It Looks Like A Jindal Win In Louisiana

The Corner has results with about 77% of precincts reporting (do they call them precincts in Louisiana?) that indicate a strong win for Bobby Jindal.

Bobby Jindal 513,183 53%
Walter Boasso 173,502 18%
John Georges 135,917 14%
Foster Campbell 121,941 13%

That was better than a half an hour ago, but the AP does not have any better info right now. 53% would mean a flat victory - no run-off election. This is a serious blow to the "Republicans are doomed" CW from the media.

*Sniff* Tiny Tim Would Be So Proud…

The ukulele is experiencing (another) revival. This time Britain is seeing a resurgence in the popularity of the little four-stringed wonder.

Music shops report a roaring trade in the tiny guitar-shaped instruments while some schools are abandoning recorders to set up their own ukulele orchestras.

A reputation for being easy to pick up and play, coupled with its resemblance to the guitar are said to be driving the classroom revival.

Ane Larsen, director of the Kitchen School of Music, teaches school children in Devon and in east London where her lessons have replaced long-running recorder work.

She said unlike the recorder, the ukulele left mouths free for singing and taught children both rhythm and melody. She said "It's definitely becoming more and more popular."

The little, guitar-shaped ukulele lets little kids make music really quickly. My own youngest son picked one up and figured out how to play well enough to perform publicly in two weeks. And they can be used for an amazingly wide range of music styles. Led Zeppelin for example. Then there's the late Israel Kamakawiwo Ole. He's in a class by himself. Over the rainbow, Iz.

UPDATE: Sam sent this link via comments. Jake Shimabukuro does George Harrison.

British SAS Raiding Into Iran?

When I read stories like this, I find myself wondering a couple of things. Is it true or is it deliberate misinformation is one thing. The other one is, if the story is true, why is the media putting their own troops at risk? The Times of London is reporting that British Special Air Services troops are conducting raids into Iran to stop arms smuggling.

BRITISH special forces have crossed into Iran several times in recent months as part of a secret border war against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Al-Quds special forces, defence sources have disclosed.

There have been at least half a dozen intense firefights between the SAS and arms smugglers, a mixture of Iranians and Shi’ite militiamen.

The unreported fighting straddles the border between Iran and Iraq and has also involved the Iranian military firing mortars into Iraq. UK commanders are concerned that Iran is using a militia ceasefire to step up arms supplies in preparation for an offensive against their base at Basra airport.

An SAS squadron is carrying out operations along the Iranian border in Maysan and Basra provinces with other special forces, the Australian SAS and American special-operations troops.

They are patrolling the border, ambushing arms smugglers bringing in surface-to-air missiles and components for roadside bombs. “Last month, they were involved in six significant contacts, which killed 17 smugglers and recovered weapons, explosives and missiles,” a source said. It was not clear if any of the dead were Iranian.

Last week, Bob Ainsworth, the armed forces minister, said the Ministry of Defence was unable to say whether British troops had killed or captured any Iranians in Iraq. The ministry declined to comment, but privately officials insisted British troops never carry out hot pursuit across the border.

Obviously, weapons are getting into Iraq and there are only a few countries they can come from. Iran and Syria are the prime suspects. Given the political structures of both countries, the likelihood of such smuggling operations being conducted without government knowledge and sanction is rather low. Stories like this have been used in the past to send a message to the government involved in the problem that they are on notice that they have been caught. This story sounds like such a warning.

Prop No Longer Useful, Thrown Away

The Times of London is reporting that Hillary and Bill Clinton gave Socks, their White House pet, away when the cat was no longer publicly needed as a prop. Ah, the soft, maternal side of the woman who would be president.

AS THE “first pet” of the Clinton era, Socks, the White House cat, allowed “chilly” Hillary Clinton to show a caring, maternal side as well as bringing joy to her daughter Chelsea. So where is Socks today?

Once the presidency was over, there was no room for Socks any more. After years of loyal service at the White House, the black and white cat was dumped on Betty Currie, Bill Clinton’s personal secretary, who also had an embarrassing clean-up role in the saga of his relationship with the intern Monica Lewinsky.

Some believe the abandoned pet could now come between Hillary Clinton and her ambition to return to the White House as America’s first woman president.

Clinton has been boosting her prospects in the past week with some homespun references to her gender as part of a series of events with the theme Women Changing America, during which she chatted girlfriend-to-girlfriend and mom-to-mom with female voters.

The softening of Clinton’s image seems to be working. Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, predicts that up to a quarter of Republican women will vote for her. She leads Democratic rivals in the polls by 26 points and is scooping up more donations to her war chest from Wall Street and defence contractors than any candidate from either party – an unmistakable indicator of who they think will win in 2008.

Clinton’s treatment of Socks cuts to the heart of the questions about her candidacy. Is she too cold and calculating to win the presidency? Or does it signify political invincibility by showing she is willing to deploy every weapon to get what she wants?

“In the annals of human evil, off-loading a pet is nowhere near the top of the list,” writes Caitlin Flanagan in the current issue of The Atlantic magazine. “But neither is it dead last, and it is especially galling when said pet has been deployed for years as an all-purpose character reference.”

Flanagan’s article, headed No Girlfriend of Mine, points out that Clinton wrote a crowd-pleas-ing book Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets, in which she claimed that only with the arrival of Socks and his “toy mouse” did the White House “become a home”.

Wow. Talk about cold-blooded calculation. The cat as prop for exactly as long as required and not a moment longer. Then dump the poor creature on someone else. I doubt my wife would have voted for Hillary before this. Now? Not a chance in hell. Is this a tempest in a kitty litter box? I don't think it will be. Some people are going to take a lot of offense to this. And if she'd dump a totally dependent animal, how do you think she treats humans?

UPDATE: Thanks to The Pirate's Cove for the link, I'm glad you like the new look! (He always has the best pinups.)

UPDATE: Others: Say Anything, Althouse, GINA COBB, Don Surber, Sweetness & Light, BitsBlog, normblog, Neptunus Lex, Vox Popoli, Suitably Flip, small dead animals, Best line of all of the links is from Gina Cobb: First the Hsus; then the Socks. Brilliant, bravo, Gina. Bustardblog, meanwhile, springs to Hillary's defense by trying to misdirect onto Republicans. The point here is that Hillary is already at a 50% negative rating. 50% of voters say they would not vote for her. The loss of even a few votes is a real problem for her.

(Side note, my wife was revolted by Hillary's actions. My wife is a cat lover - I am extremely allergic to cats. Consequently, we have a cat (down from two after one met an untimely demise). You do not want to mess with a cat lover. You will lose.)

New Keyless Entry System For British Parliament!

The British government has abandoned plans to use a fingerprint scanner to allow entry into the British Parliament. Because a terrorist would be likely to use the above master key if he really wanted to get in.

Plans to use fingerprint scanners to control entry to the Commons have been abandoned over fears that terrorists could cut off an MP's finger to get inside.

Security advisers have warned that a suicide bomber would have no compunction about removing a politician's finger to fool scanners.

The decision appears to stem from concerns that MPs could become real-life victims of scenes played out in last week's episode of BBC1's MI5 drama Spooks - in which agent Ros Myers, played by Hermione Norris, removed a dead man's index finger in order that his fingerprint-encoded laptop could be accessed.

The Commons security experts also said the available technology was unreliable and could not cope with dirty or sweaty hands, or those with particular racial characteristics.

Parliamentary security sources confirmed the decision last week, despite Government plans to impose the same fingerprint-recognition system on the public with ID cards and biometric passports.

They're the lawmakers. They are above the laws they impose upon others. Just a hint: retina prints won't work, either. Right, Mr. Yukkamoto?

The Very Definition Of Breach Of Trust

Remember the frothing rage that some folks expressed over the sexual abuse findings against some members of the Roman Catholic clergy? People had a right to be upset and the victims had every right to push the issue and get some relief for what they had suffered. That's not what I'm asking about. I mean the truly vitriolic anti-religion howls from some quarters as a result of the revelations. Court documents and investigations by the Catholic Church reveal that 4,400 of 110,000 priests were accused of molesting minors in the years between 1950 and 2002. What if you heard that there is an even worse statistic about molestation that involved some 2,570 findings that resulted in disciplinary actions in another group? What is you then heard that the 2,570 findings occurred in a four year period?

What if you heard that the people caught molesting minors happened to be public school teachers? And those are only the ones that have been reported and actually had real action taken.

There are 3 million public school teachers nationwide, most devoted to their work. Yet the number of abusive educators — nearly three for every school day — speaks to a much larger problem in a system that is stacked against victims.

Most of the abuse never gets reported. Those cases reported often end with no action. Cases investigated sometimes can't be proven, and many abusers have several victims.

And no one — not the schools, not the courts, not the state or federal governments — has found a surefire way to keep molesting teachers out of classrooms.

Those are the findings of an AP investigation in which reporters sought disciplinary records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The result is an unprecedented national look at the scope of sex offenses by educators — the very definition of breach of trust.

The seven-month investigation found 2,570 educators whose teaching credentials were revoked, denied, surrendered or sanctioned from 2001 through 2005 following allegations of sexual misconduct.

Young people were the victims in at least 1,801 of the cases, and more than 80 percent of those were students. At least half the educators who were punished by their states also were convicted of crimes related to their misconduct.

The findings draw obvious comparisons to sex abuse scandals in other institutions, among them the Roman Catholic Church. A review by America's Catholic bishops found that about 4,400 of 110,000 priests were accused of molesting minors from 1950 through 2002.

Clergy abuse is part of the national consciousness after a string of highly publicized cases. But until now, there's been little sense of the extent of educator abuse.

Beyond the horror of individual crimes, the larger shame is that the institutions that govern education have only sporadically addressed a problem that's been apparent for years.

"From my own experience — this could get me in trouble — I think every single school district in the nation has at least one perpetrator. At least one," says Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer who has spent 30 years investigating abuse and misconduct in schools. "It doesn't matter if it's urban or rural or suburban."

One report mandated by Congress estimated that as many as 4.5 million students, out of roughly 50 million in American schools, are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade. That figure includes verbal harassment that's sexual in nature.

This is a truly upsetting article if you happen to have children in school - as I do. You'll want to read it all. But you will not enjoy one minute of it. Many of the abusers are shuffled off to another school when allegations are made. The story opens with one teacher who got away with it for 40 years. It is time to take a serious look at why and how these people are being protected - and most importantly, by whom. And some heads need to start rolling for it - anytime yesterday will do nicely.

This is a much, much bigger scandal than the ones involving the Catholic Church. This is happening in your city or town right now. And it has been going on for years and people have been covering it up. (For the record, I believe this activity is confined to a very small percentage of teachers. But something has got to be done about this.)

And In Today’s Completely Pointless News

JK Rowling announces completely fictional character is fictionally gay.

NEW YORK (AP) - Harry Potter fans, the rumors are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall.

After reading briefly from the final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," she took questions from audience members.

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love."

"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.

She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."

Dumbledore's love, she observed, was his "great tragedy."

"Oh, my god," Rowling concluded with a laugh, "the fan fiction."

Which means its time for an IMAO top-ten list contest. Readers are asked to submit a comment giving one of the top ten reasons that fans knew Dumbledore was gay. RightWingDuck has a couple of good prompts up to get you started.

Which means its time for an IMAO top-ten list contest. Readers are asked to submit a comment giving one of the top ten reasons that fans knew Dumbledore was gay. RightWingDuck has a couple of good prompts up to get you started.

Get A Ghoul Nights Rest

A British Theme Park is offering guests a ghoul nights rest. If you book one of their "scare rooms" the staff will do their very best to do just that - scare you.

Maniacally grinning weirdos barging into your hotel room to shriek insanely at you, crank phone calls until all hours and incessant banging on the wall. Normally if you experience these sorts of interruptions to a night's sleep, you've had the misfortune to book into an establishment also playing host to a stag party or touring rugby club. But if subjecting yourself to this sort of nocturnal terror sounds more treat than trick, a stay in one of Alton Towers Hotel's new Scare Rooms could be just the ticket.

It's all in aid of Halloween, of course, a festival the theme park is enthusiastically embracing with a host of spooky activities on offer during its Scarefest. Prices for a stay in a Scare Room start from £46 per person and the one thing guaranteed not to await those retiring for the night is a good kip. The five rooms have been given a suitably ghoulish makeover with red lighting, ripped curtains and blood-stained walls.

Guests can also expect to find themselves tripping over gruesome props, including hideously mutilated soft toys and wooden stakes. The latter could come in handy when warding off visitations from the assorted spectres and fiends that are the hellish highlights of this particular fright night.

They have the full range of characters, from the grim reaper to an evil clown. All the fright you can handle at a bargain price. It you want to book a room, the Alton Towers site is here. If you go to the Scarefest website, they have a scary picture generator. You can upload a picture, then adorn it with a number of new looks. We do not advise uploading a picture of Nancy Pelosi, however. The website should be back up shortly.

Trouble In (Socialist) Paradise

One of (T)Hugo Chavez's underlings, president Evo Morales of Bolivia, is having more than a bit of trouble enacting his socialist utopia. In the latest uproar, more than 7,000 residents of the province of Santa Cruz stormed and occupied the airport there, driving Bolivian troops into a very hasty retreat.

Protesters armed with clubs and waving flags rallied at the airport in the province of Santa Cruz.

The dispute pits Bolivia's richest region against the central government.

President Morales' socialist government had sent in troops after claiming that local officials were illegally demanding landing fee payments.

But the troops pulled back on Friday to avoid clashes with protesters.

Most flights at the Viru Viru airport have been running normally despite the dispute, reports say.

Demonstrators were responding to a call from the Santa Cruz governor, Ruben Costas, for people to turn out in huge numbers on Friday to wrest back control of the airport.

But the 220 troops withdrew before about 7,000 protesters reached the site.

"This has been a victory for the people of this town, and it has been a defeat for the wicked," said Santa Cruz governor Ruben Costas, who is a fierce opponent of President Morales.

The airport is only the flashpoint. In fact there are many disputes, including a local desire for autonomy from the central government and a fierce opposition to Morales' plans to seize the assets of companies in the region - al la his master's asset grabs in Venezuela. I rather suspect there will be more unrest very soon.

Al Gore: The Myth

Al Gore, fresh from his triple crown, an Oscar, an Emmy and a Nobel Political Statement Prize, is riding high in the hearts of the left. Right? Not exactly. Alexander Cockburn from The Nation absolutely destroys Al Gore, the myth, by exposing Al Gore, the shill and hack. It is as amusing as it is ugly.

Already the hysteria about anthropogenic global warming stoked by Al Gore and the Big Lie gang writing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's press releases has done enormous damage to vital environmental cleanup, sidetracking attention and money from work on sewers, toxic waste sites, filthy smokestacks–not to mention the vast disaster of agricultural pollution. Two other consequences of the hysteria will be deadly. Biofuels will steal the meals of the Third World poor and put them in First World gas tanks. Nuclear power is the hysteria's prime beneficiary. As Peter Montague describes it in our current CounterPunch newsletter, "The long-awaited and much-advertised 'nuclear renaissance' actually got under way this fall." NRG Energy, a New Jersey company, applied for a license to build two nuclear power plants in Bay City, Texas–the first formal application for such a license in thirty years.

NRG can confidently await the green light for two reasons. Using the fakery over the supposed effects of man-made greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, the nuclear industry successfully lobbied to pass the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which provides four different kinds of subsidies for atomic power plants. The other shoe promptly dropped with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's sweeping revision of its procedures, drastically attenuating the approval process for new plants. As nuclear plants start to sprout like toadstools across the landscape, it is certainly appropriate to lay a large measure of the blame on Al Gore, who has been a shill for the nuclear industry ever since he came of age as a political harlot for the Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratory in his home state of Tennessee.

For a Man of Peace, Gore has plenty of blood on his CV. Looking back through the 1980s, we find that on every relevant issue, whether it was supporting the contras or Reagan's bombing of Libya in 1986, shilling for the Pentagon's latest weapons systems, voting for nerve gas or backing the Reagan/Bush position on NATO deployments in Europe, Gore's hawkishness was unflagging. In the course of his career he voted for the neutron bomb, the B-2 bomber, the Trident II missile, the MX missile and the Midgetman. He also backed the mini-Star Wars plan. The defense contractors always loved Al, the same way the nuclear plant manufacturers do today.

Obviously, Cockburn and I don't see eye-to-eye on a number of issues. But the willful myopia of the left to Al Gore's true history - and true intentions - is absurd. Cockburn destroys the camouflage and exposes the massive hypocrite that Gore really is.

Excessive Intellectual Capacity?

Sometimes you read things like this and you just shake your head.

FRANKLINTON, La., Oct. 17 — An Oxford-educated son of immigrants from India is virtually certain to become the leading candidate for Louisiana’s next governor in Saturday’s primary election. It would be an unlikely choice for a state that usually picks its leaders from deep in the rural hinterlands and has not had a nonwhite chief executive since Reconstruction.

But peculiar circumstances have combined to make Representative Bobby Jindal, a conservative two-term Republican, the overwhelming favorite. Analysts predict Mr. Jindal, 36, could get more than 50 percent of the vote in the open primary, thus avoiding a November runoff and becoming the nation’s first Indian-American governor. If he fails to win a majority, he would face the next-highest vote getter in the runoff.

Louisiana Democrats are demoralized, caught between the perception of post-hurricane incompetence surrounding their standard bearer, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, who is not running for re-election, and corruption allegations against senior elected officials like William J. Jefferson, the congressman from New Orleans.

Leading Democrats begged off the governor’s race, and Mr. Jindal’s opponents are from the second tier, trailing so badly in polls that Mr. Jindal has ignored most of the scheduled debates among candidates, leaving the challengers to take grumbling verbal shots at his empty chair……

……….Insinuations about his excessive intellectual capacity are still being made. “It’s not going to be about the smartest person in this race,” Walter Boasso, a Democratic state senator and one of Mr. Jindal’s opponents, said recently. But such remarks do not seem to be catching on with voters apparently weary of bumbling at the Capitol in Baton Rouge and at City Hall in New Orleans.

Just better to keep the inept and intellectually challenged Democrats in office, eh, Senator Boasso? Does he even realize what a jerk that remark makes him sound like? Jindal has serious plans to clean things up in Louisiana - the Times points out that making things change in the corrupt Baton Rouge status quo is difficult. But if Boasso represents the quality of the people Jindal will be up against, I'd bet on some good changes.

A Phony Soldier?

Let's be quite clear here, there is a man named Willie Hayes who served honorably in Vietnam, earned several medals there and completely deserved his interment in the Calverton National Cemetery on October 5th. He deserved the military funeral he received and deserves the thanks of the country he served. The problem here is that another Willie Hayes was buried in the cemetery in 2003. One who was using the same Social Security number and the same honorable discharge certificate. And nobody knows who that man really is.

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. - Willie Hayes was a Vietnam veteran who proudly served his country, won several medals and earned himself a plot at a veterans' cemetery upon his death two weeks ago. But there was one problem: As far as the U.S. government was concerned, it buried Willie Hayes nearly four years ago.

An apparently homeless man who went by the name Willie Hayes and had the same Social Security number, military record and date of birth was laid to rest at the cemetery in 2003.

The family of the recently deceased Hayes was stunned to find out about the apparent impostor, and cemetery officials are asking some perplexing questions, among them: Did the man in the grave steal Willie Hayes' identity? Was it a clerical error? Was his name even Willie Hayes?

"If he didn't serve in the Army, he shouldn't be there. It's not fair to the veterans. He stole my brother's identity," said Hayes' brother, Sylvester.

This much is certain: The Willie Hayes who died two weeks ago at 59 served in the Army in Vietnam, earned several medals and worked at a printing business. His family provided cemetery officials with overwhelming documentation of his military service and identity that show he is the rightful owner of a plot at Calverton National Cemetery.

But virtually nothing is known about the other Willie Hayes.

He was buried on Christmas Eve 2003 in the Long Island cemetery, two months after dying in a Bronx nursing home. No one came forward to claim his body, and the nursing home staff believed he was homeless. A spokesman for the center did not return a call for comment.

There appear to be no relatives to interview and precious few clues about his past. If it is determined that the man was an impostor, his body will probably have to be exhumed and put in a pauper's grave in New York City.

The family of Willie Hayes - the one buried on October 5th - presented overwhelming proof of his identity. There is no doubt who that man is. There is no clue how the other man came to possess Hayes' identity. The cemetery has removed the grave marker for the apparent impostor and replaced it with a plain green marker as a placeholder. They are trying to figure out who the first man is, but it seems very unlikely that they will be able to at this late date. But unless some proof is presented that the man is entitled to be in the cemetery is produced, he does not belong in the hallowed ground of Calverton National Cemetery.  

When Myth Meats Reality

No, that isn't a typo. The Washington Post has a sympathetic article about a growing number of small farmers who are defying Federal and State regulations - for a variety of reasons. Some are willfully skirting health and safety regulations in an attempt to compete with big agricultural producers. And some of them are in real trouble as a result.

To some, Richard Bean is a folk hero: the small farmer who dared to sell local, naturally raised pork chops, ribs, sausages and bacon. To the government, Bean looks like a felon.

Since 2001, Bean has sold his pork to restaurants and at farmers markets in the Charlottesville area, where he also offers chicken, vegetables and homemade bread. In many ways, his Double H Farm is exactly what the burgeoning eat-local movement wants: a diversified, family-run farm that sells to nearby customers.

But to make farming sustainable, Bean said, he has evaded government requirements that producers have animals slaughtered and processed in inspected facilities. His defiance led to his arrest Sept. 21 when state police officers, armed and dressed in flak jackets, arrived at the Double H with a search warrant and arrested Bean and his partner, Jean Rinaldi.

The officers handcuffed Bean, confiscated the couple's computer and charged them with felony intent to defraud, which carries the possibility of three years in jail for a conviction. The couple are accused of selling meat improperly labeled "certified organic." They also face seven misdemeanor charges. No hearing date has been set……….

………The Double H also followed organic principles when raising pigs, giving them a diet of non-genetically modified grain, soybeans and corn, an outdoor pen, and no antibiotics or hormones. But Bean never obtained federal certification that would have required him to submit a plan that, among other things, documents practices and substances used in production and allows annual on-site inspections. The cost of certification for a small farm is about $500 a year.

In the beginning, Bean had his hogs slaughtered in a federally inspected plant in Lynchburg, a 40-minute drive away. But in 2002, he began killing the pigs in his barn. "We were set up to do it, and I knew how, so it just made sense," Bean said.

In May 2006, Bean and Rinaldi were visited at a Charlottesville market by F.C. Lamneck, a state meat and poultry compliance officer. Bean said Lamneck told him that his meat should be slaughtered in a federally inspected facility. That June, Bean received a letter from state agriculture officials saying that he was in violation of the Federal Meat Inspection Act but that legal action would not be taken based on his desire to comply with the statute.

Part of what Bean was doing is, frankly, dodging compliance with rules that are in place for food safety. Period. He and his fellow farmers may have a point that the regulations are onerous. But they can blame a dead man for that. Upton Sinclair, in his efforts to bring about a socialist worker's paradise in the United States published one of the most enduring myths in American history and helped bring about the rise of Federal controls over food production. The book - taught still in the schools today as an "expose" - is The Jungle. And it is mostly made up out of the whole cloth. But it raised howls of outrage from the public and led to Federal regulation. It was - and still is - a masterpiece of pure propaganda. Sinclair didn't quite achieve his goals with it - but he got the ball rolling.

One hundred years ago, a great and enduring myth was born. Muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair wrote a novel entitled “The Jungle” — a tale of greed and abuse that still reverberates as a case against a free economy. Sinclair’s “jungle” was unregulated enterprise; his example was the meat-packing industry; his purpose was government regulation. The culmination of his work was the passage in 1906 of the Meat Inspection Act, enshrined in history, or at least in history books, as a sacred cow (excuse the pun) of the interventionist state.

A century later, American schoolchildren are still being taught a simplistic and romanticized version of this history. For many young people, “The Jungle” is required reading in high-school classes, where they are led to believe that unscrupulous capitalists were routinely tainting our meat, and that moral crusader Upton Sinclair rallied the public and forced government to shift from pusillanimous bystander to heroic do-gooder, bravely disciplining the marketplace to protect its millions of victims.

But this is a triumph of myth over reality, of ulterior motives over good intentions. Reading “The Jungle” and assuming it’s a credible news source is like watching “The Blair Witch Project” because you think it’s a documentary.

Sinclair actually opposed the law, incidentally. It was a vast expansion of Federal power and actually a boon to the big meat producers - because American taxpayers footed the entire cost. There are unintended consequences every time the government intervenes in anything. Mr. Bean and his friends may have a point about the regulations - but socialistic agendas started the ball rolling for the regulations they are up against.