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Fennville basketball player Wes Leonard 

JON SCHULTZ

The Holland Sentinel 

Mar 04, 2011 @ 08:28 AMLast update Mar 04, 2011 @ 04:30 PM 

Fennville, MI —

A moment of jubilation for hundreds of Fennville basketball fans turned to horror Thursday night as junior Wes Leonard collapsed on the court after celebrating his team’s dramatic victory and clinching of a perfect season.

About two hours later, the 16-year-old Leonard died at 10:40 p.m. at Holland Hospital, said Tim Breed, the hospital’s spokesperson.

Leonard, the undefeated Blackhawks’ star player, scored the game-winning layup in a 57-55 win over Bridgman in overtime at Fennville High School. He fell to the ground amid teammates and fans who stormed the court.

“Wes arrived at Holland Hospital in cardiac arrest,” Breed said. “All efforts were made after he arrived to help restart his heart, but unfortunately, those efforts were not successful.”

Moments before he collapsed, his teammates had given him a celebratory hoist into the air before a team huddle.

Leonard is the second Fennville athlete to die in 14 months. Wrestler Nathaniel Hernandez passed away in January of 2010 after suffering a seizure at home following his participation in a high school wrestling match. He was 14.

Leonard was recovering from the flu, Fennville coach Ryan Klingler told The Sentinel Saturday night after Leonard played helped the Blackhawks win the inaugural SAC Tournament title with a win over Bangor.

“Obviously, in the midst of celebration, I think shocking is exactly the word,” Fennville Superintendent Dirk Weeldreyer said before Leonard’s ambulance left the high school. “And certainly our deepest prayers are with Wes and his family, and obviously his health is far more important than any game.”

An autopsy will likely be conducted to determine the cause of death, Breed said.

Leonard arrived at Holland Hospital in an ambulance at 9:20 p.m. Before the ambulance left the high school, an EMT appeared to hook him to a defibrillator on the court at about 8:48 p.m.

He appeared to lose consciousness after he collapsed. His teammates started shouting for help.

The gym doors were opened, letting cold air in, and about 10 people tending to him fanned his body with everything from a jersey to a clipboard prior to the EMT’s arrival.

“It’s tough to take in,” said Leonard’s teammate Shane Bale, who stood near the gym’s exit doors with a group of others as the ambulance with Leonard remained outside. “It’s like somebody from your family, you know?”

John Norton, Bridgman’s athletic director, said he didn’t see Leonard collapse, but he could tell something went wrong.

“I just heard the gym go quiet, and I went in with our team and I came back out and helped the managers clean up the bench, and I could tell by the look on people’s faces the severity of it,” said Norton, one of about 30 people remaining in the gym after Leonard’s ambulance left. “I went back in to tell my coach to keep the guys in the locker room, and they already had a pretty good idea of what was going on, and one of our players (Josiah Badger) was leading our team in a prayer when I walked back in.”

After Leonard’s ambulance left from the parking lot just outside the gym, Klingler led a group of teammates from outside back into the lockerroom.

A crying woman outside broadcast a prayer for Leonard on her speakerphone as the ambulance sirens blared in the distance.

“Wes is just an outstanding young man, and he has obviously been a leader for our athletic teams, and he is just an absolutely great kid,” Weeldreyer said.

The game that seemed so important — the school’s parking lots overflowed with cars, fans spilling out of the stands, watching with standing room only cheering their team to a 20-0 record — suddenly became “irrelevant.”

“It’s pretty irrelevant, yeah,” Norton said. “That was a good game, but when something like this happens, sports are pretty irrelevant.”

Leonard was a two-sport standout at Fennville and arguably the Blackhawks’ greatest athlete since Richie Jordan, a member of the National Federation of State High Schools Association’s Hall of Fame.

Earlier in the season, Leonard eclipsed 1,000 points. He scored 21 Thursday to help his team dig out of a 14-point hole against their state-ranked foe.

On the football field, Leonard quarterbacked the team to the Southwestern Athletic Conference North Division championship this season and threw seven touchdowns in the game that clinched it.

In an interview with The Sentinel at Tuesday’s practice, Klingler talked about how Leonard had a great drive to succeed and that he saw the “bigger picture.”

“That’s what makes him a little different. He takes care of his body better than probably anybody I’ve ever coached,” Klingler said Tuesday. “Spends a lot of time on his own in the weight room. He’s a special kid.”

Are America's Best Days Behind Us?

I am an American, not by accident of birth but by choice. I voted with my feet and became an American because I love this country and think it is exceptional. But when I look at the world today and the strong winds of technological change and global competition, it makes me nervous. Perhaps most unsettling is the fact that while these forces gather strength, Americans seem unable to grasp the magnitude of the challenges that face us. Despite the hyped talk of China's rise, most Americans operate on the assumption that the U.S. is still No. 1.

But is it? Yes, the U.S. remains the world's largest economy, and we have the largest military by far, the most dynamic technology companies and a highly entrepreneurial climate. But these are snapshots of where we are right now. The decisions that created today's growth — decisions about education, infrastructure and the like — were made decades ago. What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and '60s: the interstate-highway system, massive funding for science and technology, a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies. Look at some underlying measures today, and you will wonder about the future.

The following rankings come from various lists, but they all tell the same story. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), our 15-year-olds rank 17th in the world in science and 25th in math. We rank 12th among developed countries in college graduation (down from No. 1 for decades). We come in 79th in elementary-school enrollment. Our infrastructure is ranked 23rd in the world, well behind that of every other major advanced economy. American health numbers are stunning for a rich country: based on studies by the OECD and the World Health Organization, we're 27th in life expectancy, 18th in diabetes and first in obesity. Only a few decades ago, the U.S. stood tall in such rankings. No more. There are some areas in which we are still clearly No. 1, but they're not ones we usually brag about. We have the most guns. We have the most crime among rich countries. And, of course, we have by far the largest amount of debt in the world.

The Rise of the Rest

 
Many of these changes have taken place not because of America's missteps but because other countries are now playing the same game we are — and playing to win. There is a familiar refrain offered when these concerns are raised: "We heard all this in the 1980s. Japan was going to dominate the globe. It didn't happen, and America ended up back on top." It's a fair point as far as it goes. Japan did not manage to become the world's richest country — though for three decades it had the second largest economy and even now has the third largest. It is also a relatively small country. To become the largest economy in the world, it would have to have a per capita GDP twice that of the U.S. China would need to have an average income only one-fourth that of the U.S. to develop an economy that would surpass ours.

But this misses the broader point. The Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, who has just written a book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, puts things in historical context: "For 500 years the West patented six killer applications that set it apart. The first to download them was Japan. Over the last century, one Asian country after another has downloaded these killer apps — competition, modern science, the rule of law and private property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic. Those six things are the secret sauce of Western civilization."

To this historical challenge from nations that have figured out how the West won, add a technological revolution. It is now possible to produce more goods and services with fewer and fewer people, to shift work almost anywhere in the world and to do all this at warp speed. That is the world the U.S. now faces. Yet the country seems unready for the kind of radical adaptation it needs. The changes we are currently debating amount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Sure, the political system seems to be engaged in big debates about the budget, pensions and the nation's future. But this is mostly a sideshow. The battles in state capitals over public-employee pensions are real — the states are required to balance their budgets — but the larger discussion in Washington is about everything except what's important. The debate between Democrats and Republicans on the budget excludes the largest drivers of the long-term deficit — Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare — to say nothing of the biggest nonentitlement costs, like the tax break for interest on mortgages. Only four months ago, the Simpson-Bowles commission presented a series of highly intelligent solutions to our fiscal problems, proposing $4 trillion in savings, mostly through cuts in programs but also through some tax increases. They have been forgotten by both parties, in particular the Republicans, whose leading budgetary spokesman, Paul Ryan, praises the commission in the abstract even though he voted against its recommendations. Democrats, for their part, became apoplectic about a proposal to raise the retirement age for Social Security by one year — in 2050.

Instead, Washington is likely to make across-the-board cuts in discretionary spending, where there is much less money and considerably less waste. President Obama's efforts to preserve and even increase resources for core programs appear to be failing in a Congress determined to demonstrate its clout. But reducing funds for things like education, scientific research, air-traffic control, NASA, infrastructure and alternative energy will not produce much in savings, and it will hurt the economy's long-term growth. It would happen at the very moment that countries from Germany to South Korea to China are making large investments in education, science, technology and infrastructure. We are cutting investments and subsidizing consumption — exactly the opposite of what are the main drivers of economic growth.

So why are we tackling our economic problems in a manner that is shortsighted and wrong-footed? Because it is politically easy. The key to understanding the moves by both parties is that, for the most part, they are targeting programs that have neither a wide base of support nor influential interest groups behind them. (And that's precisely why they're not where the money is. The American political system is actually quite efficient. It distributes the big bucks to popular programs and powerful special interests.) And neither side will even talk about tax increases, though it is impossible to achieve long-term fiscal stability without them. Certain taxes — such as ones on carbon or gas — would have huge benefits beyond revenue, like energy efficiency.

It's not that our democracy doesn't work; it's that it works only too well. American politics is now hyperresponsive to constituents' interests. And all those interests are dedicated to preserving the past rather than investing for the future. There are no lobbying groups for the next generation of industries, only for those companies that are here now with cash to spend. There are no special-interest groups for our children's economic well-being, only for people who get government benefits right now. The whole system is geared to preserve current subsidies, tax breaks and loopholes. That is why the federal government spends $4 on elderly people for every $1 it spends on those under 18. And when the time comes to make cuts, guess whose programs are first on the chopping board. That is a terrible sign of a society's priorities and outlook.

The Perils of Success

 
Why have our priorities become so mangled? Several decades ago, economist Mancur Olson wrote a book called The Rise and Decline of Nations. He was prompted by what he thought was a strange paradox after World War II. Britain, having won the war, slipped into deep stagnation, while Germany, the loser, grew powerfully year after year. Britain's fall was even more perplexing considering that it was the creator of the Industrial Revolution and was the world's original economic superpower.

Olson concluded that, paradoxically, it was success that hurt Britain, while failure helped Germany. British society grew comfortable, complacent and rigid, and its economic and political arrangements became ever more elaborate and costly, focused on distribution rather than growth. Labor unions, the welfare state, protectionist policies and massive borrowing all shielded Britain from the new international competition. The system became sclerotic, and over time, the economic engine of the world turned creaky and sluggish.

Germany, by contrast, was almost entirely destroyed by World War II. That gave it a chance not just to rebuild its physical infrastructure but also to revise its antiquated arrangements and institutions — the political system, the guilds, the economy — with a more modern frame of mind. Defeat made it possible to question everything and rebuild from scratch.

America's success has made it sclerotic. We have sat on top of the world for almost a century, and our repeated economic, political and military victories have made us quite sure that we are destined to be No. 1 forever. We have some advantages. Size matters: when crises come, they do not overwhelm a country as big as the U.S. When the financial crisis hit nations such as Greece and Ireland, it dwarfed them. In the U.S., the problems occurred within the context of a $15 trillion economy and in a country that still has the trust of the world. Over the past three years, in the wake of the financial crisis, U.S. borrowing costs have gone down, not up.

This is a powerful affirmation of America's strengths, but the problem is that they ensure that the U.S. will not really face up to its challenges. We adjust to the crisis of the moment and move on, but the underlying cancer continues to grow, eating away at the system.

A crucial aspect of beginning to turn things around would be for the U.S. to make an honest accounting of where it stands and what it can learn from other countries. This kind of benchmarking is common among businesses but is sacrilege for the country as a whole. Any politician who dares suggest that the U.S. can learn from — let alone copy — other countries is likely to be denounced instantly. If someone points out that Europe gets better health care at half the cost, that's dangerously socialist thinking. If a business leader notes that tax rates in much of the industrialized world are lower and that there are far fewer loopholes than in the U.S., he is brushed aside as trying to impoverish American workers. If a commentator says — correctly — that social mobility from one generation to the next is greater in many European nations than in the U.S., he is laughed at. Yet several studies, the most recent from the OECD last year, have found that the average American has a much lower chance of moving out of his parents' income bracket than do people in places like Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Canada.

And it's not just politicians and business leaders. It's all of us. Americans simply don't care much, know much or want to learn much about the outside world. We think of America as a globalized society because it has been at the center of the forces of globalization. But actually, the American economy is quite insular; exports account for only about 10% of it. Compare that with the many European countries where half the economy is trade-related, and you can understand why those societies seem more geared to international standards and competition. And that's the key to a competitive future for the U.S. If Olson is right in saying successful societies get sclerotic, the solution is to stay flexible. That means being able to start and shut down companies and hire and fire people. But it also means having a government that can help build out new technologies and infrastructure, that invests in the future and that can eliminate programs that stop working. When Franklin Roosevelt launched the New Deal, he spoke of the need for "bold, persistent experimentation," and he shut down programs when it was clear they didn't work. Today, every government program and subsidy seems eternal.

What the Founding Fathers Knew

Is any of this possible in a rich, democratic country? In fact it is. The countries of Northern Europe — Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland — have created a fascinating and mixed model of political economy. Their economies are extremely open and market-based. Most of them score very high on the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. But they also have generous welfare states and make major investments for future growth. Over the past 20 years, these countries have grown nearly as fast as, or in some cases faster than, the U.S. Germany has managed to retain its position as the world's export engine despite high wages and generous benefits.

Now, America should not and cannot simply copy the Nordic model or any other. Americans would rebel at the high taxes that Northern Europeans pay — and those taxes are proving uncompetitive in a world where many other European countries have much lower rates and Singapore has a maximum personal rate of 20%. The American system is more dynamic, entrepreneurial and unequal than that of Europe and will remain so. But the example of Northern Europe shows that rich countries can stay competitive if they remain flexible, benchmark rigorously and embrace efficiency.

American companies are, of course, highly efficient, but American government is not. By this I don't mean to echo the usual complaints about waste, fraud and abuse. In fact, there is less of those things than Americans think, except in the Pentagon with its $700 billion budget. The problem with the U.S. government is that its allocation of resources is highly inefficient. We spend vast amounts of money on subsidies for housing, agriculture and health, many of which distort the economy and do little for long-term growth. We spend too little on science, technology, innovation and infrastructure, which will produce growth and jobs in the future. For the past few decades, we have been able to be wasteful and get by. But we will not be able to do it much longer. The money is running out, and we will have to marshal funds and target spending far more strategically. This is not a question of too much or too little government, too much or too little spending. We need more government and more spending in some places and less in others.

The tragedy is that Washington knows this. For all the partisan polarization there, most Republicans know that we have to invest in some key areas, and most Democrats know that we have to cut entitlement spending. But we have a political system that has become allergic to compromise and practical solutions. This may be our greatest blind spot. At the very moment that our political system has broken down, one hears only encomiums to it, the Constitution and the perfect Republic that it created. Now, as an immigrant, I love the special and, yes, exceptional nature of American democracy. I believe that the Constitution was one of the wonders of the world — in the 18th century. But today we face the reality of a system that has become creaky. We have an Electoral College that no one understands and a Senate that doesn't work, with rules and traditions that allow a single Senator to obstruct democracy without even explaining why. We have a crazy-quilt patchwork of towns, municipalities and states with overlapping authority, bureaucracies and resulting waste. We have a political system geared toward ceaseless fundraising and pandering to the interests of the present with no ability to plan, invest or build for the future. And if one mentions any of this, why, one is being unpatriotic, because we have the perfect system of government, handed down to us by demigods who walked the earth in the late 18th century and who serve as models for us today and forever.

America's founders would have been profoundly annoyed by this kind of unreflective ancestor worship. They were global, cosmopolitan figures who learned and copied a great deal from the past and from other countries and were constantly adapting their views. The first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, after all, was a massive failure, and the founders learned from that failure. The decision to have the Supreme Court sit in judgment over acts of the legislature was a later invention. America's founders were modern men who wanted a modern country that broke with its past to create a more perfect union.

And they thought a great deal about decline. Indeed, it was only a few years after the Revolution that the worrying began in earnest. The letters between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, as the two men watched America in the early 19th century, are filled with foreboding and gloom; you could almost say they began a great American tradition, that of contemplating decay. Americans have been concerned about the health of their country for much of its existence. In the 1950s and '60s, we worried about the Soviet Union and its march toward modernization. In the 1980s, we worried about Japan. This did us no harm; on the contrary, all these fears helped us make changes that allowed us to revive our strength and forge ahead. Dwight Eisenhower took advantage of the fears about the Soviet Union to build the interstate-highway system. John Kennedy used the Soviet challenge in space to set us on a path toward the goal of getting to the moon.

What is really depressing is the tone of our debate. In place of the thoughtful concern of Jefferson and Adams, we have its opposite in tone and temperament — the shallow triumphalism purveyed by politicians now. The founders loved America, but they also understood that it was a work in progress, an unfinished enterprise that would constantly be in need of change, adjustment and repair. For most of our history, we have become rich while remaining restless. Rather than resting on our laurels, we have feared getting fat and lazy. And that has been our greatest strength. In the past, worrying about decline has helped us avert that very condition. Let's hope it does so today.

Restoring the American Dream: Getting Back to No. 1 — a Fareed Zakaria GPS Special premieres on CNN at 8 p.m. E.T. and P.T. on March 6 and airs again at 8 p.m. E.T. and P.T. on March 12.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/21/white.persecution/index.html?hpt=C1#

Chick-Fil-A: FREE Fries on March 4, 2011

On Friday, March 4, 2011 you can get a  FREE medium order of waffle fries between 2:00pm and 4:00pm when you ask for Heinz Dip & Squeeze and mention the Free Dry Day Promotion.

Limit one per customer.

Available at participating Chick-fil-A locations, so you might want to call ahead to make sure your local store is participating before making a special trip!

Congressional bosses from Hell: Sheila Jackson Lee

A lot of politicians give nicknames to their aides. George W. Bush famously referred to his attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, as “Fredo.” Mitch Daniels, then head of the Office of Management and Budget, was known as “The Blade.” Barack Obama reportedly called Larry Summers, his chief economic advisor, “Dr. Kevorkian.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas also hands out nicknames to the people who work for her. The Houston Democrat addressed one of her employees as “you stupid mother<snip>er.” And not just once, but “constantly,” recalls the staffer, “like, all the time.”

Another Jackson Lee aide recounts the time her parents came to Washington to visit: “They were really excited to come to the congressional office. They’re small town people, so for them it was a huge deal. They were actually sitting in the main lobby waiting area….[Jackson Lee] came out screaming at me over a scheduling change. Called me a ’stupid idiot. Don’t be a moron, you foolish girl’ and actually did this in front of my parents, of all things.”

Yet another staffer remembers requesting a meeting early on in her tenure to ask how best to serve the congresswoman. Jackson Lee’s response: “What? What did you say to me? Who are you, the Congresswoman? You haven’t been elected. You don’t set up meetings with me! I tell you! You know what? You are the most unprofessional person I have ever met in my life.” With that, Jackson Lee hung up the phone.

According to the same staffer, Jackson Lee “would always say, ‘What am I a prostitute? Am I your prostitute? You can’t prostitute me.’”

Capitol Hill is famous for its demanding, insensitive bosses. Yet even by the harsh standards of Congress, Sheila Jackson Lee stands out. She may be the worst boss in Washington. “It’s like being an Iraq War veteran,” says someone who worked for her. Strangers may say, “‘oh I know what you’ve been through.’ No, you really don’t. Because until you’ve experienced it…. People don’t tell the worst of the stories, because they’re really unbelievable.”

For some, a job in Jackson Lee’s office proved not just emotionally but physically perilous. One staffer recalls a frank conversation with his doctor, who told him he needed to quit. “It’s your life or your job,” the doctor told him, warning that the stress and long hours were wreaking havoc on his body.

Only a few on staff fought back. One of Jackson Lee’s drivers became so frustrated with her abuse the person pulled the car over and demand she stop: “She’s screaming and swearing. ‘M.F.’ everything. Finally I slammed on the brakes and told her to get the hell out of my car. I’m like ‘I can’t drive with you like this. Either get out, or you can calm down.’ And she’s like ‘you need to go or get fired.’ I’m like, ‘that’s fine. But I’m either leaving without you or you can calm down,’” the staffer said.

Jackson Lee then threatened to call the police and claim she was being held hostage in the car. But she finally did calm down when the staffer called her bluff, offering to flag down a Capitol Police officer to explain the situation.

Former aide Michael McQueery said his experience with other “difficult” bosses on the Hill prepared him for how to handle Jackson Lee. “I’ve worked for two other members. They did the same thing,” he said.

“It was at first, I’m not going to lie to you, it was a rough patch with her and me. But I took her to the side and I let her know that, you know, ‘Congresswoman, I’m a man before anything else.’ And after that, we had no problems. We had no problems,” McQueery said.

Of the scores of Jackson Lee staffers contacted by The Daily Caller, only McQueery offered an affirmative defense of the congresswoman’s management techniques. “A lot of people just did not know how to go, and say, ‘hey, that’s inappropriate,’” McQueery said.

A congressional torture chamber

In 2007, on a quiet afternoon on the fourth floor of the Rayburn House Office building, Caroline Stephens, then a low-level staffer for California Republican Rep. Gary Miller, walked down the hall to her office, taking note of an open door that was normally closed.

Congress was in recess, and the 435 lawmakers who drive the frenetic pace on Capitol Hill were home in their districts glad-handing constituents. For that reason, the door to Jackson Lee’s office was open and the sounds emanating from inside were pleasant laughter and conversation.

“You could tell when she wasn’t there,” Stephens said. That was because on a day in which Congress was in session, a different set of sounds often came through closed doors to Jackson Lee’s office: screaming and, many times, crying.

Later that day, a skinny young black man with his hair pulled back in a ponytail walked into Miller’s office and asked Stephens for a favor. Could he borrow a knife to cut a birthday cake?

Stephens, who’d seen the man working in Jackson Lee’s office, was happy to help, with only the request to “make sure you bring it back, that’s our only one.”

He laughed. “We would never leave a knife around when the congresswoman was here,” he said. As Stephens put it, “that’s when it all clicked that they are really afraid of her.”

She’ll make you wait

“I am a queen, and I demand to be treated like a queen,” Jackson Lee once said, and apparently she wasn’t kidding. Her employees describe waiting for their boss for hours on end, sometimes late into the night, while she attends events or even sits in her office watching TV.

“You worked really, really, really late for her. When she was in town, you were in the office. So that meant, two, three, four o’clock in the morning – we were there,” one former staffer said.

“She liked to hold her staff meetings — she would individually pull in the deputy chief of staff, myself and some other people individually to go over different parts of her day. But she would literally wait until super late at night. None of us could go home, because she wouldn’t tell when she was coming back or if she wasn’t. And if she called and you didn’t answer, it was like World War III,” the source said.

Jackson Lee’s designated driver picks her up at her apartment one block from her office each morning and waits for her outside wherever she goes throughout the days and nights.

“Whatever time she told me to be there, I would always show up at least 20 minutes late, and expect to wait at least 45 minutes,” said one of Jackson Lee’s drivers. By the end of this person’s tenure, “She was making me wait in the car, sometimes upwards of five to seven hours per day.” With the car running for heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer, it began to wear down the car’s engine. “My mechanic friend said, you know, your car looks like you’ve driven it twice the miles you have,” the source said.

One woman who interviewed for a job in Jackson Lee’s office arrived at 5:00 p.m. but ended up waiting for hours. “I sat there, no kidding, from 5:00 p.m. until 10:30 p.m. They had me waiting, and this was just for the interview. Her staffers there kept telling me to be patient, that she puts everyone through the ringer…She actually went out to dinner while I was sitting there waiting for an interview,” the woman said. A Lee staffer called the woman at 11:15 p.m. after she’d just arrived home to beg her to come back. The congresswoman was finally ready.

It wasn’t just staffers who have been made to wait. Ray LaHood, the secretary of transportation, cooled his heels for an hour and a half in her office before leaving. “He was there to address transportation issues – getting funding to Houston. So I was just shocked that she would let him leave,” a former staffer said. Jackson Lee was waiting for a chance to appear in front of the C-SPAN cameras on the House floor.

“I would have to wait for hours,” says Gladys Quinto, a former staffer whom Jackson Lee instructed to write a memo about why she was incompetent in front of other staffers. “I missed the last metro once. My roommate had to come pick me up.”

Nathan Williams, who quit his job when Jackson Lee threw a cell phone at him, told the Houston Chronicle in 2002, “I don’t think I ever got home before 11 o’clock at night.”

The ‘Queen’ doesn’t wait…for anything

Even though she delays others for hours, Jackson Lee won’t wait a second for her demands to be met. “She expected you to run – all the time,” says a former staffer. “There was no walking. Nobody could walk, you always had to run – everywhere. She viewed walking as being lazy, so everyone always had to run.”

Another former aide added that the congresswoman would clock her on how long it took her to run an updated schedule print-out from Jackson Lee’s office in the Rayburn building to the House floor. “She would actually physically time you in terms of from office to getting to the [House] floor and finding her, hunting her down,” the staffer said. Then Jackson Lee would demand, “what took you so long?”

Her former drivers say the congresswoman demanded they run red lights and drive on highway shoulders around traffic. This caused at least one accident. As Jackson Lee was yelling at a staffer to drive faster she turned too sharply, smashing the side of her car into a wall.

Jackson Lee’s requests don’t stop at the end of a normal working day. “In the middle of the night, people had to go get her garlic. She’ll call you at two in the morning for garlic because she takes them as supplements,” a former staffer said. Jackson Lee’s garlic runs were confirmed by other staffers, too, though no one could remember the exact brand of the supplement. The deputy chief of staff “would have to go get it, and he would have to go drop it off. It was some kind of a multi-vitamin,” another former staffer said.

On Christmas Eve, one staffer was at a midnight mass ceremony at her church. When the boss called, the staffer didn’t answer. “She got so irritated that I wasn’t answering her call on Christmas Eve. So she called me every minute for 56 minutes,” the source recalled.

Jackson Lee on race

Jackson Lee has always been quick to assign racism as a motive of her political opponents and others. In 1997, for example, The Hill reported that the newly-elected congresswoman asked NASA officials whether the Mars Pathfinder photographed the American flag astronaut Neil Armstrong had planted on the surface of Mars. When it was pointed out that the flag in question was on the moon, not Mars, Jackson Lee cited bigotry. “You thought you could have fun with a black woman member of the Science Committee,” her then chief of staff wrote in a letter to the editor.

Jackson Lee recently blasted a Pepsi advertisement shown during the Super Bowl in which a black woman throws a can of soda at her husband for ogling an attractive white woman next to them. “It was not humorous. It was demeaning — an African-American woman throwing something at an African-American male and winding up hitting a Caucasian woman,” she thundered from the House floor.

In 2009, she helped prevent Rush Limbaugh from becoming an NFL owner. “He does not represent the fullness of appreciation of athletes of all diverse backgrounds, no matter what he wants to pretend to say on his radio station,” Jackson Lee said.

In 2003, she demanded that more Hurricanes be named with African American-sounding names.

A former staffer recalls one revealing episode during the height of the financial crisis in the waning months of the Bush administration. Jackson Lee demanded a meeting with a top Treasury aide, even though she did not sit on any of the committees with jurisdiction over financial matters. As her car pulled up outside the Treasury, Jackson Lee told her driver to park directly outside the door.

Due to the proximity of the Treasury Department’s headquarters to the White House, Secret Service officers told the driver not to park there. After an argument with the agents, who kept telling the driver to back off, Jackson Lee finally emerged from the building.

As the car drove away, a Secret Service van flashed its lights behind them. “Keep driving,” Jackson Lee told her staffer. Ultimately, the driver pulled over in defiance of the boss’s wishes. At this point, Jackson Lee emerged from the car, screaming, “I’m Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee! Who do you think you are?” to a team of Secret Service agents.

Jackson Lee accused the “white” agent at the gate of racism, claiming she wouldn’t have to deal with “this stuff” when Barack Obama became president. She then filed a formal complaint with the Secret Service, which prompted an investigation. A Treasury official later explained that the accusation had been dismissed because the agent in question was Hispanic, not white.

Given Jackson Lee’s apparent touchiness on racial questions, there’s a certain irony in the fact that aides claim she is far harsher to the African Americans who work for her. “’You stupid mother-effer’ was like a constant,” says one. “Like, all the time. But the interesting thing is she would really project that behavior more towards her African American staffers. She would have other ethnic groups in the office, like interns or whatnot. But it was really her African American staffers who she felt comfortable enough to really curse out…. This is something we always talked about. We chalked it up to her just feeling more comfortable acting out her aggression toward a certain group of people versus others.”

“She is very strange in who she insults and how. For some reason, it seemed like she was racist against African Americans,” another said.

Why she would come down harder on black staff was one of many mysteries that provoked endless speculation from those subject to her abuse.

“We would sit around and try to analyze why she was so miserable,” a former staffer said, “We all kind of felt bad for her. She was such a lonely, miserable person. And it must suck to work on Capitol Hill and have all of your colleagues hate you, right?”

The good, the bad, and the zany

And yet for all the nastiness, Jackson Lee also exhibits a zany side. She regularly asks that documents be printed in different colors. She has staff drive her from the Rayburn building to the Cannon building to attend homeland security hearings. She sometimes demands two staffers in two cars pick her up from the airport, one for her, the other for her luggage. On one occasion, she demanded an aide wear a green hat when picking her up.

One day in March of 2004, Jackson Lee told colleagues on her hall in Rayburn that the corridor would be closed from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. to accommodate her visit from Michael Jackson. The House Administration Committee promptly informed her that she had no authority to close a public hallway.

Staffers describe Jackson Lee as a hoarder. For example, she keeps over twenty boxes of the book “Black Americans in Congress” in her office, hundreds of copies in all. From time to time, she adds new copies of the same book to her collection.

Aides who’ve worked for Jackson Lee for years will call her on her cell phone and, despite the caller ID on her blackberry, she invariably answers, “This is Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.” When getting into the car in the morning, she will give her aide directions to the Rayburn building one block away, even if the aide has been driving her there every morning for months or years.

Jackson Lee’s speeches are frequent and eccentric enough to have occasioned a game in other Capitol Hill offices. Every day, one staffer puts money into a Sheila Jackson Lee jar. If she speaks on the House floor, as she usually does, the jar moves to the next desk. On the rare day she doesn’t speak, the staffer holding the jar wins all the money.

It’s funny, but not really

Not surprisingly, Jackson Lee has one of the highest staff turnover rates in Washington. Over the last ten years, at least 39 staffers have left within one year. Over that time, Lee has employed at least nine chiefs of staff, eight legislative directors, and 18 schedulers or executive assistants, according to records of federal disclosure forms published by the website Legistorm. Nine staffers left within two months, 25 within 6 months.

The many veterans of Jackson Lee’s office meet regularly for drinks and stories. We “still get together to have a cathartic release,” says one. “We sit around and tell these stories and just work ourselves into a state of rage.”

Jackson Lee’s view

TheDC made several vigorous attempts to speak to Jackson Lee about her staff’s accounts of life in her office. Jackson Lee made an even more vigorous effort not to answer the questions.

This Monday, after 6:30 p.m. votes, Jackson Lee spoke to an empty House chamber in celebration of African American history month, veering off topic to blast Republicans for trying to cut spending. “Why do you have to have your way or the highway?” she asked.

Afterwards, she went into the Democratic cloakroom, a lobby alongside the House floor where lawmakers often congregate. After half an hour, I checked with the reliably helpful Capitol Hill police and other assorted staff to see if she’d left by another route, but apparently she had not. By this point, the lights in the House floor had been turned off, and every other lawmaker was gone. I knew from my reporting it could be hours. “She’s just sitting in there, forever!” I said to a group of policemen. They laughed knowingly. Finally, I left.

The following day during House votes, Jackson Lee briefly emerged from the House floor with her cell phone in hand. “Congresswoman, I need to interview you,” I said politely. She looked at me, scanning up from my waist to my face, said nothing and hurried back onto the House floor.

Later, she held two meetings in the wood-paneled Rayburn Room. The room has only two exits, one of them into a hallway, the other to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office. As the meeting ended and she got up to leave, a staffer whispered to her. Jackson Lee walked quickly toward Pelosi’s office. “Congresswoman! Congresswoman! Congresswoman Jackson Lee!” I said. She muttered something about a “meeting” and escaped into the office.

Finally, I went to Jackson Lee’s own office in the Rayburn building. Her press secretary was not available. I spoke instead to a woman at the front desk, explaining that I had spoken with many of the congresswoman’s former aides, most of whom had <snip>ing things to say about Jackson Lee. The woman laughed. She knew all about the article. I gave her my cell phone number, but Jackson Lee never called.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/02/congressional-bosses-from-hell-sheila-jackson-lee/#ixzz1Fd9k6OVi

March 2, 2011

Teachers Wonder, Why the Scorn?

Trip Gabriel

NY Times

Former Inmate Breaks Back Into Penal Farm

Natasha Chen 9:08 p.m. CST, March 2, 2011

• A former inmate at the Shelby County penal farm allegedly broke through a fence to smuggle in contraband.
• The contraband included tobacco and cell phones with prepaid minutes.
• This comes after nine former inmates were indicted Monday for smuggling drugs into the penal farm.

(Memphis 3/2/11) - A man and woman allegedly broke through a fence to the Shelby County penal farm in attempts to smuggle in contraband.

On Feb. 7 just before 6:00p.m., a corrections officer saw a man leave three packages on the inside of a fenced area by the maintenance building.

A woman was driving the getaway car, a blue Honda Civic whose tag indicated it was rented from Budget Rent-A-Car.

"They had gone up actually to that fence, cut the lock, got through that gate and then ran up to the other gate, and then heaved that stuff over the top of the fence, hoping to get it inside," said Steve Shular, the public affairs officer for the Shelby County Mayor's office.

The corrections officer recognized the man as someone who was in jail last October. The man was later identified as Randy Williams.

"They study the officers, just as much as the officers study them. They look for ways that could be security breaches. And they have a lot of time while they're in there. And so while we're watching them, they're watching us," Shular said.

While the woman driving the car, Martha Arnold, has been arrested, Randy Williams still remains at large as of Wednesday night.

Deputies said that the boxes Williams tried to smuggle contained 24 packs of Kite tobacco with rolling papers attached to each pack, 24 packs of Bugler tobacco with rolling papers attached, two Wet Mango Royal Blunts, and four Samsung cell phones with prepaid minutes.

On Monday, authorities announced two former Shelby County corrections officers had resigned and nine former inmates were indicted for smuggling drugs and other items into the penal farm.

"It's just one of those situations that shows just how desperate people are. There is a desperation among inmates that want to find other ways to get around the rules of the prison," Shular said.

He said that people will always try to smuggle things into prison, but that their security is being stepped up to try and prevent it from happening.

He said that would include training for the officers, finding ways to strengthen the policies and procedures, and more supervision of the officers themselves.

Police: Local Priest Offered Sex to Officers After Arrest

Suzanne Stratford

Fox 8 News Reporter

10:51 p.m. EST, March 2, 2011 

 A local priest may need more than the Lord's forgiveness after what police officers say he did Sunday night.

"I sum it up as unusual at best," said Brimfield Township Police Chief David Blough.

It started just after 11:45 p.m. Sunday when officers received a report of a car off the side of the road at the intersection of Meloy and Sandylake roads.

Father Ignatius Kury was laying down in the back seat of the vehicle.

"He was extremely intoxicated," said Chief Blough.

Kury tested three times the legal limit and was taken to the police station for processing. Officers say that's when things really got interesting.

Police rolled a video tape of the incident to protect themselves and use it as evidence in court.

"Because of the fact that one of my officers walked by the holding cell and he was exposing himself," said Chief Blough.

Kury is heard on the tape saying, "I'll give you a sermon on the mount."

According to Chief Blough, the priest's rant lasted over 20 minutes during which he threatened and propositioned officers.

Kury is heard saying, "I'll pay you whatever you want. What do you want? Want me to give you a [expletive]? Is that what you want ?" "Do you want me to be a sexual slave?"

Eventually, Kury was released on bond.

He could've faced additional charges for his actions inside the holding cell, but Chief Blough says the OVI charge and videotape are punishment enough.

Kury will have his first court hearing March 4, 2011.

No one could be reached for comment at Father Kury's parish, Holy Ghost Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic Church, on Brown Street in Akron.

NU president 'troubled' by sex toy demonstration on campus

Jodi S. Cohen and Lisa Black

Tribune reporter

12:13 PM CST, March 3, 2011

http://dai.ly/hJGUKY

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/environment/2011-03-03-1Apurewater03_CV_N.htm

Patrik Jonsson 

Staff writer
March 2, 2011 at 5:49 pm EST

What if NFL labor talks break down Thursday and football owners lock out their players?

On one hand, lack of agreement by the Thursday midnight deadline wouldn't preclude more negotiations between rich players and even richer owners over the $9 billion chunk of change that is the league's annual honey pot.

But a lockout puts the 2011 NFL season into question. And that prospect is one that the NFL deeply wants to avoid, worried that any lost games – or an entirely lost season – could cost the league its status as the unrivaled king of the American sports landscape.

But would it?

In a press conference before the Super Bowl last month, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said pro football was not immune to the kind of fan backlash that struck Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League in the years after they lost seasons to labor disputes.

“I have said repeatedly that the fans want football and if we are not successful in reaching an agreement that [backlash] will be toward the commissioner, toward the clubs, toward the players, toward everyone involved,” Mr. Goodell said Feb. 4.

Baseball needed a steroid-induced home run chase to recover from canceling the last two months of its regular season and the World Series in 1994. Hockey has only now begun to recover from its 2004-2005 lockout year, boosted by rule changes to make the game higher scoring and the emergence of stars Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin.

Yet the NFL's connection to modern America might be so deep that it can weather labor troubles better than baseball and hockey did. The once-a-week Sunday ritual, the devotion to fantasy football leagues, and the fascination with the gladiatorial nature of pro football makes it a sport that is difficult to replace.

“It will bounce back, because it meets a function in society, even though it goes through readjustments from time to time," says Bowling Green University sociologist Eldon Snyder, author of an article in the Journal of American Culture called "Football and American Identity."

The 1987 players strike, where owners used replacement players, irritated fans and led to less-than-full stadiums but did not irrevocably damage the game. Since that time, the popularity of the game has risen year by year.

The two sides in the current dispute are split about how to divvy up $9 billion in gate and TV revenues. Included in that equation are issues including a rookie wage scale and a proposal to add two more games to the current 16-game season.

If an agreement isn't met by Thursday, players have vowed to decertify the National Football League Players Association ahead of the deadline. While the stated reason is so players can take the NFL to court for antitrust violations, dismantling the union would also give players the ability to sign personal contracts directly with teams.

Given what happened in 1987, when striking players stepped over the picket line after only five weeks of replacement play, owners are confident that a work stoppage would cause today's players to buckle to owners' demands in late spring or early summer rather than August, at the start of training camp, says University of Illinois labor expert Michael LeRoy.

At least publicly, however, the NFL's players and owners aren't taking fans for granted.

"We want the fans to know that we're trying. We're trying," NFL general counsel Jeff Pash told the AP. "We understand our responsibility, and if we don't get it done, we know that we'll have let them down. And we take that very seriously. So do our owners."

Charlotte Observer 

Wednesday, Mar. 02, 2011

Police say school employees tried to poison coworker

By Glenn Kahl
Reporter
Manteca Bulletin
March 1, 2011 1:52 a.m. 

 

Christopher Carroll. (Courtesy San Joaquin County Jail)