SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

ANOTHER GREAT EDUCATIONAL DECISION – From Fox:  A cafeteria worker at an Idaho middle school gave a free lunch to a 12-year-old student who said she was hungry, but the school district fired her Monday for her actions, the Idaho State Journal reported.  Dalene Bowden said the Irving Middle School student didn’t have any money to pay for the hot lunch. The cost: $1.70.  The Pocatello/Chubbuck School District reportedly placed Bowden on leave Dec. 15 before deciding to fire her. She said she offered to pay for the lunch herself, but her supervisor said no.  “This just breaks my heart, and I was in the wrong, but what do you do when the kid tells you that they’re hungry, and they don’t have any money? I handed her the tray,” Bowden told the Journal...Tens of thousands of people rushed to her defense. A petition supporting Bowden racked up more than 38,000 online signatures as of Wednesday.  We'll follow this and see how it turns out.  I'm sure the kindhearted Ms. Bowden will be offered many jobs.  As far as the "educators" at district headquarters, they need a common-sense transplant.

FAITH IN POLICE REBOUNDS – From Powerline:   2015 was a bad public relations year for the police. It was hammered by the Black Lives Matter movement and other leftists. President Obama did his bit stating, “You know as well as I do, that the tensions in some communities, the feeling that law enforcement isn’t always applied fairly, those sentiments don’t just come out of nowhere.”  But even with all the bad PR, trust in the police increased this year according to a Gallup poll. 56 percent of those polled rated the honesty and ethical standards of police officers “high” or “very high” (and only 14 percent said “low” or “very low”). ...Herein lies the most interesting aspect of the survey: the rebound was driven mostly by African-Americans. In 2014, less than one-fourth of them believed in the honesty and ethics of police officers. This year, 40 percent do.  Ray Kelly, New York City's former police commissioner, got a standing ovation every time he appeared at a black church.  The parishioners understood how the police were protecting their community every day.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD MESSES UP AGAIN – When will even liberals realize that there's something wrong over there.  From the Federalist:   International Planned Parenthood Federation, of which Planned Parenthood Federation of America is an official affiliate, maintains it is a person’s “human right” not to tell their sexual partners they are HIV positive if they don’t want to.  It’s all laid out in International Planned Parenthood Federation’s booklet for HIV-positive youth entitled “Healthy, Happy and Hot.” It says, “Young people living with HIV have the right to decide if, when, and how to disclose their HIV status.” It continues: “Sharing your HIV status is called disclosure. Your decision about whether to disclose may change with different people and situations. You have the right to decide if, when, and how to disclose your HIV status.”  Planned Parenthood thinks it’s your human right to risk exposing other people to a potentially deadly disease without telling them.  

December 23, 2015