If there is a previous record for “Highest Level of Saturation Press Coverage with No Political Party Affiliation Named” (HT to e-mailer Jason), the Cleveland press corps almost broke it.

In looking over three publications’ stories about today’s massive and far-ranging police actions in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, Ohio, I found only one reference to the Democratic Party affiliation of those involved. Cleveland’s sole daily newspaper put up a half-dozen related blog entries and failed to name anyone’s party in any of them.

First, though, from the always-reliable (in shielding troubled Dems’ party affiliations) Associated Press, writer Joe Milicia named no party in eight paragraphs:

FBI searches county offices in Cleveland

FBI and IRS agents served at least 10 search warrants Monday at Cuyahoga County offices, businesses and homes as part of a public corruption investigation, authorities said.

About 200 FBI agents, some brought in from Pittsburgh to help with the searches, raided the county administration building, engineer’s office and an information services center.

….. Agents entering the administration building searched the third and fourth floors, including Auditor Frank Russo’s office and Commissioner Jimmy Dimora’s office, Wilson said. FBI vehicles were spotted at both oAgents entering the administration building searched the third and fourth floors, including Auditor Frank Russo’s office and Commissioner Jimmy Dimora’s office, Wilson said. FBI vehicles were spotted at both of their homes.

At the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the paper’s 9:35 AM blog entry (video is available at the link) also put up eight paragraphs without identifying the Democratic Party affiliation of any of those involved:

Cuyahoga County offices, businesses, homes raided in FBI corruption investigation

More than 100 federal agents swooped into Cuyahoga County offices, the homes of officials including County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, and several businesses. The FBI said it was investigating public corruption, but agents would not confirm whether all of Monday morning’s raids were connected.

• Agents cordoned off county workers on the administration building’s third and fourth floors and targeted Dimora’s office. The workers were sent home after filling out forms identifying themselves.

• Searches were also conducted at the West Side office of the county engineer and the county’s data center. …..

• The searches involved both the FBI and the IRS, including the tax agency’s entire Northeast Ohio criminal unit.

Separately, the Plain Dealer is working on entering the record books for “Most Related Blog Entries with No Party Affiliation.” Besides the one just excerpted, there’s this, this, this, this, and this.

Only Kim Wendel of TV station WKYC broke the party-affiliation silence in the story’s seventh paragraph — but only after missing at least a half-dozen opportunities to do so in the previous six:

FBI/IRS raid the Cuyahoga County administration building, other county offices, officeholders’ homes

The FBI and IRS executed search warrants early Monday morning inside the Cuyahoga County administration building, the county engineer’s office and elsewhere throughout Cuyahoga County, including the Independence home of Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora; the Mayfield Village home of Cuyahoga County Auditor Frank Russo; and the Parma home of J. Kevin Kelley, a Russo employee and a Parma school board member.

At the county administration building, the FBI’s Scott Wilson said the raid was the culmination of a longstanding investigation but did not elaborate when asked by Channel 3’s political correspondent Tom Beres.

FBI and Internal Revenue Services vehicles encircled the building early this morning. They have questioned and released dozens of employees on the third and fourth floors.

Those employees were told to go home.

People inside the building said the search warrants are being executed on the third and fourth floors and that the warrants are focused on information regarding public and political corruption.

The third floor is where Russo’s office is and the fourth floor houses the Cuyahoga County commissioners — Jimmy Dimora, Tim Hagan and Peter Lawson Jones.

Dimora is also chairman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.

Of course we don’t know the full nature of what the FBI and IRS were looking for, exactly what led them to conduct their searches, or what they might have uncovered. But it would appear that the “use by” date for the “culture of corruption” theme employed against Republicans by Democrats to gain political power in the Buckeye State during the past few years might have passed.

In Ohio, it’s likely that even most casual followers of the news know that Cleveland and Cuyahoga County politics are dominated by Democrats. But again, as with the ongoing criminal situation involving Democratic Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (commented on last week at NewsBusters and BizzyBlog), the whole nation deserves to know which political machine is involved with corrupt and/or criminal activities. As in Detroit, Cleveland-area journalists appear to be determined to prevent that as much as they possibly can.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Former Pennsylvania Congressman Pat Toomey, currently head of Club for Growth.

From a Wall Street Journal editorial this morning:

The profound failure of inner-city public schools to teach children may be the nation’s greatest scandal. The differences between the two Presidential candidates on this could hardly be more stark. John McCain is calling for alternatives to the system; Barack Obama wants the kids to stay within that system. We think the facts support Senator McCain.

“Parents ask only for schools that are safe, teachers who are competent and diplomas that open doors of opportunity,” said Mr. McCain in remarks recently to the NAACP. “When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children.” Some parents may opt for a better public school or a charter school; others for a private school. The point, said the Senator, is that “no entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity.”

Mr. McCain cited the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program, a federally financed school-choice program for disadvantaged kids signed into law by President Bush in 2004. Qualifying families in the District of Columbia receive up to $7,500 a year to attend private K-12 schools. To qualify, a child must live in a family with a household income below 185% of the poverty level. Some 1,900 children participate; 99% are black or Hispanic. Average annual income is just over $22,000 for a family of four.

A recent Department of Education report found nearly 90% of participants in the D.C. program have higher reading scores than peers who didn’t receive a scholarship. There are five applicants for every opening.

….. The state of California just announced that one in three students in the Los Angeles public school system drops out before graduating. Among black and Latino students in L.A. district schools, the numbers are 42% and 30%. In the past five years, the number of dropouts has grown by more than 80%. The number of high school graduates has gone up only 9%.

The silver linings in these dismal clouds are L.A.’s charter high schools. Writing in the Los Angeles Daily News last week, Caprice Young, who heads the California Charter Schools Association, noted that “every charter high school in Los Angeles Unified last year reported a dropout rate significantly lower than not only the school district’s average, but the state’s as well.”

On recent evidence, the Democrat Party’s policy on these alternatives is simply massive opposition.

….. A visitor to Mr. Obama’s Web site finds plenty of information about his plans to fix public education in this country. Everyone knows this is a long, hard slog, but Mr. Obama and his wife aren’t waiting. Their daughters attend the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where annual tuition ranges from $15,528 for kindergarten to $20,445 for high school.

Sometimes it goes beyond massive opposition.

Having contemplated the disgrace I noted yesterday in Rochester, NY (”In Rochester, Almost Half of 7th and 8th Graders Fail Exam — Even When Given Some of the Answers”), I’m led to the inescapable conclusion that urban politicians who are overwhelming Democratic, and the overwhelmingly liberal media that cover them, would prefer to avoid criticizing their school systems — no matter:
- how poor the performance.
- how high the dropout rate.
- how much violent crime, including sexual assault, takes place.
- how derelict administrations and teachers are in doing their duties (as seen in Rochester).

The reason for this criticism avoidance — except occasionally, and even then usually in concert with please for more money, which is so not the problem — is that to engage in criticism will give legitimacy to the arguments of those who advocate alternatives.

They just won’t allow for that.

The hypocrisy of Democrats like the Obamas, who have the means to avoid the awful Chicago Public School system but refuse to contemplate giving poor parents the opportunity to do the same, is obvious.

The Obamas know you that only have one chance to get it right with their children’s education, and have chosen not to wait for the “we’ll have it right in a few years” mentality that pervades the education system. “A few years” never comes.

Poor parents also know that you only have one chance to get it right with their children’s education. But presidential candidate Barack Obama won’t let poor parents who want it choose a better alternative for that one chance.

Their kids be (educationally) damned. Literally.

Oh, and the long-terms needs of the US for a skilled workforce — despite the pretty rhetoric, the heck with that too.

Had to be somewhere this morning, and the database overloaded the server. I’m back now.

From New Zealand (HT Good News Blog):

Jul 16, 2008

An Auckland man who survived a 170 metre plunge down a mountain in the Southern Alps, says he owes his life to his mate.

Steffen Poepjes waited in the mountains for two hours while his friend ran for help.

“I thought I was a goner…I was terrified,” says Poepjes from his hospital bed.

The climbing pair videoed their successful climb to the top of Mount Philistine.

But it all went wrong on the way down.

“I was facing the rock, down climbing and just one foothold gave way, and it was over from there,” says Poepjes.

Poepjes is calling his friend, Cameron Walker, a hero.

“He saved my life pretty much. I was pretty sore and pretty cold up the mountain waiting, but if it wasn’t for him, no one would have found me,” he says.

Walker says he feared the worst while climbing down the mountain looking for his friend after seeing him fall.

“I was looking for a blood trail straight away,” he says.

But after finding his friend alive, he was able to raise the alarm.

“I told him to keep his eyes open, and he wasn’t to sleep,” says Walker.

After raising the alert, a rescue chopper was there within an hour and winched Poepjes to safety. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.