Crime (Fighting) Doesn’t Pay

A now-former employee of a Whole Foods supermarket in Ann Arbor, Michigan has discovered that crime fighting does not pay. Hence his employment status. Said former employee stopped a shoplifter in the store by tackling him - and was promptly fired by management.

John Schultz said he lost his job as a fishmonger at a Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor after he knocked a suspected shoplifter to the ground and detained him.

Schultz was fired on Monday. "Our policy is clear and listed in the employee booklet," said Kate Klotz, a Whole Foods spokeswoman.

"The fact that the employee in question touched the suspect is grounds for termination."

Schultz said he was acting as a private citizen and not as a Whole Foods employee. "The fact that I worked at the store at (the time of the robbery) is coincidental," he told The Ann Arbor News.

Well, Whole Foods certainly has sent a strong message, hasn't it? Employees have been told to let thieves alone and the thieves have been told it is open season at the store. Absolutely brilliant. Let's see what Whole Foods' shrinkage figures jump to in the next few months.

The Target

The Opinion Journal has an editorial today that should make a lot of people think hard about what is happening in Pakistan. They point out that al Qaeda has been failing in the West, losing in Iraq and having its proxy taliban in Afghanistan see loss after loss after loss. The fear is that al Qaeda is after the big score by hitting in Pakistan: a ready made nuclear arsenal.

"In Pakistan there are two fault lines. One is dictatorship versus democracy. And one is moderation versus extremism." Thus did Benazir Bhutto describe the politics of her country during an August visit to The Wall Street Journal's offices in New York. She was assassinated yesterday for standing courageously, perhaps fatalistically, on the right side of both lines.

We will learn more in coming days about the circumstances of Bhutto's death, apparently a combined shooting and suicide bombing at a political rally in Rawalpindi in which more than 20 others were also murdered. But there's little question the attack, which had every hallmark of an al Qaeda or Taliban operation, is an event with ramifications for the broader war on terror. With the jihadists losing in Iraq and having a hard time hitting the West, their strategy seems to be to make vulnerable Pakistan their principal target, and its nuclear arsenal their principal prize.

In this effort, murdering Bhutto was an essential step. Hers is the highest profile scalp the jihadists can claim since their assassination of Egypt's Anwar Sadat in 1981. She also uniquely combined broad public support with an anti-Islamist, pro-Western outlook and all the symbolism that came with being the most prominent female leader in the Muslim world. Her death throws into disarray the complex and fragile efforts to re-establish a functional, legitimate government following next month's parliamentary elections, which seemed set to hand her a third term as prime minister.

This is exactly the kind of uncertainty in which jihadists would thrive. No doubt, too, there are some in the Pakistani military who will want to use Bhutto's killing as an excuse to cancel the elections and reconsolidate their own diminished grip on power. In the immediate wake of the assassination, members of Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party have accused President Pervez Musharraf of being complicit in it. But whatever Mr. Musharraf's personal views of Bhutto–with whom he had an on-again, off-again political relationship–his own position has only been weakened by her death. It would be weakened beyond repair if he sought to capitalize on it by preventing the democratic process from taking its course.

That is exactly what I am worried about at this point. The thugs of al Qaeda could never win an election, as Bhutto pointed out, but they could disrupt things enough to seize power. With a nation as a base and with a nuclear missile capability, they would be able to wreak havoc on the planet. Even though they would cease to exist as a result of unleashing nuclear war, they would have already done the damage by doing so.

Frightening picture, isn't it?

Dead Heat On The Political Merry-Go-Round

The Los Angeles Times reports that Obama has pulled even with Clinton in New Hampshire and that there is a three-way tie with those two and Edwards in Iowa. The Times, as well as the rest of the media, is now trying to figure out how much impact the Bhutto assassination is going to have on the rapidly approaching voting. They are speculating wildly, but nobody really knows the answer to that question yet - and probably won't until the votes are actually tallied, no matter how learned the pundits try to sound about it.

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama has wiped out Hillary Rodham Clinton's once-commanding lead in New Hampshire and the two remain virtually tied with John Edwards in Iowa, as more and more voters get off the fence and decide whom to support, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll has found.

Obama drew backing from 32% of New Hampshire Democrats who intend to vote in the primary, compared with Clinton's 30% — a statistical dead heat. That's a dramatic shift from September, when a similar poll found him trailing 35% to 16% in the state that will hold its presidential primary Jan. 8.

In Iowa, which opens the 2008 presidential voting with its Jan. 3 caucuses, the poll found Sen. Obama of Illinois, Sen. Clinton of New York and former Sen. Edwards of North Carolina in a statistical three-way tie.

But other poll findings suggest Clinton might gain stature in both states if Democrats' concern about world affairs increases after Thursday's assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The poll shows that Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire consider Clinton far better equipped than her rivals to safeguard national security — as do Democrats around the country.

Such a shift in focus away from domestic policy also could affect the Republican presidential contest and benefit Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose campaign has rebounded in New Hampshire. He's second behind Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.

The fact is that voters in both states might pay no attention to what just happened in Pakistan. The people who are going to show up at the caucuses and first primary are mainly highly partisan voters. So trying to read the tea leaves on this one is not so much divination as it is wild guessing. I'd also caution that the poll was taken in the days leading up to Christmas and may or may not be all that accurate because of that. Who knows? But Pollster.com has been aggregating all of the polls and there are real trends (which are always the most valuable information coming out of polling - not the individual snapshots). Clinton is sliding, Obama is gaining. Huckabee is really gaining. How much the outside world's events change all that nobody can say right now. The national polls are not even close for the Democrats right now, however. Clinton has a commanding lead while the Republicans have no clear frontrunner at the moment.

Reasonable People

Peggy Noonan looks at all the candidates currently scurrying around in Iowa scratching for votes and judges them on her personal standard for this election: Is the candidate 'reasonable?' As in a reasonable person. Her judgments might not really surprise you. Then again, they might.

This is my 2008 slogan: Reasonable Person for President. That is my hope, what I ask Iowa to produce, and I claim here to speak for thousands, millions. We are grown-ups, we know our country needs greatness, but we do not expect it and will settle at the moment for good. We just want a reasonable person. We would like a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane. We'd like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it.

Here are two reasonables: Joe Biden and Chris Dodd. They have been United States senators for a combined 62 years. They've read a raw threat file or two. They have experience, sophistication, the long view. They know how it works. No one will have to explain it to them.

Mitt Romney? Yes. Characterological cheerfulness, personal stability and a good brain would be handy to have around. He hasn't made himself wealthy by seeing the world through a romantic mist. He has a sophisticated understanding of the challenges we face in the global economy. I personally am not made anxious by his flip-flopping on big issues because everyone in politics gets to change his mind once. That is, you can be pro-life and then pro-choice but you can't go back to pro-life again, because if you do you'll look like a flake. The positions Mr. Romney espouses now are the positions he will stick with. He has no choice.

John McCain? Yes. Remember when he was the wild man in 2000? For Republicans on the ground he was a little outré, if Republicans on the ground said "outré," as opposed to the more direct "nut job." George W. Bush, then, was the moderate, more even-toned candidate. Times change. Mr. McCain is an experienced, personally heroic, seasoned, blunt-eyed, irascible American character. He makes me proud. He makes everyone proud.

You'll have to go read for yourself her opinions on Obama, Clinton and her dodge on Giuliani. I suspect many voters not rigidly in lockstep with their party  - or rabid ideologists - are actually looking for a reasonable candidate. While I would be in favor of one myself, I am not at all sure that reasonableness is going to be the deciding factor or not. There have been too many extreme positions staked out. (Some, like Clinton, are trying to stake all of them out at once, in classic Clintonian triangulation.) The irony here is that many states pushed up their primaries in order to challenge the primacy of Iowa and New Hampshire. That, in turn, has made both of those states even more important this year. The outcome of those early contests may send the races off in a completely new direction.

Spud Arson

How embarrassed is the Boise, Idaho fire department today after word got out about their most excellent Christmas Eve adventure? After all, it isn't every day that firemen get to fight a fire in their own firehouse - especially because of flaming potatoes.

Boise firefighters returning from a medical call had to turn their hose on the firehouse kitchen after an overheated pan full of Tater Tots melted and set some cabinets ablaze.

The Christmas Eve fire at Station 8 was quickly extinguished, with no injuries. No damage estimate was available.

Investigators were trying to determine why a computerized safety system that automatically turns off appliances when firefighters are called away apparently had not been activated.

Obviously, the spuds were smarter than the computer. Or the firemen.

K-8.5 Unit Catches Suspect

Tink the mighty crime-fighting dog can't really be called part of the K-9 unit. They have size requirements, after all. But Tink rounded up a suspect just as well as the regulars do it. Even if Tink is a chihuahua.

The dog's Christmas Day adventure began when four suspects who were fleeing police crashed a stolen minivan into a hillside in this Sierra foothill town east of Sacramento, and one of them fled.

Tink, a Pomeranian and Chihuahua mix, found him hiding under a neighbor's motor home and chased him into the woods, said Wendy Anderson. The dog belongs to her son.

Her son and husband directed a law enforcement helicopter to where the 20-year-old man was hiding.

One hopes the Auburn, California police are having a special unit patch made up for Tink as an honorary member. Note to criminals: watch out for the little guys - they overcompensate.