Political Briefs

BUSH IN THE STICKS — Air Force One landed at the Springfield-Branson Airport yesterday at 6:55 p.m. carrying President George W. Bush, Karl Rove and the gang. According to Springfield’s KY3, he is scheduled to speak at a campaign rally for Jim Talent at 9:20 this morning. The two will then head to an invitation-only rally at noon at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin.

JUDGE GETS A BREAK — According to the Post-Dispatch, U.S. District Judge Charles A. Shaw has been cleared in a complaint filed earlier this year alleging he told 314 people at a local naturalization ceremony to vote for Congressman Lacy Clay. The Appeals Court ruled that there was not “sufficient evidence” to believe the incident actually happened.

Apparently the word of a Post reporter and 314 new Americans just doesn’t cut the mustard.

THE MAYOR, THE CHIEF, and “THE SYSTEM” — The Mayor and Police Chief Joe Mokwa were side-by-side this week defending their city’s honor (if not their streets) from the label of “Most Dangerous City”. But as the American Spectator observed yesterday, just a few days before, Mokwa was trying to explain why his department can’t seem to keep this city safe — it’s the judges’ fault!

Mokwa complained to the Police Board that his officers “keep re-arresting the same habitual criminals, whose presence keeps some neighborhoods in a crime rut and makes the job of officers more difficult and dangerous.”

No wonder, the chief continued, “that it’s difficult to make an impact on crime while there are so many predators on probation”…

The problem — and more important, the solution — is plain, noted one beleaguered police commissioner: “The police are doing desperate work on a nightly basis….The neighborhoods are crying out, but the judicial system is turning its back to them….We’ve got to demand stronger sentencing, stronger results. It’s our judicial system that’s letting the people down.”

The police board blaming the judges? You know, in a place where elected officials were more accountable to the people, a police chief would be taking heat from his boss, the mayor. Or the circuit attorney would be taking heat from her boss, the people, for not getting tough sentences for hard offenders.

But in the City of St. Louis, “the man” blames “the system” for our dangerous predicament. And we just watch.