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Guns in Schools
Test scores at Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools are up this year for all racial and socio-economic groups, and so are the number of guns -- and guns discharging -- in our schools. Just goes to prove that all children can learn something at CMS if they survive long enough.
Iraq/Saddam/Terror
The people of Saudi Arabia, the country from which most of the Sept. 11 hijackers hailed, watched as the US attacked Iraq, a country from which none of the hijackers hailed, in an effort to combat terrorism in America.
Now, while US troops are patrolling Iraqi borders, the next generation of terrorists is crossing ours. From our unprotected chemical plants to our shoddy nuclear security, they're bound to find this a land of boundless opportunity.
While we're doing the rest of the world a service by pulling Saddam Hussein out of a rat hole over there, terrorist cells here are digging into theirs.
Clay Aiken
The American Idol runner-up was perhaps Charlotte's best export this year. Aside from making UNC-Charlotte a household name nationally, his other never-before accomplished feats included beating out Oprah Winfrey for the number one spot on the National League of Junior Cotillions' "Ten Best-Mannered People of 2003" list.
Don't Drop the Baby
The local Department of Social Services took a well-publicized beating for interfering too much in the controversial Stratton case, in which a gaggle of Christian children was taken from their parents by bureaucrats whom critics say were essentially seeking to trade them for federal adoption money. Soon after, the DSS came under fire for doing too little in other cases where children suffered at the hands of caretakers they should have been taken away from. By year end, the agency was under fire for allegedly favoring a gay couple over a straight one as adoptive parents.
Things could be worse. At least Michael Jackson doesn't live here.
Big Brother is Watching
This year, the City of Charlotte has found new ways to use your money to keep an eye on what you're up to. This summer, the state legislature voted to let the city start using cameras to catch speeders on film so it could ticket them and fine them $50. Then this month the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police announced that the city was going to use federal money to add more "security" cameras uptown so they could gather something they call "criminal intelligence," which includes keeping track of everyone from terrorists to panhandlers, all supposedly in the name of keeping us safe. All this is in addition, of course, to the cameras the city mounted at intersections a few years back to photograph the license plates of those running red lights.
Miracle at the Sav-A-Lot
What 50-plus FBI agents working full time for over two years couldn't accomplish with a $24 million budget, Jeffrey Scott Postell pulled off in less than 15 minutes at no additional cost to taxpayers. The 21-year-old rookie cop, a one-year veteran of the nine-member Murphy Police Department, bagged world-famous abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph in June after arresting an unknown man lurking behind the Sav-A-Lot in the small mountain town where Rudolph had been spotted on and off for five years.
It was a feat for which his training as a Wal-Mart security guard and later as a police officer had apparently prepared him and was yet another public humiliation for the FBI's agents, most of whom have no Wal-Mart security training. Rudolph will be tried this summer in Alabama for the 1998 bombing of a Birmingham abortion clinic.
Leave Us Alone
This year, Americans traded a bit of the First Amendment for a bit of peace and quiet in two court decisions. One bans telemarketers from calling them at home if they sign up on a no-call list. The other, a ruling on campaign finance by the Supreme Court, bans the generally unpleasant campaign commercials run by special interest groups right before an election.
Both bans don't apply to the politicians who backed them, of course. Their campaigns can still call you at home during dinner soliciting donations or your vote, and they can still run all the nasty commercials they want right before an election, regardless of whether what they have to say about their opponents is true or not.