Is Bakersield ready??
Controversy swirled a bit in the news last week when former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett, a 
frequent columnist and ‘talking head’ on news program said:
“But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down,” Bennett said. “That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.”
Bennett made these comments in the context of a debate that he was having on television. He defended his remarks in this Washington Post story.
The Bakersfield Californian is making a big deal out of his arriving into the sleepy town of oil derricks and Bill Thomas’ ‘machine politics’ – but is it really that big of a deal?
PRINCIPLE ONLY LASTS TO THE PLAYOFFS
Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle, incensed at the decision of Angel’s owner Arte Moreno to name his team the "Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles" in what Pringle felt was a violation of an agreement with the City of
Anaheim, proudly announced that he would attend no Angel games at the Big "A" Stadium. Well, it goes to show you that everyone has their ‘breaking point’ – and in the case of Pringle — it was the playoffs! The Los Angeles Angels are doing well, and Pringle will be taking in his first game in a long while. Curt, don’t forget your Rally Monkey!
TODAY IS THE VOTE TO REPLACE CHRIS COX
Today the voters of the 48th Congressional District (including me) will pick a candidate to replace Chris Cox, who is now the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. But there are two questions hanging in the balance — the first is who will be the GOP nominee, and the second is whether the GOP nominee can attain the majority of the vote needed to make the runoff. You can read my in-depthy analysis of this race that I wrote for Capitol Weekly, which remains largely unchanged. The featured Golden Pen column today is ont he phenomenon of bloggers in this race. Perhaps a more interesting phenomenon is that the column is by "Jubal" – the anonymous pen name of the proprietor of the infamous OC Blog web site!
There are a lot of items in today’s news, all of which are on the FR home page.