Rehab project getting socialists all atwitter

Dinner is served.

The BBC is reporting on The Delancey Street Foundation, another liberal rehabilitation scheme doomed to failure:

The Delancey Street Foundation in San Francisco puts hardened criminals - including thieves and murderers - in charge of their own recovery and it doesn't take a penny in grant money from the United States government.

Instead the residents support themselves - and each other - by running a string of businesses including a gourmet restaurant. It is a 500-strong family, and - much like a normal family - the punishment for those who step out of line is washing the dishes.

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair visited the place recently, prompting calls for the concept to be introduced in Britain.

Bringing a bit of San Francisco to Britain is probably not a good idea. We don't even like the things going on there.

James greeted me warmly, dressed in a suit and tie - the only evidence of his notorious past a necklace of tattoos peeking above a crisply-starched shirt.

He never really stood a chance. His mother was a prostitute, his father a member of the Hells Angels. By the age of 44 he had spent nearly half his life in prison. He has a rap sheet which reads like an encyclopaedia of crime: drug possession, assault, attempted murder.

But now James is going straight.

If you believe James will go straight, you probably have a tumor competing for the blood in your brain.

The first stop on our tour: a gourmet waterfront restaurant run by the residents and open to the public for lunch and dinner.

How many shanks end up in the tortellini?

Winfrid was caught by the FBI attempting to transfer his ill-gotten gains into an offshore bank account and served 11 years, four months and two days in a federal prison, not that he was counting.

A year into his stay at Delancey Street he says he will never do another hold-up again.

Riiiiight. This is too comical to believe. Now if we could just give the inmates free drugs, liberals would believe society had inched that much closer to their utopian fantasy.