In an absolutely shocking scandal at Miramonte Elementary school in Los Angeles, California, two teachers were arrested for lewdness involving their students.  One of the teachers taught third grade, where he allegedly forced children to eat his semen from a spoon over the course of five years.  The case widened yesterday when the police found 200 more photos of the teacher committing lewd acts, bringing the grand total to around 600.  The teacher also sent notes and CDs to students, who were all of nine or ten years old.

So what took so long for this pervert to be caught?  According to the Contra Costa Times, the school is heavily attended by illegal immigrants.  Their parents were afraid to report the situation to the authorities for fear of being arrested and sent back to their home countries.  Manuel Flores, one parent at the school, told the Times that he wouldn’t attend a parents’ meeting, since the school “was full of police.”  Said a lawyer for some of the victims’ families, “One little girl told me she doesn’t want to come forward because she’s afraid her parents will be deported.”

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This week, Los Angeles County okayed a new regulation banning the throwing of Frisbees or footballs on the beaches – which, of course, destroys the purpose of living in Southern California in the first place.  The first offense will earn you a hefty $100 fine; the second, $200; the third and beyond, $500.  You can, of course, apply for a permit.  For parents with industrious children, holes deeper than 18 inches are also banned – so get your kids the cheap plastic shovels or pay a fine.

What’s the point of this law?  Unless it’s to prevent horrific incidents like this, the only point is to raise cash for the state.  This has become the MO for California law enforcement: higher ticket costs, more tickets written.  California is now a police state – except when it comes to policing actual crime in hard-hit areas.  The state, counties, and cities task police officers with going after soccer moms going 45 in a 35 zone rather than monitoring drug-ridden precincts.

The trend is obvious, and California motorists know it: as McClatchy reported back in August 2011, “As the state and cities wrestled with shrinking revenue and growing budget gaps, the California Highway Patrol issued about 200,000 more traffic citations in 2009 than it did two years before.  Sacramento Superior Court, meanwhile, processed about 37,000 more traffic filings last year than in 2006 – a 16 percent increase.”  The size of the fines has escalated dramatically, too: “With the average fine costing as much as $250 and rising, the increase in CHP tickets produced as much as $50 million over two years. That money went to state and local courts, crime labs and other purposes.”

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In a time when America’s immigration system is swamped – when illegal immigrants are routinely caught and released, many of whom are dangerous – it seems that one of ICE’s top priorities is public relations with illegal immigration advocates.  Yesterday, Andrew Lorenzen-Strait announced via the Department of Homeland Security website that he had been named ICE’s “first-ever public advocate.”

Lorenzen-Strait

His job will be to “serve as a point of contact for individuals, including those in immigration proceedings, NGOs, and other community and advocacy groups, who have concerns, questions, recommendations or important issues they would like to raise.” This new role, says Lorenzen-Strait, will help ICE “focus the agency’s immigration enforcement resources on sensible priorities” – code for doing less, since the Obama Administration consistently makes a big deal out of the notion that most illegal immigrants aren’t dangerous and therefore should be left to their own devices – and “implement policies and processes that priorities the health and safety of detainees in our custody.” And he has one more job, according to ICE Enforcement Director John Morton: he’ll have to explain to all of us why ICE lets illegal immigrants off the hook.

What did Lorenzen-Strait used to do? He’s been with ICE since 2008. Before that, he was a pro bono attorney in Maryland, doing child advocacy and divorce work via Community Legal Services. How does that qualify you for working in immigration, exactly? And then there’s the question of money spent. It’s more and more obvious these days that working for the government is the quickest road to a healthy paycheck – and Lorenzen-Strait’s salary proves it. In 2010, he was paid $112,224 by the feds. We can only imagine that the salary has risen since then. Not bad for being a public relations officer who does nothing to actually enforce immigration law.

We’re constantly hearing that the government has trouble finding places to cut spending. This seems like a good place to start.

President Obama says we should allow the federal government to take charge of our healthcare; as usual, the “experts” are best positioned to instruct us how to live our lives.

Except they’re not.  Today, according to the AP, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans that they eat too much bread and rolls, and that such foods account “for more than twice as much sodium as salty junk food like potato chips.”  No wonder we’re fat.

Unfortunately, the federal government that now tells us that we eat too much bread is the same government that originally told us to stuff our pieholes with … bread.  Remember the original food pyramid?

I remember this pyramid – I grew up learning about it in my vaunted public school.  Notice how the bottom section is enormous, and suggests 6-11 bread, cereal, rice and pasta servings each day.  Why did the government originally mandate that?  According to Harvard Medical School’s Eat, Drink and Be Healthy (Simon & Schuster, August 2001), the government was attempting to help out farmers via the Department of Agriculture’s recommendations.

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Mike Flynn recently wrote a cri de coeur on Big Government asking why conservatives have failed to move back the needle on government spending despite the profusion of conservative think tanks, foundations, policy shops, grass-roots organizations, and sundry other pointy-headed groups, mostly based in Washington, DC (although every state now has their equivalents, usually in the state capital.)

Why? It’s the culture, smarty-pants.

By “culture,” I don’t mean Washington, DC culture. I mean pop culture.

While the brightest and most talented conservatives pour into DC and pump out one study after another, endlessly debating arcane policy with a handful of other pinheaded intellectuals, the left has been busy consolidating their iron grip on the real reins of power — movies, TV, music, art.

If half the conservatives who pine to work at Heritage or Cato would only turn their ambitions to moviemaking and showrunning, conservatism might have a fighting chance.

As it is, you can move the musical chairs in DC around all you want, but if you don’t recapture the culture — or even a healthy slice of it — you may win a political battle or two now and then, but you’re destined to always play catch-up in the war long-term.

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Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is a rising star in the Republican Party, a true representative of the tea party spirit. She’s plainspoken, brilliant, and incisive. She’s running for re-election to the House in Minnesota. And today, I had the chance to pre-record an interview with Congresswoman Bachmann for my radio show, “The Ben Shapiro Show,” broadcast Sundays 1-4 PM EST on 810 AM in Orlando, FL. You can also listen live at big810am.com.

In the interview, Congresswoman Bachmann characterizes President Obama’s response to the BP spill as “infantile,” says he’s the worst president in American history, says he’s siding with the Islamic world against Israel. How’s that for guts! Take a listen:

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There used to be a certain level of decorum incumbent upon the office of the President of the United States.  After all, the office is more than the man that occupies it.  It’s also more than his politics or platform.  In many ways the Presidency is the embodiment of America.  It’s the face we put forward to the world.  With the election of President Obama the presidency has also awakened dreams in many children who never believed the White House was attainable.

The mandates of the office dictate how those entrusted with its power should act.  The Obama White House has failed to maintain the high standards of this office.  Rather than operating in a dignified manner the staff has desecrated the office by resorting to old-school Chicago-style politics.  That is to say they’ve used the Presidency to reward their friends and single out and attack their enemies.

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The allegations raised in “White House Creates ACORN for the Arts” and prior stories about the NEA enlisting artists who receive government grants to support President Obama’s political goals certainly raise a number of issues.  Foremost among them is whether such actions violate White House policy and potentially federal law.  The White House Counsel was concerned enough about the conference call that it was compelled to issue new guidelines for public outreach meetings, noting that some of the comments on the call may have been “misunderstood as seeking to inappropriately politicize activities of the NEA.”  But beyond violating these White House guidelines, which could result in further forced resignations but little else, what is really at issue with the alleged conduct?

By seeking to enlist the private sector in lobbying for the President’s agenda, the alleged conduct may have violated the Anti-Lobbying Act (18 U.S.C. §1913), which as Ben Shapiro pointed out in a previous piece, explicitly provides:

No part of the money appropriated by any enactment of Congress shall, in the absence of express authorization by Congress, be used directly or indirectly to pay for any personal service, advertisement, telegram, telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device, intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress, a jurisdiction, or an official of any government, to favor, adopt, or oppose by vote or otherwise, any legislation, law, ratification, policy, or appropriation, whether before or after the introduction of any bill, measure or resolution proposing such legislation, law, ratification, policy or appropriation.

The Anti-Lobbying Act, according to government handbooks, prevents government employees from engaging in “substantial ‘grass roots’ lobbying campaigns … expressly urging individuals to contact government officials in support of or opposition to legislation …. Provid[ing] administrative support for lobbing activities of private organizations”

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