Back in Texas when someone had over-developed sense of entitlement, we used to say, “He’s got a handful of Gimme and and mouthful of Much Obliged.”

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has that attitude built in to his DNA. He thinks it is his right to spit in the eye of America when he wants to showboat his generosity in spending other people’s money on social services for foreigners: San Francisco Advertises Sanctuary to Attract More Illegals.

But if Washington is handing out cash, Newsom’s snout is deep into the trough. He pursued drug-fighting money from the feds with apparently no intention of using the grant for the purpose intended — and what was the DOJ doing giving millions of dollars to a sanctuary city to prosecute crimes often committed by illegal aliens?

The U.S. Department of Justice wants San Francisco to repay $5.4 million in grant money earmarked to help fight the war on drugs in states bordering Mexico because federal auditors found the city was not eligible for the funding.

San Francisco had sought the grant under the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative, which compensates law enforcement agencies in California and other border states for the costs of handling prosecutions in lieu of federal authorities.

As of March of last year, the city claimed it had handled more than 2,241 such cases, but a federal audit released this week found that none of the cases had been referred by federal officials to District Attorney Kamala Harris’ office as required under the program.
[Feds want $5.4 million back from S.F., San Francisco Chronicle, April 4, 2008]

Earlier this week, Newsom claimed a massive undercount of the city that cost it a lot in federal money: Newsom says U.S. census missed 100,000.

Mayor Gavin Newsom said the U.S. census has somehow overlooked 100,000 San Francisco residents and the city is failing to collect millions of dollars in federal funding as a result.

To compound the wackiness, the city paid an unspecified amount for the study by the Social Compact, a Washington-based non-profit that promotes inner-city investment. Who are these “uncounted” — illegal aliens, homeless living in Golden Gate Park and the like? Newsom believes that such people represent “incredible purchasing power” but the notion that persons living on the fringes have lots of disposable income doesn’t pass the most rudimentary credibility test.

Washington is not about to fork over millions of dollars to San Francisco on the basis of a bogus study, but Newsom keeps pitching anyway for more handouts. He wants all the benefits of being the mayor of an American city with none of the responsibility.

As another commemorative date rolls around on the nation’s civil rights calendar—the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death—the Fourth Estate pushes the expected monotonous tales of injustice, disparity, and oppression through a distorted retrospective lens.

In terms of race relations, the nation’s media elite predictably views full “equality” as an unmet goal. Lost in all the spilled ink on King and the Kerner Commission report is the lack of honesty and candor in thoroughly assessing the nation’s ongoing racial problems.

Just imagine the following taking place: In idle chatter around the water cooler at the Education Department,  John Jones, an upper echelon supervisor in the office that evaluates the No Child Left Behind initiative, raises the following point to his colleague Tom Smith as others are in earshot: “Well, Tom, I don’t think we can honestly evaluate the nation’s state of race relations without considering the impact of biological and cultural differences that exists between racial groups and what these differences may mean in terms of average mental ability and educational performance…” and then ask yourself: How long will Jack Jones remain in this position or even employed at the Education Department?

For whatever else one can say about the current state of our nation’s race relations, the Left has succeeded in creating a “PC-climate” in which any candid observation that suggests racial differences are more than just surface matters and transcend socio-economic factors is a risk not worth taking in public.

Are we really better off as a result?

Marvin Arrington is a black judge in Fulton County , Georgia who last week asked all the whites present, (mostly lawyers and staff) to leave his courtroom so he could give a Bill Cosby style stemwinder to the blacks present, (mostly defendants.) This caused some controversy, and it reminded me of some of the attitudes of the Old South, with the colors reversed.

Fulton judge repeats talk given to black-only audience

By STEVE VISSER

[Send him mail]
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
April 3, 2008

Fulton County Judge Marvin Arrington, who last week asked white people to leave his courtroom while he chastised black defendants, on Thursday delivered much the same message to anyone who wanted to hear it.

“We have insanity going on in the black community,” he said to the courtroom as TV news crews filmed his spiel. “If we don’t say something, the infrastructure of this community is going to collapse. It will be like living in the wild, wild west.

Arrington, 67, stepped into controversy last week when he asked whites to leave so he could lecture defendants about turning their lives around. The judge soberly noted that the whites were mostly lawyers and staff. He said almost all of his defendants in Fulton County are black.

He thought he would be more effective if he did it before a black-only audience which he said was unfortunate because it caused people to focus on his method rather than his message. Civil society, he said, depends on heeding the message.

The judge apologized if he offended any whites but said he was just trying to do some good. He ticked off a list of crimes to help illustrate why he was delivering a message to African-American youth.

The first one he mentioned is the kind of hate crime that doesn’t get mentioned in the national press, much:

Arrington said a white man and a white woman were buying crack cocaine near Christian City in South Fulton County when they got into a dispute with the black vendor over the price. The dealer wanted $20 for the rock, the male buyer wanted to pay $15.

“He (the dealer) said, and I quote, ‘I get tired of you crackers,’ and he shot the fella in the head. The girlfriend said, ‘Why would you do that?’ And he said, ‘We don’t need no witnesses,’ and shot her in the head,” Arrington recalled. A security guard investigated and the gunman killed him. Three deaths, the judge said, in 20 minutes.

Interesting story, and he’s saying some very sensible things. But remember, the main point of this story is that Marvin Arrington is a black judge–see his website for photos.(I was surprised to see a judge with a personal website, but it turns out that Superior Court Judge is an elective office in Georgia.) Read the AJC story and see if there’s anywhere it actually says that he’s black.

Oh, you can tell–if a white judge ordered the courtroom to be cleared of white so he could lecture blacks, it would be a much different story.

This is the kind of story where they frequently add the phrase “who is black” to someone’s name, but they haven’t done so here. It does say things like:

African-Americans in positions of authority have an obligation to speak out to young people who are on the path to becoming street thugs before they turn into killers, Arrington said.

But hey, white people say things like that, too. (There have been several complaints about it.) Congratulations to Judge Arrington for saying these things, and negative congratulations to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for obscuring the issue again.

British thriller writer Gavin Lyall once said that

Opinionated writing is always the most difficult … simply because it involves retaining in the cold morning-after crystal of the printed word the burning flow of molten feeling.

I know what he means, but I’m here to tell you Ann Coulter doesn’t have this problem. She now has a copy of Dreams from My Father, and is quoting it in her latest column, Obama’s Dimestore ‘Mein Kampf’. [April 2, 2008]

It’s interesting that while Mark Steyn referred to Jeremiah Wright’s preaching as “stark, staring, out-of-his-tree, flown-the-coop nuts,” Ann, who has read and is quoting the Obamabiography is applying much the same language to Obama himself–“The man is stark bonkersville” and “a flabbergasting lunatic.” Read the whole thing to see why.