With 64% of precincts reporting, Romney has 52% of the vote, followed by McCain with 21%, Ron Paul with 19%, and Mike Huckabee with 6%. While the race hasn’t been officially called, I think it’s fairly obvious that Romney has prevailed.
DeMint was angered after learning that the Berkeley City Council voted this week to tell the U.S. Marine Corps to remove its recruiting station from the city’s downtown.”This is a slap in the face to all brave service men and women and their families,” DeMint said in a prepared statement. “The First Amendment gives the City of Berkeley the right to be idiotic, but from now on they should do it with their own money.”“If the city can’t show respect for the Marines that have fought, bled and died for their freedom, Berkeley should not be receiving special taxpayer-funded handouts,” he added.
I fully agree, of course, neither Berkeley or any other city in this country should be receiving taxpayer-funded handouts in the first place, but the People’s Republic of Berkeley would be a great place to start stripping from.
In the meantime, a senior Marine official tells FOX News that the Marine office in Berkeley isn’t going anywhere.
“We understand things are different there, but some people just don’t get it. This is a part of the military machine that gives them the right to do what they do, but what they are doing is extreme,” the official said.
DeMint said he will draft legislation to rescind any earmarks dedicated for the City of Berkeley in the recently passed appropriations bill — which his office tallied to value about $2.1 million. He said that any money taken back would be transferred to the Marines.
Sounds like a good arrangement to me. Berkeley can’t throw out the recruiting station anyway because it’s a Federal office. They are just grandstanding because the city is full of attention starved misfits from society. That being the case, I can’t imagine there are too many residents actually signing up for the military anyhow, but that’s not the point. Here is the list of government waste they are slated to receive:
— $975,000 for the University of California at Berkeley, for the Matsui Center for Politics and Public Service, which may include establishing an endowment, and for cataloguing the papers of Congressman Robert Matsui.
— $750,000 for the Berkeley/Albana ferry service.
— $243,000 for the Chez Panisse Foundation, for a school lunch initiative to integrate lessons about wellness, sustainability and nutrition into the academic curriculum.
— $94,000 for a Berkeley public safety interoperability program.
— $87,000 for the Berkeley Unified School District, nutrition education program.