President Reagan died on June 5, 2004. Let’s win one for the Gipper!

— Scott Walker (@ScottKWalker) June 5, 2012

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new champion:

[via Gawker]

“When I was a child, President Ronald Reagan was the nice man who gave us jelly beans when we visited the White House. I didn’t know then, but I know it now: The jelly beans were much more than a sweet treat that he gave out as gifts. They represented the uniqueness and greatness of America — each one different and special in its own way, but collectively they blended in harmony.” [Politico]

Joe Miller scores a twofer today:

“East Germany was very, very able to reduce the flow… Now, obviously, other things there were involved. We have the capacity to, as a great nation, obviously to secure our border. If East Germany could, we could.”

Really, all it takes is the right security detail.

Joe Miller On Securing The Border: ‘If East Germany Could, We Could’ [TPM]

Say, how are things about two hours north of our Ancestral Home?

The district attorney in Multnomah County, [Oregon’s] most populous area with over 710,000 residents, announced recently that it can no longer prosecute dozens of crimes thanks to an ever-shrinking budget.

Caught with small amounts of heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine? It’s a ticket. So’s a hit-and-run accident. Small-time shoplifting? You’ll still get arrested, but it’s still just a violation.

For these and other lesser crimes, the district attorney will simply refuse to prosecute.

Golly! We didn’t think Mighty Orygun would lead the nation in meeting teabagger demands, but if they can make small government work there, they can make it work anywhere.

Oregon county decriminalizes heroin, meth, cocaine and shoplifting, among others [Raw Story]

Today’s Sacramento Bee has a very interesting article about a sharp rise in calls to the State Department of Personnel Management asking for grief counseling assistance for state employees dealing with suicides of co-workers.

The Bee writes:

California government departments  in 2009 made 33 requests for “critical incident stress debriefings,” in which counselors meet with employees traumatized by the suicide of a colleague.

In 2008, the state made 14 such calls. In 2007, when the Department of Personnel Administration began tracking the incidents, government departments made 18 requests for such grief counseling.

The data are drawn from such a relatively small population and over such a brief period that it’s impossible to determine any trends, said mental health experts interviewed by The Bee. Identifying a single cause for the kind of hopelessness that leads to suicide can be next to impossible.

But it’s clear, they said, that the state’s unprecedented labor unrest – on-again, off-again furloughs that cut state worker pay nearly 15 percent, fractured labor relations with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, rising public disdain for civil servants – has increased tension for a group of people who tend to value security and predictability in their work.

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