Amster: "Citizens need to make opinions clear"

Randall admits, "I generally try not to be prescriptive in these columns," and my question is: why? Up to near the end here I think you're doing pretty well, Randall. This is progress, keep it up!

Letters: Life's a beach

Earl Burden is back, still whining for sand between his toes, as he did on April 27. Do you get the feeling no one's listening?

Editorial: "Veterans deserve our thanks today and every day"

And promise them we'll never again send them into harm's way for anything less than a real threat to our lives and freedom. We can do better than this.

Weekend off

The weather's great, working folks have a three-day weekend, who needs to sit around reading about the Courier? Check back in a coupla days. Open thread in comments here if you feel the urge.

A3: "Ellen Simon drops out of Distict One race"

Hmmm. Maybe Ellen really has a more compelling focus. Or maybe she discovered that local Dems don't much like her. It sure looks like she's a little disorganized about it, in any case.

Update, 2:31pm: Headline typo

A1: "Chino council ready to look at roundabout"

Apparently the Chino Valley Council isn't scared of roundabouts either. Maybe they're just more scared of signal-controlled T-bonings.

Talk of the Town: "Bad outweighs the good with illegal immigrants"

With this I think we might surmise that the debate has played out and there's nothing new to be said about immigration, at least on one side. The same tired arguments made in the same tired way, from people who have no credentials for special insight, makes for awfully dull reading. Why is this here?

Letters: Councilcritter toots horn

I've known Jim Lamerson for years, and I've got used to his iconoclastic style. But it's a little unseemly even for him to write something like this. That should be a job for a happy constituent, and if you're not getting that sort of help, it's a clue.

For the record, I think he's got a point -- people are always more willing to bitch than praise, and as voters we need to be more aware of what's not going wrong. I don't necessarily agree with him about what's going right, however.

Did Jim call up the Courier seeking an interview for a feature on Council's point of view about its various controversies? Might not that have been a good idea, editors?

A1: "Sheriff’s office check turned up Aryan link"

The fascination with this sensational story is understandable, but I'm getting a little uneasy about it.

The meat here is in how old Buck didn't seem to care much about who he was hiring and is getting defensive about it; that Sheriff Waugh didn't know, but now he did know and it didn't matter, but now it matters. And John K's got a good angle on how this might throw some doubt on certain cases. None of this is really at the focus of the story, though.

It's getting irritating to repeatedly read, "a usable amount of cocaine and drove to a convenience store," as if a visit to the Circle K rates a few days in the clink. But that's just a minor aggravation.

My civil-libertarian alarm is going off about the Aryan Nation (no, not "Nations," guys) focus in general. Distasteful as it is, there's nothing illegal about involvement in any such group, and the story is pulling most of its horsepower from what may be nothing in terms of reality right now. There's going to be a jury on this, and how will this information affect them? Will he receive harsher treatment because of an ugly but not unlawful political affiliation in his past? How would we feel if, rather than speaking stupidly about race, he had spoken stupidly, for example, about the rights of animals when he was in college?

I'm not saying that I know he's not an evil bastard, but I sense this could easily turn out into a railroad job, perhaps in part to cover up slack practices inside the YCSO.

I'm asking the Courier to be very careful about this.

Update, 9:15: Today's editorial throws more fuel on the fire, demanding new procedures to screen out "extremists." What's important, guys, is not really what the guy did before, but how he feels about it now and what he's likely to do now. Maybe he's still an awful racist, but maybe he's not; in America we're allowed to learn, change our minds and do things differently without permanent stains from the past. Or we should be. A hiring system should be careful enough to sort that out, rather than respond reflexively to how a past mistake might look.

'Extremist' is in the eye of the beholder, and a certain editor has thrown that word at me as well.

Wiederaenders: "Roundabouts leave a lot to be desired"

I'm sorry, I have no sympathy for this at all. Roundabouts are very simple -- you just have to understand what a 'yield' sign means. If you can't handle it, I'd suggest you should probably turn in your license. But the simple truth is that anyone who can handle a freeway merge can easily handle a roundabout, as long as you don't turn your mind off when you see something that looks new.

Editorial: "Roundabouts work, but require a learning curve"

The unnamed Courier editor gets it -- the traffic moves and you won't get T-boned by some drunken yahoo doing 90 against the light. Duh.

Talk of the Town: "Development is a natural, beneficial human trait"

Greg Sober, huh? Sort of smells like a nom de plume. Could anyone really be so naive and thoughtless beyond the third grade? That's it, isn't it: the small boy's fascination with toy trucks.

The best bit, though, is the spurious anthropology, imagining the ancient Pueblo peoples in the role of Del Webb. I'd laugh harder, but it's really kind of embarrassing to think that this person somehow managed to get through public school. Sheesh.

Is the Courier spike really so empty? Bill O'Reilly would be better. Words fail me.

Cartoon: The phones don't work

More space wasted on Paris Hilton. Gag me.

A1: "Couple watches lion kill deer in yard"

Oh, this must have been fun to write. How often does a writer get to use 'catamount,' after all? Joanna Dodder seems to relish the opportunity. Plain ol' straight news, no one hurt unless you count the deer, and the sidebar is a nice, informative touch. Here's a cookie. I love living here.

A1: "Contract non-renewal causes peaceful protest"

It's a drag that this otherwise interesting story doesn't include the other side of the conflict, although the 'call me on Tuesday' quote is arch, if uninformative. This hits an important voter-interest story, that of charter-school management and funding, and it would be easy to infer from the photo box at lower right that we may have a theme building. I'm wondering whether the Courier has considered covering the board meetings where this conflict has been apparently playing out, and if not, why not? In any case it's good to see something on these usually invisible education experiments.

I had some direct experience with Kestrel some years ago, and I have to say I met some great people there, but management problems have dogged it. I hope it gets better, because it offers a great mission.

A1: "Former deputy was once head of the Washington state Aryan Nation chapter"

Oy. I hear he's a bass player, too.

A1: "City moves forward with roundabout study"

Councilcritter Suttles goes to school on roundabouts, and I hope she'll be able to borrow Cindy Barks' notes, she'll need them for the quiz. Voters should take a few notes here, too, for the coming election.

A1: "Police arrest second PUSD teacher"

We don't learn why it took two months between taking him out of his classroom and the actual arrest, but Mirsada Buric covers this ugliness pretty well. I'm thankful for the quote from Kapp at the end in defense of all the good teachers whose reputations are indirectly besmirched by this. And for anyone thinking of putting their kid in private school to get away from this, bear in mind that PUSD has a program in place and caught the guy. You don't hear about the ones who don't get caught.

Cartoon: Memorial Day protest

Protesting the war to take our troops out of harm's way equals spitting on our veterans. Uh-huh. The mind that can buy into this drek is pitiable, but the minds that conceive this message and abet its distribution are the real serial abusers, taking advantage of those who are too weak to defend themselves.

Letters: Inattention edition

Leaving aside the standard nonprofit thank-you letter, today's mailbag is about missing the boat: Suzanne MacGowan thinks we can just tax the underground economy, Peggy McCauslin agrees with me but didn't quite read the material, and Reb Satterfield, while doing wonderful things for the troops, remains confused about the war.