainment VP Steven Payne, who famously told a dissatisfied movie patron to "f**k" herself, could learn a thing or two from online shoe retailer Zappos.com. The New York Times reports that Zappos is unveiling a $7 million multiplatform ad campaign that “celebrate[s] its customer service representatives, whom the company refers to as the customer loyalty team”:

 

The intent is to demonstrate to potential customers - and remind current ones - how the employees make it easy to order or return merchandise, either on or by calling a toll-free number. …

 

There will be television commercials, print advertisements and video and display ads on Web sites, along with a presence in social media like Facebook and YouTube and on Zappos.com.

The ads will also appear in an unusual place where Zappos is already advertising: on the bottoms of plastic bins in airport security lines, reflecting the origins of Zappos as a seller of shoes.

 

The campaign is centered on the interaction during phone calls between Zappos employees and customers. The employees are represented by puppetlike characters who are based on and styled after actual Zappos workers.

 

The characters, called Zappets, resemble Muppets who have been to the theater several times to see “Avenue Q.” The idea is to evoke the offbeat company culture for which Zappos has become known. …

 

Some of the commercials use recordings of calls made to Zappos employees, whose voices are heard in the spots. The words “Actual call with Zappos” appear onscreen. The customer service representatives were not aware that the calls were potential fodder for an ad campaign.

 

The calls heard in those commercials were made by actors or Mullen employees posing as customers, asking tough questions or making unusual requests.

 

Editorial Note: Is it The Stiletto's imagination, or have puppets been in the news a lot lately? 

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?): You’d think that President Barack Hussein Obama would have learned not to set deadlines for Congressional action by now, but to quote President Ronald Reagan – a staunch opponent of socialized medicine - “there he goes again.” The New York Times reports:

 

Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told reporters Thursday that the president expected the House to complete its work by March 18, when Mr. Obama is to leave for Australia and Indonesia. But the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and other Congressional leaders outlined steps that would make it difficult to meet that timetable.

 

First, Ms. Pelosi said, Democratic leaders must agree on the substance of a budget reconciliation bill, the likely vehicle to make changes in the health care bill passed by the Senate. At that point, Ms. Pelosi said, House Democratic leaders will consult with their Senate counterparts, and then their own colleagues in the House. She conceded that some Democrats are skittish.

 

“Every vote, every legislative vote is a heavy lift around here,” Ms. Pelosi said.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, “Daddy, What Causes Global Warming?”): Based on private e-mails exchanged by climate scientists at the National Academy of Sciences that were obtained by The Washington Times reports that “climate researchers are plotting to respond with what one scientist involved said needs to be ‘an outlandishly aggressively partisan approach’ to gut the credibility of skeptics.” In other words, they will continue to operate in the same fashion that gutted their own credibility.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Not Giving Credit Where Credit’s Due): Ahmad Afzali, the imam linked who tipped off would-be NYC subway bomber Najibullah Zazi that he was under federal surveillance, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI when they asked him about his conversations with Zazi, reports The Associated Press:

 

Under the plea deal, Afzali faces up to six months behind bars at sentencing on April 8. It also requires the Afghanistan-born defendant to leave the country within 90 days after completing the sentence or face deportation.

 

After the New York Police Department was alerted to the possible threat, detectives reached out to Afzali to gather information about Zazi and two other men the imam knew from a Queens mosque, Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay. Authorities say the former high school classmates traveled together in 2008 to Pakistan, where Zazi received explosives training.

 

This would be the same Ahmad Afzali who, upon Zazi's arrest, complained bitterly: "Are we going to be treated like this for the rest of our lives? Every Muslim across America is fed up with this kind of mistrust." Every infidel across America (that is to say, Christians and Jews) is tired learning that there are terrorist sympathizers, co-conspirators and wanna-bes like Zazi, his friends and his family (allegedly) trying to kill us right here in the US. FDR would've known what to do with the whole lot of you (second item). Perhaps when the White House is occupied by a president who is deadly serious about protecting the homeland against terrorists within and without, September 11 will not be remembered as the anniversary of the worst terror attack on U.S. soil, but as the anniversary of America and its allies putting down jihadism once and for all.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Red Is The New Blue (Dog): Now that Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) won the people’s seat held by Ted Kennedy for decades, Blue Dog Dems are now being joined by Yellow Dogs in running for the exit. Rep. William Delahunt will not be running for re-election, “ending a nearly 40-year career in elected office and giving Republicans hope of capturing the district, which stretches from Cape Cod to the South Shore,” reports The Boston Globe:

 

The congressman has faced recent questions about the handling of the 1986 Amy Bishop shooting case, which occurred in Braintree when he was Norfolk district attorney. Backed up by his then-top prosecutor, Delahunt has said consistently that his office was not told that Bishop fled with a loaded weapon after killing her brother in what police then called an accident.

 

But the case has absolutely nothing to do with his decision to retire, Delahunt said. Several of his friends and associates confirmed that the lawmaker has been mulling his departure for years, and very seriously considering it for many months.

 

Voters in Delahunt’s 10th District gave Republican Scott Brown his best margins in the state in the Jan. 19 special election to fill Kennedy’s seat, giving the GOP hopes of breaking the Democrats’ lock on the House delegation.

 

The Globe did not mention another controversy in Delahunt’s tenure: During a 2008 hearing on the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques, Delahunt told David Addington, then-chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, that he hoped Al Qaeda was watching C-SPAN so they could see what he looked like (video).

 

Meanwhile, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) resigns from Congress to avoid an ethics investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by a male staffer. Massa, who is battling a recurrence of terminal cancer, did not want to put his family through an ethics investigation, according to press reports. Massa had voted against the House healthcare “reform” bill, and the vacancy lowers the majority House Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs for passage to 216.

 

† Updates To Recent Posts (last item, The Sum For The Parts): U.S. District Judge William Martini in Newark, NJ denied class action status to families seeking damages from funeral homes in three states for a years-long conspiracy to harvest and sell tissues and parts from the bodies of their loved ones' for transplants, reports New Jersey Law Journal:

 

[T]he proliferation of factual differences in the cases make a class action unworkable.

 

And there are too many potential conflicts between the interests of the 13 named plaintiffs and unnamed potential class members numbering in the hundreds, Martini ruled in Kennedy-McInnis v. Biomedical Tissue Services Ltd.

 

The plaintiffs' lawyers greeted the decision with a shrug. Van White, a Rochester, N.Y., solo who filed the putative class action in 2006, says Martini telegraphed his inclination to deny the request months ago.

 

White says the decision actually clears the way for the main effort: individual suits against individual funeral homes by family members. …

 

Seven funeral directors or employees have been found guilty in the scandal, which came to light in 2006.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, What It’s Like To Live In The Bronx): Maybe those Manhattan coyotes should be afraid of the Bronx chickens. The New York Post reports that a fox in a British henhouse met a grisly end when the resident rooster and his three hens together kicked a table over on its head to knock it out and then pecked it to death. Clearly, chickens are not dumb clucks.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (ninth item, Revenge Of The Nerds): Former mayor of Racine, WI, Gary Becker (D) was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of child enticement and attempted sexual assault of a child arising from an Internet sex sting, reports The Associated Press:

 

Judge Stephen Simanek said he was prepared to sentence Becker to probation but was alarmed to discover Becker purchased girls' underwear two weeks ago.

 

With this denouement of a sordid small-town sex scandal, AP retains its unbroken streak of never mentioning Becker’s political affiliation when writing about the progress of his case through the criminal justice system.