Category Archives: Subsidiarity

Why not ask SLED to investigate deputy’s actions?

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UPDATE: Sheriff Lott called me this afternoon, and he has a pretty good explanation for why he went with the feds first. Later tonight, I’ll write a new post about it…

I said this in a comment earlier, but I think it’s worth a separate post…

So Sheriff Lott has fired the deputy involved in the Spring Valley incident.

But here’s something I want to know, and would have asked Leon had I been at the presser: Why go straight to the FBI? Why not invite SLED in? Or, I don’t know, the statewide grand jury.

Yeah, I know, even though he’s my twin and all, Leon may not be as enamored of subsidiarity as I am. But why immediately buy into the cliche that NO ONE in SC can be fair and objective about this; we have to bring in the feds?

As Harry Harris said in a comment yesterday: “SC seems to be the one state that has reacted to most of the police excessive force revelations in a sound manner – prosecuting and disciplining the officers involved.” Leon’s immediate firing of this deputy demonstrates that — unless it just demonstrates a Pilatesque desire to wash his hands, and I don’t think that’s the case.

I would have given the SC system a chance to work. If the feds wanted to do a civil rights investigation on a parallel track, nobody’s stopping them.

But I just don’t get why, in this case and previous ones, Leon doesn’t want to turn to SLED…

MSNBC on South Carolina’s NCLB problem: our high standards

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Jim Foster over at the state Dept. of Ed. drew my attention to this recent report on MSNBC that touches upon the great problem that South Carolina has with No Child Left Behind: That the federal law judges states on how well they meet their own standards, and South Carolina has some of the nation’s highest.

Of course, all of us who had been paying attention knew that already. If the feds want to assess the schools, they need to come up with a uniform standard for the assessments to mean anything. But here’s a better idea: Shut down the U.S. Dept. of Ed., and get the federal gummint out of our schools.