A sampling of recent editorials from Colorado newspapers:
NATIONAL:
The Daily Sentinel, Grand Junction, Colo., June 13, on the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Boumediene v. Bush:
The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided that terrorists captured and held overseas—people trying to kill American troops and innocent civilians—have the same right as American citizens to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian court.
The ruling is a terrible mistake for several reasons.
It will make it more difficult to continue to fight terrorist groups around the world. Whether it will “cause more Americans to be killed”—as Justice Antonin Scalia said in his dissent of the 5-4 decision—we cannot predict. But it will certainly make it more difficult for U.S. officials to detain and get information from suspected terrorists about planned attacks, either against American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan or against civilians on U.S. soil.
As a result of the ruling, al-Qaida members captured in Iraq or anywhere else may now challenge their detention in federal courts and raise issues in public hearings that could jeopardize sensitive intelligence operations.
Opponents of the Bush policy have supported their case with Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, which says, “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when Cases of Rebellion or Invasion, the public Safety may require it.” But until now, that provision has applied to people in the United States, not to enemy combatants captured in foreign lands.
The Supreme Court reading of this provision under Justice Anthony Kennedy gives broad new rights to those who are trying to destroy us.
Additionally, the ruling significantly broadens the authority of federal courts. It rejected a pair of 2006 laws passed by Congress in an attempt to clarify exactly when Habeas Corpus applies and how captured military combatants can be treated. Instead, the ruling allows federal judges to make their own determinations on these issues.
In effect, the five members in the majority on the Supreme Court rejected Congress’ legislative authority and bestowed it on their fellow jurists throughout the federal court system.
The ruling in Boumediene versus Bush, the Habeas Corpus case decided by the court, is a recipe for disaster, both in the war against terrorists and for the separation of powers mandated in the Constitution.
Editorial: 8—4A—detain—edit.html
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The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colo., June 14, on the heroics of the Boy Scouts in Iowa:
It’s hard to imagine the pain facing love ones of the four Boy Scouts who were killed when a twister ripped through their camp in Iowa recently. Don’t forget them. They are: Aaron Eilerts, 14, Sam Thomsen, 13, Ben Petrzilka, 14, and Josh Fennen, 13.
This was the loss of four boys who were likely to become extraordinary men—the kind who would become leaders in their communities and put others ahead of themselves. How would anyone know this? Because they were Scouts, meaning they were statistically likely to succeed. There’s no shortage of cadets, at the Air Force Academy as well as the other service academies, who were Boy Scouts. Many of them were Eagle Scouts, the pinnacle of Scouting’s ranks.
Boy Scouts organizations are a genuine gift to the United States and other cultures of the world. They teach boys and young men to be prepared, instilling in them the life skills to live as men—real men who can survive hardship, build fires, change tires, handle guns and knives, and help people in need. They live by the Scout Promise, which says, “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.” That sounds like good folks to have around.
When an assassin tried to kill Maldividan president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, Boy Scout Mahamed Jaisham risked his life, got between the president and the attacker, and saved the president’s life. Boy Scout heroics are common, though most don’t make news.
Moments after the tornado turned their camp to shreds, it was evident how the Iowa Scouts had been prepared to serve. They immediately began putting their training to work, digging through rubble to free and tend to their injured peers. While most children understandably would have panicked, the Boy Scouts went to work. Some broke into an equipment shed, grabbed tools and a chainsaw, and began clearing fallen trees from the road so parents and rescuers could get to the scene.
The boys who died can never be replaced. But their deaths should bring attention to the need for more Boy Scouts, in a culture that’s suffering from an abundance of weak men, barely prepared to care for themselves. More Boy Scouts, like the four who died, would make our future world a much better place.
Newspaper:
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STATE/REGIONAL:
Reporter-Herald, Loveland, Colo., and Times-Call, Longmont, Colo., June 16, on the need to find funding to help end the cycle of poverty:
Colorado disappointingly took on a leading distinction last week.
The state’s number of impoverished children grew substantially faster than any other state’s rate. Between 2000 and 2006, that rate rose 73 percent, putting 15.7 percent of the state’s youth in poverty.
The next fastest-growing rates were 47 percent and 45 percent in New Hampshire and Delaware, according to a New York Times report.
Nationally, the increase was 9 percent.
The findings of the annual Colorado Children’s Campaign’s 2008 Kids-Count in Colorado report should give pause among adults across the state.
The organization cited various factors, including the number of children in single-parent households, the lack of living-wage jobs, the rising number of dropouts and the growth of Hispanic households.
These numbers don’t yet include the results of the economic downturn Colorado has experienced.
The Colorado Children’s Campaign report pointed to one important contributing factor, what it calls “The Colorado Paradox.”
The state is known for being home to people with a high level of education, yet the state is attracting those residents rather than graduating those students.
And the gap is growing, as noted by this example. In Jefferson County, the number of people in low-skilled positions decreased by 0.5 percent while those in high-skilled positions grew by 2 percent. The state’s population with less than a high school education, meanwhile, grew by 0.7 percent.
But no factor alone contributes to growing poverty, just as no one solution exists.
Addressing the problem, however, is important because poverty is a cycle that often passes from generation to generation.
A strong education foundation is one important step, including expanding something that has lacked in Colorado—strong and diverse early childhood programs.
The organization agrees, taking the time to outline the dired need for funding for education and programs that help youth in need, pointing to constitutional amendments that put a strain on the state’s budget.
The Children’s Campaign also suggests the need for health programs.
Somehow, as a state, we need to find the dollars to pick up those children, to give them a hand up out of poverty. Our children deserve more—to break the cycle of poverty.
Newspapers: and
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Rocky Mountain News, June 15, on using the Black Canyon compromise as a model in disputes over natural resources:
Imagine—environmentalists and water users, as well as state and federal governments, actually agreeing on a compromise over the water flowing through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. If accepted by a state water court judge, the 30-year squabble will end in an agreement that allows annual peak flows and shoulder flows—tied to natural runoff—plus a year-round base flow of 300 cubic feet per second. It’s a good accord—too bad it took so much litigation to get the parties to sit down and hash it all out.
After seemingly ceaseless reports of wrangling over everything from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the fate of the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse, it’s little wonder that news of this happy settlement in southwestern Colorado caught our attention.
Why can’t this sort of news be the norm, rather than the exception? Why can’t this level of cooperation be a model for the resolution of other disagreements over the use of our natural resources?
The answer is that it can, especially if we learn from the history of this conflict.
For eons, water gushed or trickled (more often gushed) through the Black Canyon as nature and the seasons dictated. These historical flows helped scour the imposing river gorge, removing debris, signaling fish when to spawn and even removing parasites that have more recently devastated fish populations with the dreaded whirling disease.
About a hundred years ago, Coloradans started chipping away at those flows by diverting Gunnison River water to towns and farms. By 1933, when the canyon was designated a national monument, large quantities of water were being taken from the river.
It was 1963, however, when the biggest change came to the Black Canyon. It was in that year that the federal government completed a series of three major reservoirs—including the state’s largest, Blue Mesa—at the head of the gorge. The 2 million-year era of the great earth-cutting surges was effectively over.
But beginning with a water court judge’s ruling in 1978, the pendulum began to swing back and forth between the desire for greater or lesser flows through the breathtaking chasm.
The administrations of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton aligned themselves with conservationists who favored historical flows dating back to the 1933 water right, while President George W. Bush has pushed for lower flows and more widespread use of the water for farmers, power producers and towns.
At the end of this tug-of-war came a lawsuit and a court ruling in 2006 that set the stage for the settlement talks that concluded recently. It was, finally, as Interior Department solicitor David Bernhardt said in the Rocky, “a common-sense solution that achieves the various parties’ respective goals, which is historic.”
Historic indeed. And the lesson we spoke of earlier that can be drawn from this? Skip the bickering and get down to the talking.
Just think how much time, money and energy was frittered away over the course of 30 years or more before the various interests came to realize that giving a little here and taking a little there might be the best way to work out their differences.
As Colorado’s profile grows ever larger in the nation’s energy future, this lesson is a gift that should not be spurned. The wealth of natural resources beneath our state’s ruddy soil—petroleum locked in shale, natural gas, uranium—is already beginning to provoke superheated controversies, fiercely debated legislation and threatened legal action. (Can you say “Roan plateau”?) Environmentalists, lawmakers and energy producers alike would do well to embrace the model offered recently out of Gunnison and Montrose counties.
Editorial: model/
