A Grab-Bag of Crazy

So I took a job with a newspaper doing legislative reporting. Utah seems to have what can only be described as a grab bag full of crazy.

Well, perhaps it can be described other ways.

The Utah Legislature:

The Nexus of Nuts
The Cross Roads of Inanity
Logic Interupted
Reason Referendum
Normality Disaffected
Libertarian Fascists (note juxtaposition, if you please)

The point is, that there seems to be a durth of measurment in some legislative approaches. I'll cite Rep. Scott Wyatt as one who must have gotten a yard stick of prudence for Christmas.

Wyatt actually took a bill that sought to ban gay clubs in schools, which was way over kill in it's approach, and stepped it back to let parents deal with their own children.

Bravo Scott. It is prudent that simple clubs not be burdened by 16 pages of regulations, including requisite approval of all guests (e.g. a chess master to a chess club or an Armenian professor to a foreign language club) and approval of all handouts by school administrators.

I promise that this is, perhaps, one of the lest egregious examples of crazy.

Violent Video Game Crazy, and the Man Who Almost Sounded Believeable
or
How to Get Your Ass Sued for Liable*

I prefer the day anti-violent-video game activist Jack Thompson called and basically said that Utah's AG called in a drunken sounding rage because, in effect, Utah legislators believed an argument that Thompson's made. Thompson said that Shurtleff sounded drunk, like he was having a nervous break down.

This over an argument was that a bill up for a vote was constitutional; a bill which mirrors ones that have been declared unconstitutional something like 16 times in 8 states.

Thompson calls up and declares the Utah AG "a jackass" and further called for the impeachemnt of the Utah AG because he told legislators that similar bills have been found unconstitutional in other states. And it came with a news release.

So I call the Utah AG and ask him about it. I get something along the lines of "no I didn't call him. . . but I'd sure like to chat with him. Do you have his phone number?"

Oh, Jack, if your going to say that someone called up sounding drunk and send out a news release, maybe you should know that 1) Mark Shurtleff doesn't drink and 2) get a phone record to make it sound a little less like you're making it up - they're easy to get. Call up AT&T and say, "hey, can I have a copy of my bill?"

Why, oh why must these things be?

In short, Please, Please, let's measure our attempts to push through our personal beliefs against the possibility that we might not know and understand all that goes on around us.

Dare I say, only God himself is qualified to speak in absolutes. And I am too, but only in order to say that only God gets to do so. (And I'll reserve the oppertunity to do one more absolute later on.)

A short list of my favorite "crazy" issues.

To be on this list, it should be an issue that is either strange that it exists, odd in how it is being approached, or a fix that is so far from the mark of good judgment that it completely misses the social / governmental / societal problem.

• Video Games
• HPV
• Imigrant In-State Tuition
• Sodomy Repeal: Utah apparently doesn't discriminate on gender - who knew.