Sometimes I wonder if in order to be working for law and justice in government you have to be a bad guy yourself or be totally incompetent. It started couple of weeks ago when LA County Sheriff Lee Baca mysteriosly sent Paris Hilton home. That got LA city attorney Rocky Delgadillo, a friend of Magic Johnson, all upset. He complained bitterly about Baca's action. However, the media then found that Delgadillo's wife had drove with a suspended license. She was found to have no insurance which led to the finding that Delgadillo also had no insurance. Then it was found that his wife had crashed his government car. The government was billed for the repair. The media also found that Delgadillo's staff had to do personal errands for him and babysit for his family. Oh, he was also recently fined for improper campaign finances. Whatever happened to "those who lives in glass houses should not throw stones"?

The police chiefs in LA are always in trouble. The performance of the LA district attorney's office in the O.J. trial was notoriously poor. Here in Ventura County a few years ago the D.A. was found to commit fraud. So it is unlikely that "Law and Order" will be using any of our local hero's stories soon. Of course at the Federal level things are not any better. The best thing you can say about John Ashcroft is that he is no Alberto Gonzalez.

This will be my last blog until I come back from vacation. Writing over the internet under my blog name will probably get me screened and arrested while I am visiting China. Of course having complained about the law enforcement dept. here, they probably won't let me come back!

An article in the LA times yesterday got me angry. It was about a school district in Chula Vista, CA that served "alternate" lunches to kids whose parents were behind in their lunch payments. The kids were given cheese sandwiches instead of the usual burgers or pizzas that is on the main menu. They are also allowed to use the salad bar. This cut the yearly debt from $300,000 to $67,000. Of course the dead beat parents are complaining because it hurt their children's self-esteem. But of course if the parents had not stiff the school, the kids would not be stigmatized. Another case of people not taking their responsibilities but blaming others.

Of course I don't even think it is the role of the school to feed the kids. It is your kids, you should feed them! The poor kids get free breakfast and lunches at school. The other kids pay $1.50 which means the lunches are heavily subsidized. The schools are failing and yet society wants the schools to take on responsibilities that used to be those of the parents. Sex education used to be taught by parents but now the school teaches it. There is a call for medical clinics at the schools. They already have school nurses now. Pretty soon you won't have to keep the kid from school and take him to the doctor if he is sick. The doctor will be at school. How much longer do you think before they pass out condoms at school?

One of the first blogs I wrote was about Katrina. I have not written about it or New Orleans since then because almost all of the stories I have heard since then has been bad news. Rebuilding has been slow and lots of people will never go back. There was the story of the trailers provided by FEMA that caused allergy or asthma reaction in young children. Numerous stories of people cheating the government to get money for free and numerous stories of people really needing help not getting it. Finally today I saw a program on Dateline NBC that was a good story.

This was about the Vietnamese community which had to relocate to Houston and elsewhere after Katrina. Unlike many other communities the Vietnamese have rebuilt in New Orleans. There are several reasons why they are successful. First of all they did not depend on the government. They did not wait for handouts which may never come as many have found out. In fact the local government made things worse for them by trying to not allow rebuilding of the neighborhood. Ultimately the passion of the community won out. Many of these people came to the U.S. as refugees. Having survived typhoons in a war-torn Vietnam and then the high seas after they left their hoemland, Katrina did not seem to be an unbeatable enemy. Finally they were tied together by the Catholic church. They had a great priest as their leader and the organization of the church to help them.

I am not a big fan of organized religion but in this case the church and the priest deserve a lot of credit. It also show that we can't depend on the government. Unfortunately many people have to come to expect the government to bail them out even in much less dire situation than Katrina. Finally this shows that immigrants give strength to our country because many have survived disasters. They have learned how to rebuilt their lives before.

Missed the Democratic debate last week. I understand I didn't miss much. No new good ideas. None of the second tier candidates made any progress. The biggest coverage of the three top candidates of was of them professing their faith for Jesus. As I said before, I don't think God is going to bless us just because our leaders end every speech with "may God bless America". I find that people who goes around saying how great God is in their lives are usually moralistically deficient. Hilary Clinton is an example of that. Does anyone really believe that the Clintons are religious people? Yet she is saying how faith kept her marriage together. The truth is nobody can possibly win the presidency without pretending that he or she is religious, preferrably a protestant chrisitan. So instead of coming with ideas of their own, candidates all pretend they get strength from God. I don't have any respect for that since I always believe that God helps those who help themselves.

I did catch most of the Republican debate. I am just as disappointed with the Republicans. Actually I like Ron Paul. Or is Paul Ron? At least he knows that preemptive strikes and trying to create democracy by military force are bad ideas. I understand McCain's position and he has no choice now but continue his advocation for more aggresssion in Iraq. Giuliani was my favorite among the Republicans before but I don't see how I can vote for him after hearing him talk about Iraq. He still insists that invading Iraq was a good idea. Mitt Romney tried his best to avoid the question as to whether he would have invaded Iraq. Finally he said that if Hussein had let inspectors in before the war then the war would not have started. This shows how much he kept track of the war since Hussein did let inspectors in before the U.S. invaded. This was almost as much a blunder as when Ford said that Poland was not under Soviet control during his debate with Carter.

So the quality of candidates is still poor. Since all the primaries are being moved up this means that only candidates with lots of money backing can campaign in numerous primaries at once. This makes it unlikely that an unknown candidate will get momentum by a good showing in New Hampshire or Iowa. So no fresh faces to keep things interesting!