Do they mean like this?

“Teacher Mark Berndt is accused of taping his students’ mouths shut, blindfolding them and placing a giant cockroach on their faces. . . . Berndt was arrested Monday on felony charges of committing lewd acts on 23 boys and girls, ages 6 to 10…”

That’s from an AP story today which goes on to note that another Los Angeles public school teacher – working at the SAME SCHOOL as Berndt – was arrested on Friday “for investigation of lewd acts on two girls” who “were about 7 years old and said they were fondled in a classroom.”

As a homeschool dad, I’m feeling awfully guilty this morning about denying my kids the “socialization” opportunities afforded those kids at Maramonte Elementary School. Bad homeschool dad. Bad.

And while we’re on the subject of the publik skools, I attended the GOP caucus meeting for my precinct this morning and looked around the room at all the posters and stickers plastered on the walls. Talk about Liberalville, USA. It was completely and totally obnoxious. Racism, feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, anti-bullyism, you name it – all four walls; ceiling to floor.

Hey, but at least the kids are getting “socialized,” right?

Anyway, polling released today in the Las Vegas Review-Journal shows that among GOP voters in Nevada, Romney leads Gingrich 45-25 percent. But among those who strongly support the tea party movement, Gingrich leads Romney 37-27 percent. So this really is a race pitting moderate vs. conservative and the establishment vs. the grassroots.

* From the Don’t-Call-Us-We’ll-Call-You Department comes this quote from Tim Miller: “The reality is Newt hasn’t learned from his past mistakes, and he’s completely unwilling to run the type of disciplined campaign necessary to win.” Mr. Miller is a former aide to Jon Huntsman – the guy who has already dropped out of the race because he ran such a crappy campaign. So consider the source.

* Rick Santorum is delusional. He doesn’t have the funding, the national following, the record of achievement or the gravitas to be the conservative alternative to Romney. Period. It’s still an uphill climb for Gingrich, too, but Gingrich clearly has the better shot. The longer Santorum stays in the race, the more likely it is the GOP will nominate its next Ford-Dole-McCain. Thanks, Rick.

* The best endorsement news for Newt Gingrich in Nevada this week was in NOT getting Sharron Angle’s. After blowing a slam-dunk opportunity to take out Sen. Harry Reid in the 2010 election, Angle is pretty close to political kryptonite in Nevada now. And to the surprise of nobody, she endorsed Rick Santorum on Wednesday. Newt really dodged a bullet on that one.

“Considering Cegavske’s been a Carson City fixture for over 15 years,” The Anon Guy writes, “her zero-content responses” to direct questions were particularly “egregious,” especially when it came to questions about Nevada’s budget:

“It is getting increasingly tiresome to hear deficit-hawks suddenly lose their zeal for fiscal responsibility when asked the obvious question “What would you cut?” (with the added implication of “and please, for the love of god, give me a specific item that actually cuts something besides a few damn pennies!!!”) But, like virtually all conservatives before her, she mumbles something about looking at a variety of unnamed solutions before being pressed into a laughably small (and, therefore, politically safe) target.”

What he said. For suggestions for real cuts and real money-saving government reforms, check out the Freedom Budget proposed by the Nevada Policy Research Institute. Conservatives in Nevada won’t find a better place to start.

Sheldon Adelson’s

If you ban super-PACs you’re NOT going to stop wealthy individuals and large employers – who have a lot to protect from the government – from getting involved monetarily in political campaigns.

Indeed, if Mr. Adelson wasn’t allowed to donate $10 million dollars to the Winning Our Future PAC, for less than $500 bucks he could create Winning Our Future, Inc. and still buy $10 million worth of advertising supporting his favorite candidate(s). It’s called free speech…though in this case it’d be $10 million speech.

So who are we kidding here?

In the movie Jurassic Park, actor Jeff Goldblum had this to say about the theme park’s plan to only clone female dinosaurs so they couldn’t breed: “If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free… Life finds a way.” The same could be said for money in politics.

Therefore, the best solution is to remove all caps on political donations, allow individuals and corporations and unions to give unlimited amounts of money directly to the candidate’s campaign – thus allowing candidates to not only be in control of their campaign and messaging again, but be 100% responsible for it, as well – and simply require full disclosure of the all donations online within 48 hours. Then let the voters decide if the money means anything.

Granted, there are exceptions to any rule…but voters, generally, aren’t stupid.

The letter advised me that my “dumb” meter was scheduled to be removed and be replaced with a “smart” one in the next 30 days. Well, that didn’t sit too well with me, so I rang up the energy monopoly from my smart phone and asked if I could “opt out.” And the answer, frankly, stunned me.

I was told that, yes, I could opt out – subject to an upcoming ruling by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC, which I think might be short for “pucker up, baby!”). However…

If I “refused” – and that’s the word the nice lady used, not “opt out” – to change over to the smart meter, I was warned that NV Energy could come take out my “dumb” meter and…get this…leave me with no electricity at all!

I thought surely I must have misunderstood. But sure enough, I was informed, in no uncertain terms, that the meter belongs to NV Energy and that they are perfectly within their rights to come take it back and leave me, literally, in the dark. Which is not exactly the sort of threat you take lightly. In fact, them’s fightin’ words.

Something tells me I’m about to become very, very much engaged in this fight.

Oh, puh-lease.

If Romney gets 50 percent in Nevada it will be because this is a caucus state, not a primary state…and Romney (a) has been organizing and campaigning here for five years, (b) has a strong LDS base of support, (c) has dramatically outspent his opponents, and (d) has perhaps the best GOP campaign pro in Nevada, Ryan Erwin, calling the shots. It’ll have absolutely NOTHING to do with “conservatives coalescing around him.”

Why does the media insist on quoting these guys who have no real-life experience in politics, especially within the conservative movement, as “experts”?

Hmm. I seem to recall that it was Gingrich who was responsible for leading Republicans such as Mrs. Vucanovich into the majority in the United States House of Representatives in 1994. That’s gratitude for ya. I guess it’s true that no good deed goes unpunished.

I was in one of the two lines going through the checkpoint at McCarran. When the line next to me grew shorter I asked one of the TSA employees why we couldn’t move some of our people over to the other line. His response was that I should stay out of his business and if I didn’t I would be arrested. If you have ever had a similar experience at McCarran or any airport, I would like to know about it.

If you examine the qualifications of a TSA agent, you will understand the level of talent and judgment of these people who last year were in a governmental agency that spent and cost 8 billion dollars.

TSA is the poster child for government waste.

WHO SAYS OSAMA BIN LADEN DIDN’T WIN THE WAR? JUST LOOK AT THE FALLOUT FROM HIS SPENDING NO MORE THAN $20,000 TO HIJACK THREE PLANES AND CRASH TWO OF THEM INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER ON 9-11-01.

Stay on ‘em, Mr. Rogers! The TSA sucks. Airport security needs to be re-privatized. These government “papers, please” apparatchiks have gotten WAY out of hand.

“George Romney was born in Mexico and was 5 years old when a revolution forced his family members in 1912 to flee their Mormon colony and seek refuge in the United States. But there are other elements to the Romney story that may explain why he doesn’t tell the full tale on the campaign trail. The reason that George was born in Mexico is that his grandfather – Mitt’s great-grandfather – had taken refuge there in order to escape US laws against polygamy. It was this family patriarch, Miles Park Romney, who established the colony and lived there with four wives. Mitt Romney has decried what he has called the ‘awful’ practice of polygamy and has never visited the colony, even though several dozen of his cousins continue to live there.”

Interesting. Not relevant. Just interesting.

Of course, Ron Paul isn’t going to get out and no one expects him to get out. And frankly, he’s earned the right to stay in. But Rick Santorum?

Santorum’s nothing more than the last remaining “flavor of the month.” And by staying in the race beyond Florida and Nevada, all he’s doing is denying conservatives their last and only chance to unite behind a Romney alternative. His efforts are going to give the GOP the moderate Romney…just as he gave his home state of Pennsylvania the moderate Sen. Arlen Specter in 2004 when they could have had the conservative Pat Toomey.

Exactly how “principled” of a conservative are you when you keep helping to elect moderates in big-time races?