A judge ruled the 14 year old boy accused of killing Lawrence King can be tried as an adult. Brandon McInerney allegedly shot King as the child, who had told friends he was gay, was writing an assignment for his English class. The February crime occurred in a school in Oxnard, California, a state that has what’s called Proposition 21. Passed by California voters in 2000, this law gives state prosecutors more leeway on charging children 14 and older with adult crimes without having the permission of a  judge. McInerney is charged with first-degree murder and a hate crime.

No one reading this site is looking to give McInerney a pass; however, what purpose is served charging the young with adult crimes? California gives death to those found guilty of first degree murder and I’m not sure the state wants to be known for executing a child.

Barack Obama with German chancellor Angela Merkel in front of the Reichstag in Berlin on July 24.

If Germans could vote for president of the United States, Barack Obama would win in a landslide. “He will be in Berlin this Thursday, when Germans will hail him as a magician with the ability to transform a gloomy world into a brighter place,” says Der Spiegel, the most respected news magazine in Germany. “Never before has there been so much excitement in Germany over the visit of a presumed US presidential candidate,” adds Spiegel. “Obama may be running for the White House, but judging by the commotion, one would think that he had already advanced two steps further and were the president of the world,” says Spiegel, which calls Obama ‘An American Idol in Germany.’

Of course, Barack Obama is still only the junior senator from Illinois and not yet even formally nominated as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, but “Mr. Obama may well be the first American presidential candidate to deliver a speech in Berlin,” as Jeff Zeleny notes in the New York Times politics blog, The Caucus.

The German enthusiasm for the Democratic presidential candidate is hardly surprising, given the low regard in which George W. Bush is held in Mitteleuropa. In Germany, Bush is reviled as an ideologue and an imperialist who launched a disastrous war in Iraq and plunged US relations with European allies to their lowest point in decades. With Republican presidential nominee John McCain viewed by Germans as offering more continuity than change, Germans are hoping his Democratic rival replaces the Dummkopf who has occupied the White House for nearly eight years now.

But downing some beer and bratwurst with Angela Merkel is not only good trans-Atlantic politics, it is also good politics for a presidential candidate such as Barack Obama, given the deep connections between Germany and America. “Often overlooked is just how German the United States really is,” says Nicholas Kulish on The Caucus page of the Times, pointing out that nearly 43 million Americans are of German descent, many of them in key battleground states in the Midwest, such as Wisconsin, which is 43% German American.

Munich’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung calls today ‘Obama-Day in Berlin.’ Deutschland has succumbed to Obama mania. The question is, will Mittelamerika demonstrate the same Obama mania in November…?

You have to hand it to some of Hillary Clinton’s supporters. These “hardy few” are doing their best to make sure their candidate’s name is listed on the binding vote to be held at the upcoming Democratic convention. Called the Denver Group, the organization has asserted in newspaper ads that because neither Clinton nor Obama have the elected delegate count for the prize, a roll call of super delegates is required to clear things up.

It’s unclear if the group is reading the party’s rules right but Heidi Li Feldman, a co-founder of the Denver Group, insists on her blog her work for the roll call has everything to do with a principle instead of a person (although she does confess she wants Clinton to represent the party come the fall):

I am committed to enfranchisement, enfranchisement wherever franchise is offered. By exercising the franchise individuals go through a decision making process to resolve a situation that was not previously resolved. I insist that the superdelegates be meaningfully enfranchised at the Democratic National Convention, that they be given a real chance to make a real choice.

I’m sort of confused what a “real choice” actually means (and can the words super-delegates and enfranchisement be used in the same sentence without a fit of the giggles?). The only options at the end of the primary were Clinton and Obama and except for some style points the differences between those two were minimal at best. So the “choice” Professor Feldman is asking for is essentially between Coke and Pepsi. If that’s “real choice,” then we are in big trouble.