Source: Union Tribune
By Logan Jenkins
A brick — the Crazy Heart Is a Lonely Hunter award — to Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, for his by-now-infamous prescription: the mass deportation of American citizens who lack “soul.”
Even making allowances for the setting — the first-term congressman was delivering red meat to tea party folks — young Hunter stepped into a YouTube bear trap when he suggested that citizens with American birth certificates born to undocumented parents should be deported.
“We’re not being mean,” he said. “We’re just saying it takes more than just walking across the border to become an American citizen. It’s what’s in our souls.”
Tell that one to Lady Liberty. (“It takes more than sailing across the Atlantic to become an American citizen.”)
Arizona, as you know, has come under blistering fire for a new law endowing state police with the power to ask for “papers” on the basis of how a person looks or acts.
Hunter would take that physical inspection to a psychic level. He would have us look deep into souls to determine if they owe their citizenship to the cracked soles of their parents’ feet.
Yes, there’s a fringe debate brewing over “anchor babies” and “birth tourism.” North County’s Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach, is keen on reversing the historical understanding of the 14th Amendment. Hunter is tracking the same prey.
For the time being, however, an American is an American is an American, period.
Anyone who disagrees has lost his soul.
A bouquet — the Resign, Baby, Resign award — to Comischell Rodriguez, the first-term trustee on the Del Mar school board who did something that more public officials should do when they’re really mad.
Resign.
As board president, Rodriguez says, she was subject to “the distractions of petty power struggles and nitpicking.” In response, she gave up the coveted title but, by remaining as a trustee, retains her voice and her vote.
This sort of gesture is one way elected officials can take a high-principled road while delivering low, but in many cases deserved, blows to opponents.
As the lone vote against firing Superintendent Sharon McClain on March 31, Rodriguez evidently failed a loyalty test among her board colleagues.
The other trustees — a controversial (a generous adjective) majority that got rid of former Superintendent Tom Bishop and then McClain, whom they hired — apparently cut Rodriguez out of the loop. Documents were signed, attorney consulted without her knowledge, she says. In her view, the president’s gavel had been taken from her.
So she took a bold step, newsworthy in itself, and sent out a press statement with teeth, if not talons.
Rodriguez didn’t get mad, at least not in public.
But she did get even.
A brick — the Impaired Reporting award — to the writer of this column for crashing into the history of Escondido’s driver checkpoints.
In Monday’s column, I wrote that two years ago the current Escondido police chief, “without council debate or vote, embarked on a controversial series of checkpoints to stop unlicensed drivers and impound their cars.”
Dick Daniels, Escondido councilman and candidate for mayor in the November election, told me the way it was:
“Driver checkpoints didn’t begin two years ago under Chief (Jim) Maher. (They were) initiated in 2004 by then-Chief Duane White, well before the rental ban ordinance. It wasn’t until well after the council abandoned the rental ordinance that attention became focused on checkpoints. And that’s the way it was.”
A check of the archives showed Daniels to be correct.
In late 2004, for example, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that “police impounded 80 vehicles during a driver’s license checkpoint yesterday at Mission Road and Quince Street.”
A bouquet — the All Aboard ... Please award — to the North County Transit District for going the extra marketing mile to entice motorists to leave their cars and take the Sprinter in the merry month of May.
Weekend travelers who travel in pairs on the Sprinter (and the Breeze buses) will enjoy a 50 percent cut in the normal $5 fare. Yes, it’s the old two-for-the-price-of-one deal.
And this Friday, the NCTD is hooking up with the Oceanside Arts Commission to turn the Sprinter’s evening (4:30 to 7:30) commute into a festival called Art Traxx. At six stations, train riders will be regaled by musicians, dancers and “interactive visual artists.”
Who knows? Inducements may increase traffic on an underused — and oversold — line that to some is a potential boon (and others a boondoggle).
But I have a better idea than price-cutting and concerts at the end of a long work day:
Shoulder massages.
Hire masseurs to roam the trains giving free five-minute rubs. They say taking the Sprinter relieves stress. Here’s a way to make the claim demonstrably true.
You may have a better marketing idea. Send it to me. Together, we’re going to find the silver bullet to turn this Disoriented Express into a success.
Logan Jenkins: (760) 476-8212; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com
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