Math Skills Looted: Dr. Donny George, director of the Iraqi National Museum during the American invasion, spoke yesterday at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and caused “scattered gasps” by showing photographs of destroyed artifacts, writes Sean Emery at the Register. Emery notes that looters stole “15,000 artworks and artifacts” and a few paragraphs later calculated that “about half of what was taken” or “approximately 3,700” pieces were recovered. Let’s see: subtract the six, carry the one…. Yeah, 3,700 is half of 15,000.
Giving OC the Finger Again: Six of the top seven online stories in the Orange County news section of the Times had nothing to do with Orange County. Pathetic. And it's an almost daily slight of a county with lots of money, population and stories. Who is the idiot inside Times HQ that's pulling this stunt each day? Do you understand that folks down here are going to give you the finger back by putting a quarter down for the other daily? I’m hoping the Register boys use this neglect in an upcoming subscription campaign.
Leaving Her Readers Clueless: High-ranking Santa Ana city officials are demanding that members of city commissions who blog must “tone down” their opinions of city affairs or risk losing their appointments, reports Jennifer Delson at the Times. But instead of giving a single example of what she is talking about Delson simply calls it “inflammatory language and innuendo” published by three bloggers at Art Pedroza’s OrangeJuiceBlog.com. City Councilman Carlos Bustamante backs the idea of silencing the commissioners because public criticism of city affairs in his mind isn’t “part of the solution.” Sal Tinajero, another city councilman, wants the bloggers to show a “sense of decorum” or suffer the consequences. “We’ve been the first ones to come along and talk and speak about things that people call taboo, about things people prefer to bury,” Pedroza told the paper. “That’s why what we are doing seems so outrageous.”
There’s Always The Mexicans: Michael Finnegan at the Times pokes around the Christian right and finds intense frustration in the current presidential campaigns. “Barely three months before the voting for a new president begins, the religious right has yet to unite behind a Republican candidate, heightening concerns among evangelical leaders that social liberal Rudolph W. Giuliani will capture the party’s nomination,” writes Finnegan. He also notes decline of the GOP Bible thumpers in the wake of the party’s mounting homosexual, prostitute and corruption scandals. Oh, well. As we know well from OC politics, there’s always Mexicans to attack as an election year ploy.
Best Crime Story From The Weekend: Police claim that a 65-year-old Anaheim Hills woman shot her neighbor in the shoulder during a backyard shrubbery dispute, reports Nayeli Pagaza at the Register. Details were sketchy but Pagaza writes, “One neighbor who did not want to be named said she could hear a man saying, ‘Don’t cut my bushes’ before the gunshot.” The suspect, also unnamed in the story, barricaded herself in her house but eventually surrendered to a SWAT team. The victim is in stable condition. LA-based TV stations played footage of the arrest.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.