Gov. 'Strickwell' sets the agenda

COLUMBUS – Ohio Gov. Ken Blackwell has named a Columbus attorney to spearhead an effort to eliminate regulations that hamper the growth of business in the state. Scott North, 48, will serve as the Governor’s Special Representative on Regulatory Reform. “To give Ohio a competitive advantage, we must identify and eliminate inefficient and drawn-out regulatory processes and turn to a common-sense approach to regulation,” Blackwell said.
The announcement followed Blackwell’s endorsement of GOP legislative leaders’ plan to seek a Medicaid “buy-in” waiver that would allow disabled Ohioans to earn greater incomes while still receiving Medicaid coverage, saving the state money in the long run. “He’s interested in working very closely with the legislature to address the issue,” said the governor’s spokesman.

OK, OK. You caught me. Republican Ken Blackwell isn’t Ohio’s governor. Democrat Ted Strickland, who beat him handily in November, is. Otherwise, every word of the above item is true. That points out an interesting phenomenon in the Statehouse these days: Much of the state’s policy-making business is proceeding as though a Republican had been elected governor. Aside from that silly muscle-flexing veto over lead-paint lawsuit limits that’s likely to get overturned by the courts, Strickland is avoiding high-profile initiatives so far that articulate a distinctly Democratic agenda.

In fact, some in Strickland’s own party are miffed that he took away Democrats’ chance to get some partisan “payback” for 16 years of Republican judicial appointments. His first major act was to create an independent (though with a nominal 3-2 Democratic advantage) judicial nominating commission, plucking that plum perk from the palms of county party bosses. What’s next? An independent board to redraw legislative districts and take away Democrats’ new-found advantage in that process? Maybe. Talks are in the works.

A recent statement by House Speaker Jon Husted, R-Kettering, on Strickland’s approach to fiscal issues is telling: “We don’t see anything that he’s said that would be substantially different from something we might have seen from (former) Gov. (Bob) Taft.” Ouch.

Of course, trying to make government as efficient, transparent and even-handed as possible is not – or rather, should not be – the province of one party. The business-regulation and Medicaid reforms were in Strickland’s campaign platform last fall, but they won't turn out nearly like a Gov. Blackwell or Gov. Taft would have wanted. Psychologist Strickland’s approach, after the scandals and nasty campaigns of the past year, may have a purposeful "healing" element to it. And yes, he's only been in office a couple of months.

Still, it makes you wonder if some Ohio Democrats are beginning to think they elected a DINO – Democrat In Name Only.

Check it or no ticket?

This week’s news that a computer systems analyst is taking his $100 speeding ticket to the Ohio Supreme Court on what looks like a technicality probably made readers roll their eyes – especially because it appears he was going 41 mph in a 25 mph zone in Bellville.
Gary Kieffaber, who has spent $400 acting as his own attorney on the case, says the ticket was invalid because the officer didn’t check the box on the ticket indicating that Kieffaber’s speed was “unsafe for conditions.”
“I can’t be convicted based on a document that doesn’t support or explain all the elements of the charge,” he told the Associated Press. “They failed to show that my speed was improper.” The guy sounds like a lawyer. Makes you want to say: Hey, you were speeding. Just pay the darn thing, OK?

The kind of technology Cincinnati’s parking enforcement officers are about to get – handheld ticket-printing computers – may make such arguments moot by ensuring that tickets are legible and completely filled out.
But maybe Kieffaber has a point. While no rule or law says that every single box or line on a ticket has to be filled out for the charge to be valid, you shouldn’t let sloppy or poorly documented citations slide, either. That might call into question the accuracy of the rest of the information on the ticket, especially if it’s challenged.
It’s tempting when you’re talking about “just” a speeding ticket, but some things can’t just be left to discretion or common sense. In 1998, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Montana’s highway speed “limit,” which the state simply had defined as “reasonable and proper.” Clearly, one man’s reasonable is another man’s outrageous. An undefined “limit” gives an officer plenty of pretext to stop someone – at which point your constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure is far weaker than at home.

Besides, the issue of whether someone is properly charged with an offense, given full and accurate notice, matters greatly in the legal world. It was at the center of a significant federal case recently involving illegal immigration. All involved need to know whether an arrest or a charge has a sound legal basis. Otherwise profiling, harassment, or a simple fishing expedition could be involved.
Maybe that idea was behind Friday’s Ohio 1st District Court Appeals ruling that threw out the DUI conviction of a Cincinnati man who was pulled over for driving 20 mph below the speed limit. “Slow driving alone does not create a reasonable suspicion” of drunken driving, Judge Mark Painter wrote.

This stuff matters. Driving 16 miles over the limit or 20 miles under it may be nickel-and dime stuff, but the need to follow legal procedures clearly and fairly isn’t.

A reason for the UC whistleblower

The latest news in the UC football recruit sex tape scandal helps explain why an anonymous whistleblower felt compelled to send a letter to the university's top administrators.

The allegations are that members of the football team and some recruits made a sex tape involving a female former UC soccer player during a dormitory drinking party over a recruiting weekend. If true, this would constitute serious recruiting violations and violations of university policies.

Reporter Bill Koch's Tuesday morning story quotes Senior Associate Athletic Director Mike Waddell saying that top members of the athletic administration, including Football Coach Brian Kelly and Athletic Director Mike Thomas, first learned of the allegations on Feb. 8, after two athletes reported them to Maggie McKinley, director of compliance and student services. But Waddell noted the story had been swirling around the athletic department before then. The report to McKinley was just "the first time anybody was officially notified that people felt like this was anything more than a training-room rumor."

The story became public last week after Koch wrote a story about an anonymous letter outlining the allegations that had been sent to the University administration. The author of the letter identified himself/herself as "A Concerned Athletic Department Employee." In the letter, the author said he/she was afraid the athletic department wouldn't do anything about the situation.

In Tuesday's story, Waddell described what happened when the administration forwarded the anonymous letter to A.D. Thomas on Feb. 14:
"As soon as he got that, upon receipt of that letter, you realize it's more than just a training-room rumor," Waddell said. "It's something that's now in official channels."

The incident is now being investigated by Dan Cummins, director of the university's office of judicial affairs. "Any time they've called over and Dan has asked for anything, they've gotten it from us," Waddell said. "It's in the proper hands now."

So just to be clear, according to Waddell, this wasn't a problem as long as it was just a "training-room rumor." They didn't think it was in "official channels," when only the coach, the athletic director and their staffs were dealing with it. And it didn't get into "the proper hands," until the Office of Judicial Affairs took over.

I can certainly agree with that last statement. Apparently so did the whistleblower.

HPV vaccine: Ky. proposes a little breathing room

The Kentucky House came down on the side of a controversial vaccine said to prevent a virus that causes most cervical cancers. Legislators voted to require it for middle-school girls but tempered that "requirement" by giving parents wide range to opt out.

The measure now goes to the state Senate for consideration.

It's hard to perfectly assess anybody's motivation on this issue, tainted it has been by heavy lobbying by vaccine maker Merck & Co., and influenced by conservatives who say the vaccine could implicitly promote sexual activity and staunch advocates who say it's a stunning health advance and no family should have the ability to opt out.

I think the Kentucky House was right to build in the option.

Parents aren't necessarily being reactionary by taking a cautious approach with this vaccine. From post-menopausal hormonal treatment to side effects of birth control, females have sometimes felt yanked around by medical advances that seemed not quite ready for prime time.

This issue has been so filled with hype that families deserve a chance to investigate the issue for themselves and ask questions of their children's pediatrician. Good public information campaigns -- which have largely been missing from this roll-out -- can go a long way toward leading parents to make the right decision for their daughters and feeling comfortable with it as well.

Merck should have stayed in the lab on this one. Good science will stand on its own in the long run.

The Marcus case: The forgotten victims

Hate will not bring Marcus back. Nothing we can do will bring Marcus back. Hate cannot even serve the justice that is desperately needed in this case. Yet, when we read the comments on almost every story about the tragedy of Marcus Feisel and its case, hate is the leading and common denominator. With Liz Carroll found guilty, David Carroll to go on trial in March and God only knows the justice that will be served to Amy Baker, there are four other young victims of this horrific tragedy that are almost totally being forgotten amidst this hate: the Carrolls' own children.

Almost immediately being taken away from the Carrolls and placed into foster care themselves, they have become invisible. Though we all hope and pray that they are being far better foster-cared than innocent young Marcus, it is inevitable that Liz and David must feel some sense of turmoil and irony knowing the frightful way in which they departed from young Marcus, taken by them for foster care.

As we hear or read Liz and now Liz’s mother share their emotions and anguish over wanting to save "Liz’s own babies," anyone with children can understand this pain and anguish. It is bound to be multiplied manifold knowing from their personal experience and treatment of Marcus by the Carrolls and Baker, that there are really people out there who will be ruthless, heartless and completely selfish when it comes to the care of young babies taken for foster care.

Maybe it is already past time for the family of Liz and David to curtail their agonizing over Liz and David and perhaps take some proactive and constructive actions to protect and care for the helpless four young remaining victims.

Rebirth or death spiral?

The top issue in the city of Cincinnati in recent years – the only issue in many residents’ minds – has been crime. Specifically, it is the perception that crime is on the rise, symbolized by an increase in homicides.
So it’s natural that Mayor Mark Mallory would devote much of his State of the City Address, delivered Tuesday night, to public safety. Mallory ticked off a number of initiatives and trends that he said shows the city is serious about fighting crime – from increased forfeiture and seizure to federal prosecution of gang members to a mayors’ coalition against illegal gun trafficking.

But that wasn’t the main message Mallory hoped to convey during his address at the Aronoff Center downtown. He was there to tout the “new” Cincinnati, particularly in the city’s core. “Cincinnati is experiencing a rebirth,” he said. “The state of our city is strong and growing stronger.”

He cited: a blight-fighting initiative in neighborhoods; the downtown condo boom, with a near-doubling of residents since 2000; the Fountain Square renovation, with several new restaurants opening nearby; the expanded Convention Center, with the NAACP convention booked next year; a functioning Banks Working Group; new transportation plans, including a streetcar study; new business and job developments in neighborhoods.
“Much of the city’s progress last year was overshadowed by the number of homicides,” the mayor said, “(but)we are seeing the signs of progress.”

Is Mallory correct? Is Cincinnati on the upswing or in a downward spiral? Read his speech and our stories on it, and tell us what you think, either on the SpeakUp! feature on the online stories at Enquirer.Com (click on the Local News or Opinion tabs) or by email to letters@enquirer.com.

Let 'em fry -- or freeze?

City prosecutors are making a good call in rethinking their decision to bar a sexual offender from a homeless shelter because it is within 1,000 feet of a school.

Larry Winslow, homeless for five years and suffering from walking pneumonia, feared he could die in the cold if he couldn't stay at the Drop Inn Center in Over-the-Rhine. He sued in federal court and initially city prosecutors appeared unwilling to budge. Now they're letting Winslow spend nights at the shelter temporarily and say they'll try to find a longer term solution.

It's not coddling sex offenders to offer them the simple human decency of a place to come in out of the cold.

Winslow deserved to be punished for his crime and to be labeled a sexual offender -- he was convicted of the sexual battery of two adult prostitutes in the 1990s. But his crimes were not committed against children, and denying him a night's stay at a shelter -- when students aren't in school -- hardly keeps children safer. Winslow's presence in a supervised shelter is a more secure arrangement than forcing him to sleep on the streets.

At some point communities across this nation are going to have to get real about dealing with sexual offenders. The bans and boundaries and fantasy "1,000-foot limits" are gut-reaction solutions to a complex problem that most policymakers and most of us really know little about. Much as we all hate this issue, somebody's going to have to get close enough to it to figure out what really works -- or what responsible, long-term solutions to put in place if nothing works.

Meanwhile, by treating offenders in flagrantly inhumane ways and labeling them as monsters, we run the danger of becoming one ourselves.

Wal-mart in urban America

The corporate headquarters of Wal-Mart is located in bucolic Bentonville, Ark., far away from an urban center.

Yet Wal-Mart hasn't become the world's largest retailer by resting on its laurels. The company recently announced plans to build Supercenters in the central city that been ignored in recent years.

Lack of jobs and economic opportunity cause instability in the central city. Ask anyone in needy areas of greater Cincinnati, and they'll tell you that.

The closest proposed store to our area is in Cleveland at Steelyard Commons. But the market in our region seems wide open, too, in many areas.

We all know jobs and economic activity can be an effective counterweight to poverty, crime and despair.

I'm not saying we need a Wal-Mart off Fountain Square. What we do need are visionaries to begin running to the central city -- not away from it.

Hail to the Other Chief

Friday’s passage of a non-binding U.S. House resolution opposing President Bush’s plan to deploy more troops in Iraq, and the following Senate debate on an identical resolution, constitute at least a rhetorical challenge to Bush’s authority to make war policy. It’s just the latest replay of an old conflict: Congress holds the purse strings, yet on military matters the president is the commander-in-chief, or as Bush would have it, the “decider.”

But is that necessarily the case? Must the conflict between the executive and legislative branches over war policy become even more heated? Or is there a way to solve this, both for the Iraq war and in the future? Lee Harris, author of “Civilization and its Enemies,” offers a tantalizing - though implausible, maybe impossible - solution to this dilemma:

Bush should designate someone other than himself to be commander-in-chief.

The Constitution states that “the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” But Harris points out a couple of caveats:
1. This clause was written for George Washington, who already had the title of commander-in-chief and who everybody assumed would become president.
2. It wasn’t taken literally by the Founders after that, because his successor, John Adams, nominated Washington to become commander-in-chief again when it looked like we were about to go to war with France.
The Senate, in fact, confirmed Washington for the post, delivered his commission to him, and he accepted. It was official. But the war threat passed, and the matter dropped.

So why not do it again? If you’re looking for the Framers’ “original intent,” there it is: The president nominates a qualified person to assume the expert duties of commander-in-chief, subject to confirmation by the Senate.
The beauty of this is that, having chosen someone with bipartisan backing and consent between the executive and legislative branches, it would remove much of the partisan motivation behind the debate on war policy. As Harris says, it could remove Iraq as the top election issue in 2008 and provide continuity during a change of administrations.
The president could focus on the nation’s many other issues, leaving strategy and command decisions to the chief.

This is not unlike a suggestion that’s been floating around for years: In a complex world the Founders could not have envisioned, we need two presidents – one for domestic issues, one for foreign affairs. It would take a constitutional overhaul to such an arrangement official, but it could be done in practical terms by having the vice-presidential half of the ticket run as the person who would take one of those portfolios. Bill and Hillary Clinton tried something vaguely like that with their “twofer” pitch in 1992, but the time wasn’t right.

With Iraq strategy likely to dominate the national debate and take our focus from other pressing issues in the coming months, even years, the time may now be right to make someone other than the president our commander-in-chief.
Someone high-profile. Someone who commands universal respect. Someone with the strength of bipartisan consensus. Someone who has expertise as a military tactician but is clearly committed to civilian control of the military.

Do I hear Colin Powell clearing his throat?

Watch the language

Hey folks, let's watch the language please. I have had to reject a couple of recent comments that made interesting points but were punctuated with expletives. I can read between the asterisks. These things aren't needed to punctuate your passions.

Learn any lessons from the storm?

When your home loses power, it's frustrating, it's somewhat frightening, but most of all it's humbling.

If your family, like mine, spent some of the last few days in the dark and cold, you probably realized just how fragile and vulnerable you are. Suddenly you have to think about how to keep your kids warm and fed without furnaces and stoves, and you shudder at the thought of a fire or medical emergency. The garage door doesn't rise at the push of a button. You're out of the loop on weather and road conditions. You suddenly have to think about frozen pipes and out-of-commission sump pumps.

If you learned a lesson about your fragility or your dependence on technology, please share your thoughts with the editorial board. We'd like to run some readers' views on this topic on our Friday pages. Email me at kramsey@enquirer.com or call me at 768-8527. We'll need your name and neighborhood and a phone number where we can reach you. Thanks -- and stay warm!

Making sense of a senseless death

All too often, we read about sad events such as the death of Natalie Fossier, the 9-year-old Clermont County girl who was killed by a falling tree branch while walking her dog outside her home Tuesday afternoon. Such a terrible story inevitably generates various comments and questions along these lines: How can a loving God allow such things to happen? Is this part of a plan or just another random act of an unfeeling universe? What does this tell us about our own mortality? How do we talk about such events with our children, particularly when they're so local and involve another child?

Today's news story on Natalie's death has generated this kind of discussion in its SpeakUp! comments section, and we'd like to continue that discussion on the Editorial Page. Add whatever thoughts you might have to the story or this post, or e-mail me at rcooklis@enquirer.com (please include your name, neighborhood and a contact number) and we'll add your perspective to the conversation.

'Reform' and the fine art of hypocrisy

Among the purported achievements of the new Democratic majority’s excessively celebrated “100 hours” blitz in Congress were new ethics rules to rein in lobbyists and curb pork-spending abuses. Looks like people celebrated too soon.

As the New York Times reported this weekend, lawmakers have found creative new ways to get lobbyists to pick up the tab for their fundraising and entertainment – birthday parties, wine-tasting tours, hunting tips, golf tournaments and a weekend at Disney World. All the lobbyists have to do to circumvent the new rules is pay for the outings indirectly through a political fundraising committee.
“Members of Congress are becoming more and more creative in finding ways to engage lobbyists to help pay for their campaigns,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center.

So don’t be surprised if that other major piece of reform – the one regarding “earmarks,” or dedicated spending items that are anonymously slipped into budget bills literally at the last minute – isn’t all it was cracked up to be. The last budget round contained 15,000 earmark items costing taxpayers $50 billion.
Earmarks often are the way lawmakers ingratiate themselves to special interests and their lobbyists, so there’s plenty of incentive to find loopholes to retain such power, whichever party is in power.

There’s plenty of hypocrisy to go around here:
-- Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., known as the Senate’s “King of Pork” for decades, now has gotten religion and is leading the charge to (technically, at least) eliminate earmarks from the agriculture bill, but not reduce the spending level. The executive branch could cut some of the spending items, but you know the special-interest pressure will be intense to keep them.
-- President Bush, who never could seem to find his veto pen or his voice against outrageous spending when his party was in charge, now has called on Congress to cut the number and cost of earmarks in half.
Where were these guys when we needed them?

Subpoenaed reporters

The Clermont County Prosecutor's subpoenaing of two Enquirer reporters in the Liz Carroll murder trial says more about pique than investigative technique.

The prosecutors wants all notes, videos, tapes and other materials Sheila McLaughlin and Eileen Kelley obtained during recent jailhouse interviews with Carroll and her husband, David Carroll. Both are charged with killing their 3-year-old foster child, Marcus Fiesel. Liz Carroll's trial started Monday; her husband's is scheduled for next month.

Kelley interviewed Liz Carroll. McClaughlin interviewed David Carroll. Everything said in both interviews was tape recorded by jail officials, so the prosecutors already know all there is to know about what the accused couple told the reporters. That point is made in the Enquirer's motions to quash the subpoenas, which Judge Robert Ringland is scheduled to hear Tuesday. The interviews were the basis of a series of stories the Enquirer ran Sunday and Monday, in which the Carrolls lay the blame for Marcus' death on their girlfriend, Amy Baker. Baker has been granted immunity from prosecution and is expected to be the key witness against the Carrolls.

So what is gained by such subpoenas? If McLaughlin and Kelley are subpoenaed witnesses they could be excluded from attending and covering the trial proceedings -- a "gotcha!" from prosecutors miffed about the interviews and subsequent stories.

This kind of a move doesn't benefit the prosecution of the case and it does have a chilling effect on the free and unfettered coverage of a case that has high public interest.

Views on the news

John D. Woods, Sr., a sometimes commenter on this blog, suggests below that if I really want to know why readers seem to prefer stories about such subjects as Anna Nicole Smith and Lisa Nowak to more serious topics like Bush/Cheney, Iran and government fraud and waste, I should go to a post on his blog, where he expounds on the subject. Going to that site, I found a claim that he tried to say the same thing on this blog, but that the comment got blocked.

My policy is to let up any comments that abide by our terms of service. Generally that means no bad language or gratuitous abuse and that the commenter stay on the point of the discussion. The latter is generally left to other commenters to police.

The point is I don't recall ever seeing this particular comment, and would not have blocked it if I had. We can take criticism, and if you have read our print edition during the past five years you know that we frequently have run letters from people who disagree with us.

So here is John's post. He makes some valid points, although I would argue that while the media in general caters to the readers's choices, it doesn't create the preferences in the first place.

Glad to have you join us John. Feel free to chime in any time.

It's my party, and I'll defy if I want to

Two heads are better than one – and so are two political parties with real clout. A trio of recent developments in Ohio state government help bear that out. All three should have been addressed when Republicans enjoyed total control in Columbus – but weren’t.

-- The General Assembly finally has made it easy for citizens to check online to see how their state Senate and House members are voting. The legislation Web site now will list who voted for and against each measure.
Rep. Jennifer Garrison, a second-term Democratic lawmaker from Marietta, sponsored two bills in the previous session that would have made such changes. Neither saw the light of day, because GOP leaders had no need to consider input from Democrats. Now that Democrat Ted Strickland is governor and Republicans have lost their veto-proof majorities in the legislature, they’ll be paying more attention.
In this case, House Speaker Jon Husted, R-Kettering, gets credit for working with Garrison to make the changes. It’s still a clunky process: Click the “Go” button on the page’s “Find Bills or Resolutions by Number” box, open the bill or resolution’s text, click the “Votes” link in the left-hand column, then click on “Details.” But it’s better than nothing.

-- New state Treasurer Richard Cordray, a Democrat, is suggesting that Ohio “securitize” its tobacco-settlement payments with private investors to get billions in up-front cash and lessen its risks if the tobacco firms making the payments run into financial trouble in the future. Sound familiar? It is. Several years ago, then-Treasurer Joe Deters, a Republican, proposed the same thing, but his fellow GOP officeholders shot down the idea – even though several other states had taken this prudent course. Hello?

-- One of Strickland’s first major acts after becoming governor was to create a quasi-independent, five-member panel to nominate candidates for the governor’s appointments to fill judicial vacancies. Previously, governors had simply taken the advice of political party officials on such appointments. This could help open up the process, both to public scrutiny and to a wider field of qualified candidates.
But guess who had been advocating just such a reform for nearly a decade? Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer. Despite the fact that he’s backed by the Republican Party (judicial elections are technically nonpartisan, however), Moyer was repeatedly rebuffed when he called on former Gov. Bob Taft, a Republican, to set up such a panel. The chief’s head must be spinning by now.

Save the babies

I was reaching for Kleenex this week when I read the story about the how a 2-year-old was knocked senseless and left to die in Pittsburgh and learned that Anna Nicole Smith died.
Anna's death itself was tragic, but the long term welfare of her newborn baby and the loss that baby may immediately feel is more tragic.
In Pittsburgh, police say tiny Nyia Miangel Page regained consciousness and wondered around in the cold before she froze to death.
You'll read more about the depravity of the people accused of killing local foster child Marcus Fiesel in Sunday's paper, too.
Taken together, the incidents make me want to hug my children a little tighter every day and protect them fiercely every moment.

Anna Nicole and the astronaut

Iran is threatening to go nuclear, the vice president may have to testify in a Washington criminal trial and Congress is investigating what happened to $12 billion in cash that was sent into Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein and might have ended up in the hands of insurgents now shooting at our soldiers.

So what stories have enthralled the public in print, broadcasts, blogs and comment boards for the past three days?

Anna Nicole Smith and the off-course astronaut.

Smith, the starlet who couldn't act, sing or dance but was famous for being a celebrity who posed for Playboy, married an aged billionaire, fought with his children over the fortune, got fat, got thin and then died Thursday in a Florida hotel room, commanded a greater market share of public attention Thursday night than misspent billions or the possibility that Dick Cheney may be cross examined in the Scooter Libby trial.

And it took a story of Anna Nicole's magnitude to bump the tale of Lisa Nowak from the top spot of public interest. Nowak is the NASA astronaut facing assorted charges for allegedly stalking and threatening a woman she thought was competing for the affections of another astronaut. The only real news out of this pathetic episode is a greater public understanding of what the shuttle crews wear under their spacesuits.

How, when and why have stories that used to be fit only for supermarket tabloids been elevated to the mainstream?

Barack's promise

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is coming to Cincinnati to raise money on Feb. 26. Look what he told USA Today Friday about his candidacy.

Mandated HPV vaccinations

The efforts in several states to mandate vaccinations for middle school girls against the HPV virus that causes cervical cancer is raising question not so much about the effectiveness of the vaccine, but about whether public health policy ought to be based on the advertising and lobbying clout of drug companies.

As noted in an editorial in Wednesday's Enquirer, Merck & Co., manufacturer of the vaccine, has been lobbying legislators around the country and has a national television campaign going to promote the vaccine among consumers.

Last week Texas made vaccinations mandatory for sixth-grade girls. This week Rep. Kathy Stine, D-Lexington, proposed the same thing for middle-school girls in Kentucky.

This is a vaccine with great promise. It should be used by people who understand fully what it is designed to prevent (several varieties of the HPV virus), and what it does not prevent (other sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy). Nor have long-term studies determined for certain how long it remains effective.

The vaccination involves three shots over a six-month period and is recommended for girls and women between ages 11 and 26. This means it is not something that should be administered without discussion and understanding by the patient. And that means a frank and open discussion about sex. Given that many state legislators welcome frank and open sex education for 11-year-olds with the same enthusiasm that they would welcome an outbreak of head lice, I have my doubts about how well informed prospective recipients are likely to be in states where HPV vaccinations are mandated.

These vaccinations and their ramifications should be discussed between parents and their children; between patients and their doctors. It should be available for everyone who then decides they want it. But we need to educate ourselves and our children about the needs, benefits and limitations of this vaccine before we mandate its use.

No Easter in spring break

Fairfield Schools are considering breaking the traditional tie between Easter Sunday and spring break.

There are plenty practical reasons for such a move. Easter moves around from year to year, but the needs of the school districts aren't so flexible. The need to prepare and give state-mandated curriculum tests, without worrying about a week-long interruption in the calendar has been cited by the school officials proposing the change. Easter will be April 8 this year, but in 2008 will be two weeks earlier, on March 23, and in 2009 will fall on April 12.
Officials would like to nail spring break to whatever week of the year includes April 1.

There certainly is logic to the proposal, but tradition has tied the break to the Christian holy days of Easter and Good Friday for so many years that there is bound to be some objections.
Set aside the religious considerations -- trips to the beach or late ski trips to Colorado are as traditional as lillies in the American concept of "Easter Vacation."

But what happens when one district, or even one region, changes the calendar. Will it throw things out of coordination with the rest of our world? Disrupt family travel plans?

On the other hand, will disconnecting Easter from the secular rites of Spring Break restore a sense of reverence that many have lost for celebration of the holy days?

Let us know what you think.

Year of the frogs

I think the Super Bowl jumped the shark back in 1995 (Super Bowl XXIX for those of you identifying sports with Roman numerology).

That was the year San Francisco became the first NFL team to win five Super Bowls, beating the San Diego Chargers 49-26 on the strength of six touchdown passes by quarterback Steve Young. I know all that only because I just looked it up on a recap site at NFL.com.

What has been imprinted in my consciousness about that game was not the passes or score. The memory that sticks is the sound of Bud, Weis and Er, the beer frogs who first hopped up out of the swamp that year. That's when the Super Bowl parties started focusing more on the commercials than the games. The space around the TV set actually got more crowded at half-time as the marginal fans wandered into the room. A few years later the Budweiser frogs were joined by chameleons Louie and Frankie and the hitman ferret. Then there were the Clydesdales.

All of this advertising pushed the games into nighttime primetime. It's probably better that the kids can't stay up so late on a school night, given that wardrobe malfunctions at the Super Bowl no longer have anything to do with chin straps or shoulder pads.

There is still a game, or course, but for the first time in 30 years, the crowd I have spent Super Sunday enjoying it with will be staying at their respective homes. Some, like me will be comfortably ensconced on our own couches, ready for bed in bathrobe and slippers, light beer and fat-free dip in easy reach, hoping to stay awake past half-time.