From Theodore Dalrymple at UK’s Times Online (HT OpinionJournal.com’s Best of the Web):

The Striking Idiocy of Youth

The sight of millions of Frenchmen, predominantly young, demonstrating in deep sympathy and solidarity with themselves, is one that will cause amusement and satisfaction on the English side of the Channel. Everyone enjoys the troubles of his neighbours.

….. Whether they know it or not, the people on the streets in France were demonstrating to keep the [predominantly Muslim] youth of the banlieues — who recently so amused the world for an entire fortnight with their arsonist antics — exactly where they are, namely hopeless, unemployed and feeling betrayed. For unless the French labor market is liberalized, they will never find employment and therefore integration into French society. You have only to speak to a few small businessmen or artisans in France — the petits bourgeois so vehemently despised by the snobbish intellectuals — to find out why this should be so. The French labor regulations make employment of untried persons completely uneconomic for them.”

Of course. It’s always the lowest people on the economic ladder who get hurt the most by artificial labor-market restrictions. Seen properly from Dalrymple’s perspective, the French marchers are engaging in selfish racism, “whether they know it or not.”

The ghost of Jayson Blair must still be haunting the Old Grey Lady

This is a week old, but too good to ignore, and it didn’t get wide notice. The link requires free registration at The Times (HT Larry Kudlow):

Editors’ Note: March 23, 2006, Thursday An article in The Metro Section on March 8 profiled Donna Fenton, identifying her as a 37-year-old victim of Hurricane Katrina who had fled Biloxi, Miss., and who was frustrated in efforts to get federal aid as she and her children remained as emergency residents of a hotel in Queens.

Yesterday, the New York police arrested Ms. Fenton, charging her with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny. Prosecutors in Brooklyn say she was not a Katrina victim, never lived in Biloxi and had improperly received thousands of dollars in government aid. Ms. Fenton has pleaded not guilty.

For its profile, The Times did not conduct adequate interviews or public record checks to verify Ms. Fenton’s account, including her claim that she had lived in Biloxi. Such checks would have uncovered a fraud conviction and raised serious questions about the truthfulness of her account.

Jaw, hits, floor.

Here is the substance of a conversation David Smith had with Bill Sloat that Bill blogged on March 13 (bold is mine):

Smith, who is en route to the Lake County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner tonight, confirmed during a cell-phone conversation that he ran in Tennessee in 2004. He said he never appeared on the ballot in Utah in 2002, but did flirt with running for Congress in that state.

”He’s got a lot of venom towards us,” Smith said of Pierce. ”He’s upset and he’s started taking shots at us.”

Um, let’s refresh from the previous post: This is a picture of the results of the first 7 BALLOTS at the Utah GOP Convention on May 11, 2002 for the 2nd Congressional District in Utah:

I guess “the truth” looks like “venom” to people who aren’t used to dealing in the truth.

The fact is, obviously, that David Smith was involved in three BALLOTS before he was eliminated, after amassing the remarkable total of 16 votes.

Going to a state nominating convention, getting on the ballot and receiving nomination votes was no “flirtation,” and you, David Smith, are sooooo busted.

NOTE: This was originally posted at 1AM, but was moved to the top for most of the business day Thursday because of the importance of the topic.
_________________________________

All county endorsement processes in Ohio’s US Senate race, at least the open and fair ones, ended Tuesday night with the Fulton County shocker, where incumbent Senator Mike DeWine was defeated by his two challengers, both of whom earned a “qualified” designation.

So NOW, one of those challengers, David Smith, releases this “fact sheet” at his web site. I believe its content was posted sometime in the Tuesday-Wednesday overnight period (anyone with info to the contrary, please e-mail me).

How convenient. After forcing us to rely on this vague, platitude-laden bio for four months, NOW David Smith tells the world that:

• He’s lived in Ohio for no more than 19 months (not that you couldn’t find it, but from real estate records I’d rather not link to, the last purchase date listed at their residential address is August 24, 2005; however, since he ran in the June 2005 Second District Primary, you would think he had to have moved here sometime between August 2004 and March 2005).
• He ran for Congress in Utah in 2002.
• He ran for Congress in Tennessee in the GOP Primary on August 5, 2004.
• He ran for Congress in Ohio in the Second District GOP Primary that took place on June 14, 2005.

I think you’ll see shortly why Mr. Smith waited until now to let everyone know about those previous races.

Mr. Smith-Has-No-Chance-of-Going-to-Washington went to the Utah State GOP convention as a congressional candidate in May of 2002. The convention used what is known as Instant Runoff Voting:

In 2001, the Utah Republican Party adopted instant runoff voting (IRV) for elections that take place at its state conventions. Several counties also use IRV at their county conventions. The party uses IRV to elect officers and to nominate candidates — candidates can win outright at the convention or, if neither of the final two candidates has 60% support, advance to a runoff primary.

IRV was used to nominate congressional candidates in 2002.

Utah’s 2nd District began its IRV with twelve candidates. On each ballot, the last place finisher was eliminated. David Smith was ousted after the third ballot (the entire process of 11 ballots it took to get to the two primary opponents Bridgewater and Swallow is not shown for space reasons):

Apparently buoyed by the stunning success of getting sixteen (count ‘em) people to vote for him, Smith achieved the following result in August 2004’s First District Primary in Tennessee (available in a PDF that can be found at this link; click on “County Totals” under “U.S. House Republican Primary”):

And here is how he did, with the results of all other candidates listed, in the 2005 Second District Primary in Ohio:

Going from a bit over 10% of the vote in 2004 to less than 1% in 2005 is not something one would ordinarily define as “progress.”

Now let’s ask a few serious questions:

• Did David Smith disclose his complete residency history and electoral record to the endorsers listed at his web site before obtaining their endorsements?
• Would Smith have obtained their endorsements if he had disclosed them?
• How many members of county endorsement committees who voted for Smith, especially in Miami County (where he received 118 votes, or roughly 27% of the total) and Fulton County (where he garnered somewhere between 10-18 votes out of 28, and received a rating of “qualified”) would have voted differently if they had known his full residency history and electoral record? (I have one answer already from one of the two counties I just mentioned, which I will keep anonymous for the time being: “I DO think it would have made a difference.”)

More is coming, or as they say, “developing …..”

Free Links:

• Apple Releases Maximum Volume Controls for iPods — This appears to be a fear-of-lawsuits response. I expect Eric Clapton and Ted Nugent to sue whatever company is involved any day now for failing to put maximum volume controls on Marshall amplifiers in the 1960s and 1970s. Zheesh.
• Talk about having a long way to go — German unemployment drops, to 12%. The economy has been so weak in Germany for so long that similar “improvements” have led to the highest level of optimism in 15 years, going all the way back to the early years of East and West German reunification.
• The optimism about the US economy, especially in tech, inherent in the pre-emptive venture capital phenomenon, is clearly making its way into the broader markets, as the NASDAQ hit a 5-year high yesterday.
• Speaking of 5-year highs — Japan’s Nikkei hit its highest level since August 2000 Thursday.
• It seems to me that if it takes expansion of H-1B visas from 65,000 to 115,000 a year, which still seems a pretty modest level, and which The Heritage Foundation supports, to keep the tech boom going because there aren’t enough tech-savvy US workers, I’m all for it. Contrary arguments are welcome.
• Fine, y’all can check it out and tell me about it — “Use of Pilotless Planes May Be on the Rise.” If you’re able to report back to me after trying it, I’ll consider that a positive first step.

It has apparently made significant headway against a woman’s Parkinson’s disease symptoms, and was featured on “The Miracle Workers” on Monday night (the article below was written before the program aired):

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