High On Corn

Actually, high in the corn. With a car. And with two police cars in hot pursuit.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch farmer watched in disbelief as a driver under the influence of cocaine drove a slalom course through his corn field, only to be joined by two police vehicles in hot pursuit, adding to the damage.

Police, backed up by a helicopter, eventually managed to corner the 35-year-old driver after he careered into a neighboring orchard and crashed into a ditch.

"Shoot out two tires… then the problem is solved," irate farmer Ad van Schendel told police, according to the Brabants Dagblad newspaper.

That last comment shows how ignorant some folks are about guns. Shooting out a tire is not at all easy. In fact, it is impossible with many handguns. But we digress. There is a picture posted of the damage over at this site. The good news for the farmer? He now has a ready made corn maze! It could be a gold mine for him.

DEAD

Ed Morrisey watched the cloture vote and live blogged it. The immigration bill is dead. a flat majority - 53 Senators - voted against cloture. Not even close.

UPDATE: Now, if we can start getting real enforcement actions like this, we may be able to make real progress on getting the situation back under control. Then we can really address the issue.

Dissolution Of The Three Ds

Daniel Henninger, in his weekly Opinion Journal column (via Real Clear Politics) takes a last look at the US Supreme Court ruling in the Morse v. Frederick case. That's the one everyone will forever remember as the "Bong hits 4 Jesus" case. Henninger recommends reading the opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas which discusses the history of the decline and fall of American public education. Somewhere along the line we lost the "Three Ds" as Henninger calls them: decorum, decency and diligence.

What he's done is rummage back through school cases, mostly from 19th century state courts, to invoke the idea of a public school. His premise is that the schools' role was most certainly in loco parentis, in that they and parents broadly agreed on what made an adolescent grow into a good person; what schools need least is court interference in this hard job.

A North Carolina court in 1837 spoke of the need "to control stubbornness, to quicken diligence and to reform bad habits." In 1886, a Maine court said school leaders must "quicken the slothful, spur the indolent and restrain the impetuous." An 1859 Vermont court spoke of preserving "decency and decorum."

Missouri's court in 1885 found reasonable a rule that "forbade the use of profane language." Indiana's in 1888 ruled in favor of "good deportment." An 1843 manual for schoolmasters speaks of "a core of common values" and teaching the "power of self-control, and a habit of postponing present indulgence to a greater future good."

Antique words from a world long gone? Even Justice Thomas admits "the idea of treating children as though it were the 19th century would find little support today." I'm not so sure about that. How else can one explain the flight from the public schools–into home-schooling, parochial schools, private schools and even charter schools, which invest public principals with greater control? Parents are spending thousands to have what American schools had from 1859 to 1959–some basic measure of the Three Ds: decorum, decency and diligence. Self-control as a higher "common value" than out-of-control.

Justice Thomas argues that the 1969 Tinker case dragged the schools into a morass of arcane First Amendment jurisprudence. He's right.

Here's a final quotation from Monday's "Bong" decision to pass out on street corners: "Students will test the limits of acceptable behavior in myriad ways better known to schoolteachers than to judges; school officials need a degree of flexible authority to respond to disciplinary challenges; and the law has always considered the relationship between teachers and students special. Under these circumstances, the more detailed the Court's supervision becomes, the more likely its law will engender further disputes among teachers and students. Consequently, larger numbers of those disputes will likely make their way from the schoolhouse to the courthouse. Yet no one wishes to substitute courts for school boards, or to turn the judge's chambers into the principal's office." More right-wing rant from Clarence Thomas? Nope, that's liberal Justice Stephen Breyer's concurrence.

The loss of that set of common values is a real problem. It is not a liberal of conservative problem - it is a problem for all of this society. There is plenty of evidence that children need limits on what they do - and that they crave that definition of boundaries. We have somehow lost sight of that when it comes to our schools.

Do Nothing, Get Raise

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, having done virtually nothing whatsoever since taking over in January, has patted itself on the back and given itself a raise in pay. Welcome to Washington.

Democrats have for weeks been privately wringing their hands over whether to accept an automatic 2.5 percent pay increase, fretting that the raise may appear inconsistent with their campaign promises.

But last night, the House made its peace with it, rejecting a bid to block the automatic cost-of-living raise of about $4,400 on a 244 to 181 vote.

Sources say Majority Leader Steny Hoyer supported accepting a bump in the $165,200-per-year salary since the Democrats kept their word by quickly pushing through the first federal minimum-wage increase in nearly a decade after taking power in January.

But Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel– ever conscious of ensuring that Democrats stay in power — was said to be a bit skittish about it, because Democrats made the raise a big issue during the elections. The Illinois congressman has long donated his salary increases to charity.

Emanuel is right to be skittish. The Democratic noise machine was in full power mode yesterday to try to get a meme started that the Republicans were "obstructionist" - for using exactly the same tactics in the Senate that the Democrats used when in the minority, mind you. (When they were doing it, they painted themselves as champions of the underdog.)  Memeorandum had a bunch of prominent left-wingers all spouting the same well-coordinated "spontaneous" language on that subject. But there is no cover for them in the House where nothing has been accomplished of any real value since Pelosi took the gavel. Yet they just took a raise for themselves. Expect that little fact to come back to haunt them around election time.

Immigration Troubles

The Washington Post is reporting that the immigration "reform" bill pending in the Senate appears to be in peril of failing. They cite top legislative aides in both parties as saying the bill will com up short of the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture.

The Senate yesterday turned back a series of amendments from both parties aimed at substantially altering controversial immigration legislation, but the bill shed supporters as it became mired in procedural problems that left backers concerned about its prospects.

The legislation faces a make-or-break vote this morning when senators will decide whether to cut off debate and move to a final vote tomorrow. If it does not get the 60 votes necessary, Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has said he will pull the bill, all but dashing hopes for any meaningful legislation this year.

Top legislative aides in both parties predicted today's vote would be very close but would fall short of keeping the proposal alive.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a key opponent, crowed last night that "they tried to railroad this through today, but we derailed the train." Another opponent, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), said, "I would say to my colleagues: Let's end this thing."

Key Democrats who were on the fence also raised questions. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said the failure of his amendment to bolster family reunification visas "makes it more difficult to vote in favor" of ending debate. The reunification provision was voted down 55 to 40.

Last night's stall came after a day that had left the bill's proponents optimistic. The defeat of provisions intended to toughen the bill or soften its restrictions suggested that the core of the "grand bargain" was holding in the Senate's second attempt to pass an immigration bill supported by the White House.

One key amendment rejected yesterday was a Republican proposal to require all adult illegal immigrants to return to their countries temporarily to qualify for a special new visa.

The provision, an amendment offered by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), was defeated, 53 to 45. But a similar amendment that would require only heads of households to return to home countries is expected to fare better if it comes to the floor, after the vote to shut off debate.

This thing is a mess. What's kind of disingenuous is that last statement "if it comes to the floor". The whole point of the convoluted rules Harry Reid put on this bill was to keep other amendments to come up other than the ones pre-approved in the agreement to bring this thing back up at all. Nothing will come to the floor if cloture is invoked. On to another bit of political peril. The Post is also reporting that John McCain appears to have destroyed his candidacy over the immigration bill. His campaign is in financial ruin because of it.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is not wavering on immigration. This week, he continued to stand firm with President Bush in seeking a Senate compromise on the issue in the face of intense opposition from core activists in the Republican Party.

His advisers refer to such a stance as one of the signatures of his political career: principled stands on tough issues.

And even they concede that, this time, it's costing him dearly.

"From a political perspective, having a candidate that takes on all the tough issues is not always the most politically expedient thing to do," said David Roederer, the chairman of McCain's campaign in Iowa. Asked what he would like to see happen on immigration, Roederer laughed and said: "Wind the clock back and forget that this issue ever came up?"

That sentiment is common among many of McCain's most ardent supporters, who admire his guts but worry about the political toll the debate is taking on their candidate.

McCain already had an uphill battle among conservatives because of his campaign finance "reform". The immigration thing isn't helping him. The Mason-Dixon polls put him in fourth place with less than 10% support. And fundraising is in the toilet for him. He'll be the first "name" candidate to fold.