Civil Liberties

Not quite. About 30 Nazi's came to Raleigh on Sunday to visit with their KKK pals. I'm proud that the opposition was led and populated largely by people from Orange County. The N & O put the ratio at about 20 protesters per Nazi.

The white supremacists marched onto the Capitol grounds to furious shouts from the protesters. Several wore brown uniforms reminiscent of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Three others donned Ku Klux Klan robes.

About a half-dozen speakers cited a wide range of complaints including interracial marriage, the war in Iraq and what they said was Jewish control of the media.- Raleigh N&O, 2/22/04

I guess you can add OrangePolitics to the list of Jewish-run media. Look out, I'm taking over!

Here is my recap of tonight's Council meeting. There were jillions of people speaking on Red Light Cameras (RLCs), mostly in favor, including the paid and volunteer lobbyists from the ACS family. Many Council members made a point of saying how glad they were to be able to discuss this heated issue in a reasonable way in the past few weeks. Then after about two hours of hearing citizens and making speeches, they voted in favor of Mark Kleinschmidt's petition to terminate the RLC contract!

I would like to present the following awards:

Most righteous indignation: Edith Wiggins (Red Light Cameras, agenda item # 7)
Runners-up: Dorothy Verkerk, Mark Kleinschmidt, Jim Ward (in that order) .

Why does Edith seem to feel that this issue is such a personal affront to her? She & Cam Hill didn't impress by reading from prepared statements. This let the citizens who took the time to contact them or to come to the meeting in the snow know that their input was not a part of their decision-making process. (Although that was actually the case for the entire Council anyway.)

The Town Council will take up the Red Light Camera issue on Monday. Half of the Council seems squarely and enthusiastically in the pocket of the company that runs the system, in fact they recently held a "forum" in which several of this company's lobbyists were given the Town's bully pulpit to advocate for their client/sponsor, ACS.

Fortunately, Council Member Mark Kleinschmidt has petitioned the Council to return to due process for red-light runners. And the Chapel Hill News weighs in with an editorial in favor of eliminating the program:

There are numerous problems with the concept — technological flaws, incursions on privacy, conflict with state public records law — but the basic issue stems from introducing commercial, for-profit enterprise into a basic governmental law-enforcement responsibility.