Sometimes the headlines are deliberately misleading, other times they define an article well and then there are the times when it is difficult to imagine what the body of the piece is based on the bold print.

I was certainly intrigued when I read the following:

N.J. College Requires GOP Cell Phones

This was a must read for me as I had never heard of a GOP cell phone. Couple that with the fact that I could not imagine what college in the State of New Jersey would be installing this requirement and this was an instant click and read.

Here is what I found.

It was after 1 a.m. on a Sunday when college freshman Amanda Phillips arrived at the train station. She was nervous about walking alone in the dark to her dorm at Montclair State University.
So Phillips activated a GPS tracking device on her school-issued cell phone that would instantly alert campus police to her whereabouts if she didn’t turn it off in 20 minutes. After a five-minute walk, she safely reached her dorm room, locked the door behind her and turned off the timer.

“I think this is a great idea. It makes me feel a lot safer. And it’s not even that expensive,” said Phillips, an 18-year-old from Delaware.

Had she not turned the device off, an alarm would have sounded at the campus police station, and a computer screen would have displayed a dot with her location, along with her photo and other personal details.

Anything which provides an extra layer of security for these students is a great idea.

Too bad it wasn’t really a GOP cell phone. It would have been one of the most interesting stories tied to a political party in quite a while.

Hugo Chavez has lost his bid to run for election after 2012 and implement some socialistic policies in his country.

The question now is will he suspend the constitution and declare himself the leader for life as his hero Castro has done?

Chavez is a dangerous man with a big ego. I don’t expect him to just calmly walk away from the results of this referendum. I look for him to do something that will install him as the dictator he wants to be.

On the other hand we have Vladimir Putin’s party receiving an overwhelming vote in their favor. Look for him to become a dictator in Russia, returning to the old days of Communism and Cold War.

Reader David kindly sent a copy of an article from the Albuquerque Journal.

This editorial tells a different kind of story about illegal immigration from what we are used to hearing.

I saw this story on television one day last week and felt terrible for the man involved and yet he is a hero and humanitarian in the best sense of the words.

Since there is no online link to the Journal I’m going to quote the story:

Manuel Jesus Cordova Soberanes brings to mind an Albuquerque cop who played “What If” one morning while listening to talk radio.

A caller to the talk show asked: “What if a cop stops an illegal immigrant who has committed no other crime and lets him go and two weeks later he commits an act of terrorism? What about that, huh?”

The cop I talked to that morning said: “What if I stop an illegal immigrant who has committed no other crime and I let him go and two weeks later he prevents an act of terrorism? What about that, huh?”

Which brings us to Manuel Jesus Cordova Soberanes, an illegal immigrant who neither committed nor prevented an act of terrorism, but did produce a moment of simple human decency.

It was the kind of thing that must make for a bad day at the office for the demonizers in the immigrant debate, the people who would have us believe that the Cordovas of the world would be our most dangerous enemies.

I first noticed him a few days ago when this headline popped up on the Internet: “Illegal Immigrant Rescues Orphan in Desert.”

From what we know so far, he did exactly what the headline said he did.

In Thursday’s Journal, in an Associated Press story, the illegal immigrant explained why: “I am the father of four children. For that, I stayed. I never could have left him.”

Here’s the story: Christopher Buztheitner, 9, whose father died earlier this year, was on a trip with his mother.

There was a car crash. She died. The boy wandered in the desert near the Mexico border.

Cordova, making his way on foot to the U.S. in hopes of finding work (he’s a bricklayer) came upon the boy.

He gave the boy his sweater, built a fire to keep him warm and 14 hours later a group of hunters found them.

The boy was reunited with relatives; Cordova was sent back to Mexico.

Now, in the larger immigration picture, there are many difficult questions this incident can never address.

But in the matter of the demonizers, the Lou Dobbses of the world, who accuse illegal immigrants of spreading leprosy; or the buyers of billboards to decry the “criminals” running amok in Albuquerque, this decent, good-hearted man from Mexico speaks volumes.

Picture him in the desert at the moment of decision.

If he stays with the boy, he will most certainly be sent back to Mexico.

If he leaves the boy, the boy’s life clearly is in danger.

He chooses to stay, saying later that he thought of his own children.

I think I’d have to call that “family values.”

In the long run, this good man will not matter to the demonizers among us.

No talk shows will spend hours examining the man’s values, extolling his decency.

But for just a moment, Manuel Jesus Cordova Soberanes gives the lie to the demonizers.

And for just a moment I hope the demonizers of decent, hard-working people will rethink their tactics.

But the moment passes. They won’t.

Thank you, Manuel Jesus Cordova Soberanes for saving this boy’s life even at the expense of realizing your dream.

Thank you, Jim Belshaw, for writing this article, and thank you, David, for sending it to me.

Now, use your lawlerly skills to get me off the hook for posting the entire article.

This LA Times piece thinks CNN is too corrupt to be trusted by either party to run any political debates.

THE United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can’t afford to be sick with anything that won’t be treated with aspirin and bed rest.

So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a “debate,” what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?

In fact, this most recent debacle masquerading as a presidential debate raises serious questions about whether CNN is ethically or professionally suitable to play the political role the Democratic and Republican parties recently have conceded it.

Selecting a president is, more than ever, a life and death business, and a news organization that consciously injects itself into the process, as CNN did by hosting Wednesday’s debate, incurs a special responsibility to conduct itself in a dispassionate and, most of all, disinterested fashion. When one considers CNN’s performance, however, the adjectives that leap to mind are corrupt and incompetent.

Corruption is a strong word. But consider these facts: The gimmick behind Wednesday’s debate was that the questions would be selected from those that ordinary Americans submitted to the video sharing Internet website YouTube, which is owned by Google. According to CNN, its staff culled through 5,000 submissions to select the handful that were put to the candidates. That process essentially puts the lie to the vox populi aura the association with YouTube was meant to create. When producers exercise that level of selectivity, the questions — whoever initially formulated and recorded them — actually are theirs.

That’s where things begin to get troubling, because CNN chose to devote the first 35 minutes of this critical debate to a single issue — immigration. Now, if that leaves you scratching your head, it’s probably because you’re included in the 96% of Americans who do not think immigration is the most important issue confronting this country. We’ve got a pretty good fix concerning what’s on the American mind right now, because the nonpartisan and highly reliable Pew Center has been regularly polling people since January on the issues that matter most to them. In fact, the center’s most recent survey was conducted in the days leading up to Wednesday’s debate.

With what seemed to be planted questions it does seem the last show and tell was not all it should have been.

If CNN devoted 35 minutes to immigration and it’s not a hot topic anymore were they actually trying to increase viewership for Lou Dobbs, who seems obsessed about any Latinos crossing our borders?

If they were selecting questions reflecting the issues Republicans care most about why select a question on the Confederate flag or even on the inerrancy of the Bible?

So far we have never had a president who headed a theocracy in this country so what the men believe about the Bible might be interesting but it isn’t an issue in the electorate.

I don’t watch CNN because I have found its reporting to be so slanted that I get seasick watching it. Their shows are boring rehashes of the previous program.

The LA Times is not a conservative newspaper, and for them to find enough fault with CNN’s coverage of the “debates” to call CNN corrupt is a big statement.

Why can’t we just have a candidate forum where we let them all go after each other and explain their positions with no interference from a so-called journalist?

Wouldn’t that help the voters sort through the issues and decide on a candidate?

Then again, what do I know?