Thursday, December 24, 2009

Polk: Officials should follow sacred oath

Our County Attorney has her say in the paper after the editors took a stab at hamstringing her yesterday. This piece quotes most of what the Republic published, edited a bit for the local audience. Did Ms Polk submit this at the same time as the Republic piece? Did the editors mess with it to make it appear that she submitted it in response to the Courier coverage? Given past experience, it's not unlikely. I also notice that someone neglected to post the byline.

No matter, Ms Polk comes through loud and clear that Sheriff Arpaio and Maricopa Attorney Thomas are far off the reservation and intent on worse. Joe's rabid fans will demand that she back up her opinion with facts, something she may not legally do. It's clear to me that she's gone about as far as she can with it.

Again, Sheila Polk is a stand-up girl and solid public servant. This will not please the power-brokers in her party, but I've never noticed that she cared much about that. Remember, she didn't have to do this, and there's no gain for her in it.

Update, Sunday: I see the byline eventually showed up.

Editorial: New deportation plan is a win-win

The unnamed Courier editor is all for the Accidental Governor's new plan to simply take the illegals out of our jails and give them to the Feds for deportation. What he doesn't ask is how we failed to think of this before.

So I took a look. The Daily Sun and other actual news outlets report that, surprise, this is nothing new. We've been doing it since 2005, azzamannerperfack, and

About 200 criminal immigrants are released early from prison in Arizona each month and turned over to federal authorities. Eighty percent of those are immediately deported to Mexico, while the rest are sent to federal detention centers, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Admitting that ol' Janet was actually doing this for years before new Jan announced it as a big budget savings might be inconvenient to the Republican memory hole, of course. But
Under a previously approved program Brewer now wants implemented, about 1,300 prisoners would be turned over to ICE in the coming 18 months, saving the state about $5.7 million.

Hang on, check those numbers. We've been handing over 200 prisoners a month, and the Governor wants to up that to 1,300 in 18 months? I smell an arithmetic fail, if nothing else.

But cutting the budget is really really important, right? Even if by a measly six million clams that apparently the system has already been saving for four years.

If this little dance is enough to fascinate the editor, it's no wonder he can't figure out what Steve Norwood is doing.

Prescott man's 'Peanuts' collection ...

I have to say it, as a news story this feature on someone's penchant for accumulating kitschy dust-collectors is an embarrassment. Perhaps the editors are nursing a case of Peanuts envy.