Over at the Flathead Beacon, Kellyn Brown has an excellent essay on the abysmal intellectual standards for Montana’s Voter Information Pamphlet that contains the arguments for and against ballot measures, plus the text of those measures.
I’ve always had two problems with the VIP. First, from the standpoint of graphical design, it’s reader unfriendly. Densely set sans serif type (Arial), not a good choice for body text, covers cheap paper. Second, it’s an exercise in footnote-free political discourse.
“Flipping through the most recent Voter Information Packet,” Kellyn writes, “there appears to be few limits as to what one can say about any given measure and even fewer attribution requirements.”
Nicely understated.
Over at the Daily InterLake, Kristi Albertson is on her way to winning an award for her reporting on the saga of Demari DeRue, and guns not in school, but locked in the trunks of cars in the parking lots of local schools. Albertson’s latest story, Discipline methods vary for guns at school, explores the frequency of gun busts at schools in the Flathead, and how the automatic punishment feature of zero tolerance is circumvented by common sense.
Thus far, the DeRue incident has been treated as a gun rights issue, and there’s been a fair amount of special pleading to the effect that hunting is a special part of western and rural culture, and that therefore gun laws should not be as strict in communities such as Columbia Falls as in cities like Detroit. Only a few commentators, K.J. Hascall, writing in the Hungry Horse News, among them.
There’s not been much attention paid to the civil liberties issues raised by having contraband-sniffing dogs loosed on the schools in surprise searches. Later this week, I’ll have some observations on schools going to the dogs. Meanwhile, I’ll conclude this post with some observations on guns on campus.
Demari DeRue posed no threat to her teachers and classmates, but her driving her car around for several days with a high powered rifle locked in the trunk was not an act of conspicuous intelligence. Her rifle should have locked in a secure gunsafe at home, put there just as soon as she got home from hunting. And her parents should have made sure she did it. It was not a shining example of sound gun handling, but it was a good example of a teenager’s lapse in judgment.
I also take a dim view of taking a gun to school for any purpose, and that includes going hunting after school. That convenience for the student does not come close to outweighing the value of a firearms free campus. Moreover, after school, students should head for the library and get started on their homework instead of heading out to blow a hole in Bambi.