D.F. Oliveria

How thoughtless of our forefathers. Surely, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and the patriots would have made three-day holiday weekends a constitutional right - if they'd realized the inconvenience a midweek Independence Day celebration would cause two centuries later.

How sweet it is. Finally, Idaho has put a choke chain on Jet Skis or "personal watercraft" (or whatever else you call those noisy water scooters that annoy everyone but the bozo at the throttle). In Kootenai County, that means no more jumping wakes within 100 feet of a boat - unless a jet skier can do it at 15 mph or less. No more buzzing swim areas, shores or docks. No more mindless stunts when others are near. Jet Ski renters in Kootenai County now are required to view a safety film and sign a form saying they understand Idaho's water laws. Why all the fuss? Wet bikes are involved in an increasing number of waterways accidents (including 56 deaths nationwide last year) - with rentals causing about 60 percent of them. Oregon has clamped down on Jet Skis. San Juan islanders have banned them. Is there a trend here? Loukaitis should face music - publicly Score one for the victims. The Washington State Court of Appeals deserves Sweet Potatoes for reversing a Grant County judge's ruling; now, Barry Loukaitis will have his personal demons examined in public. Loukaitis is the Moses Lake student accused of killing teacher Leona Caires, a former Coeur d'Alene resident, and classmates Manuel Vela, 15, and Arnold Fritz, 14. Natalie Hintz, 13, was seriously injured. This paper challenged Superior Court Judge Evan Sperline when he closed Loukaitis' pre-trial hearing in April, just before a psychiatrist's testimony on Loukaitis' mental state. When it continues, the hearing will decide whether the 15-year-old is tried as an adult (and face life imprisonment) or as a juvenile (and face less than six years imprisonment - or about two years per kill). Loukaitis' attorney likely will ask for a change of venue and may get it. Until that time, everything about this case should be open - for the sake of the survivors struggling to understand the senseless murders and as a warning to potential copycats. Spokane fire(works)bugs, eat your heart out I don't know how to say this to Spokane County readers without sounding childish. So, I'll just say it: Our (Coeur d'Alene's) fireworks display is bigger than yours. Nanana. The Lake City Jaycees will blow the Riverfront Park pyrotechnicians out of the water tonight - like they always do with their show. Bigger shells. More shells. Kaboom. Coeur d'Alene chauvinists can help keep their fusillade bigger and better, too. When the Jaycees pass their buckets along the Fourth of July parade route, drop in a buck or two. The town's honor is at stake.

Kootenai County Democrats should leave well enough alone. They and Republicans won one when the American Heroes Parade Committee correctly backed down from its attempt to charge politicians $300 to enter the Fourth of July parade - six times the going rate. Now, Democrats are angry and threatening suit because parade organizers don't want them handing out campaign literature during the parade. The committee contends leaflet distribution will create a safety hazard (though I suspect it won't unless the pols are tossing candy to scrambling children, too). Still, parade handouts are a nuisance that usually are left behind as litter. The Democrats probably have a First Amendment right to annoy us with their leaflets. But they'd be wise to listen to Rollin Putzier, a Democratic county commissioner wannabe: "We should drop it." White knight saves trail funding The anonymous donor who saved the midsection of the Kootenai County Centennial Trail deserves a Sweet Potato Pie. By contributing $35,000, our white knight guaranteed a 3.5-mile section between Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene would be built. A squabble between Kootenai County and Post Falls officials over who owed what for a local match had jeopardized a $1.1 million federal grant needed for the work. Two years ago, the county, cities of Coeur d'Alene and Post Falls and trail foundation agreed to split $280,000 for the grant's local match. But Post Falls balked when the county failed to honor a gentleman's agreement to reimburse the town for some $122,000 already spent on the trail. Both sides dug in. Time was running out on the grant when Anonymous did the kindly deed. May his or her kind increase. Maybe Ecology isn't all that embarrassed U.S. Sen. Larry Craig's request that an environmental group return public funding for an anti-mining video isn't out of line. In May, the Inland Empire Public Lands Council distributed a video door-to-door warning Spokane residents that "our future was at risk." Eventually, the video prophesied, "The heavy metal contamination of North Idaho will be the heavy metal contamination of Spokane." A $38,500 grant from the Washington Department of Ecology produced the propaganda. Last week, an Ecology muckety-muck apologized for lobbying material distributed with the video. Said Dan Silver: "I'm embarrassed to admit that this material was approved by Ecology staff." Talk's cheap. If Ecology is truly embarrassed, it'd ask the lands council for the grant money back.

Hillary Rodham Clinton's apologists want it both ways. They're delighted to have a strong, self-made, female power attorney residing in the White House as the president's first partner. But they don't want her to endure the slings and arrows - many self-inflicted - that come with the territory.

All of us have failed at something important in the past. Maybe we forgot a line in a high school play. Or we might have made the last out in the big baseball game against a school rival. Or we froze during the college entrance exam and scored too low to qualify for a prestigious college. Such failure can haunt us for the rest of our lives if we let it. Many of us do. We go out of our way not to be put in a similar spot to fail again. We limit ourselves.

It goes without saying that people should be notified when a child molester moves into the neighborhood. Yet, Erland Kautz had settled in Spirit Lake before the community learned about him. Kautz? He's a convicted molester who has admitted fondling or performing oral sex on 26 girls, ages 2 to 17. After Kautz was outed in Spirit Lake, neighbor Claudia Satefiel asked the $64,000 question that our Legislature should answer: "Shouldn't they notify me? I have children. The police should protect me by letting me know." Last session, legislators refused to look at a bill, proposed by Sen. Clyde Boatright, R-Rathdrum, that mandated notification. It was "a little harsh," sniffed the pols. But so is finding out that "nice" Mr. So-and-So next door played doctor with your kids. And he'd done the same thing to other kids before. Idaho needs an enlightened notification law like Washington's. The tougher the better. Craig double-talks finance reform Hmmm. Seems U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, wants campaign finance reform, but he just can't find a bill to his liking. On Tuesday, Loquacious Larry, Idaho's Dirk Kempthorne and 43 other Republicans blocked a vote on finance reform. Afterward, Craig harrumphed: "We need campaign finance reform, but this bill takes the wrong approach." Apparently, the bill, cosponsored by possible Republican veep candidate John McCain of Arkansas had constitutional problems. (Yeah, it might have stopped Larry from spending all of his $1.4 million re-election warchest to beat Walt Whatzhizname). You'll never get finance reform until the issue is taken out of the hands of the politicians. Green Rathdrum Prairie beats strip malls Everyone knows the Rathdrum Prairie eventually will become one big subdivision. But there's no need to hurry the process, which is exactly what a proposed amendment to the Kootenai County comp plan would do. The hounds of progress (read developers, real estate agents and contractors) are salivating over a proposed change that would permit commercial development for five miles along each side of state Highway 41. Of course, businesses will beget houses, which will increase pressure on the beleaguered grass-seed industry to move elsewhere. When the farmers go, so will the pleasing green fields that cover the prairie, filtering contaminants and cooling the surrounding area. County officials must resist the temptation on this one to be rubber stamps for their industry buddies.

So, who's your favorite American hero? George Washington? Abraham Lincoln? The Roosevelts? Ronald Reagan? All achieved greatness and have many admirers. They also share one other trait: All were politicians.

Hmmm. Seems actor Bruce Willis has been so busy pushing an initiative to stop nuclear waste shipments to Idaho he hasn't registered to vote - for the nine years he's lived here. In a recent column, Dan Popkey of the Idaho Statesman captured Willis' rantings and chest-thumping on the nuclear-waste issue before popping the big question: Are you registered to vote? Willis claimed he was, but he couldn't produce a piece of paper to prove it. Said he: "I voted in this state - I voted in the last election here." Popkey then had the unpleasant duty of telling him that the Blaine County clerk said otherwise. After the interview, Norma Douglas, director of Stop the Shipments, dashed to the courthouse to get Willis signed up to vote. Quoth she: "That's not good for our credibility." Bingo.

Andre Brigham Young is the kind of monster that shouldn't be allowed to prey on society again. Beginning in the early 1960s, Young, 54, committed six violent rapes over 23 years. Sometimes he broke into the homes of his adult female victims. Sometimes he brandished knives as he violated them. If freed, he's sure to reoffend.

Kootenai County and Post Falls are playing a bureaucratic game of chicken that could leave the county's 23-mile Centennial Trail unfinished - forever. Unless someone blinks soon, the county will lose a $1.1 million federal grant needed to complete the lone unfinished section of its trail - 3.5 miles between Coeur d'Alene and Post Falls. Two years ago, the county joined in agreement with Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls and the Centennial Trail foundation to share equally the required $274,000 local match. Now, Post Falls claims it paid more than its share years ago when it bought easements and doesn't want to contribute $70,000 more.

With Republicans and Democrats battling over Whitewater, it's tempting to dismiss "Filegate" as another example of partisan politics. It's not. At the very least, it's "an innocent bureaucratic blunder" of monumental proportions that should never be repeated; at worst, it's a calculated, cynical attempt by the Clinton White House to obtain "dirt" on "Travelgate" figure Billy Dale and potential presidential rivals.

In the end, the FBI won a no-win situation. When 16 anti-government freemen surrendered peacefully Thursday after an 81-day standoff at an eastern Montana farm, they'd long lost public support - even from militia sympathizers. No one could say that the freemen had been treated unfairly. No one could say the government had failed to negotiate with them. In fact, by outwaiting the freemen, the FBI won grudging praise from militia and patriot movement leaders - some of whom, such as Militia of Montana's Randy Trochmann and Colorado state Sen. Charles Duke, aimed their barbs instead at the defiant extremists.

It's a good thing this country had Abraham Lincoln running it in the 1860s instead of Bob Dole. Or Bill Clinton. Neither modern politician would have had the guts to condemn slavery and face a civil war. Democrat Clinton would have flip-flopped all over the place trying to get a good read on the polls. Republican Dole would have added a "Declaration of Tolerance" to the Republican Party's anti-slavery plank to say it's OK to support slavery, too. And slavery would have flourished.

Post Falls officials can save themselves the expense of a national job search by naming Police Chief Cliff Hayes as the next city administrator. Of course, Cliff probably doesn't want the post after the second city administrator in the past three years resigned earlier this week. Hayes, however, has one qualification that the city's first two administrators - Barry Cook and John Hendrickson - didn't. He fits in. And that's no small matter in a tight-knit community like Post Falls. Said Councilman Gus Johnson of Hendrickson: "John didn't do a bad job. His fit just didn't fit our fit. That's all it comes down to." Cliff is as much at home waiting for election returns at a pizza parlor with Mayor Jim Hammond as he is leading the police force. He knows where the skeletons lie. He knows which toes not to crunch. Post Falls shouldn't put another city administrator through the misery of trying to fit in without wooing Hayes first. I had to give governor my 2 cents' worth I couldn't meet with Gov. Phil Batt for 45 minutes Tuesday without expressing my disappointment that he hadn't ordered convicted killer Donald Paradis executed. Last month, Batt decided to commute Paradis' death sentence for the murder of Kimberly Palmer to "life without parole." That, of course, will be an acceptable sentence if it stands. But I suspect that Paradis and his crafty lawyers someday will ask the parole board to convert the new sentence to one of "indeterminate life" and, as a result, freedom. Still, Batt was put in a tough place by an orchestrated press campaign on behalf of Paradis. It's hard to insert the needle when bleeding-heart journalists are braying about the minute possibility Paradis could be innocent. (I think he was involved in killing both Palmer and her boyfriend, Scott Currier.) I hope the media hyenas who got Paradis off death row are around when he gets out of prison and harms someone else. Car insurers have a license to steal Forget the pyramid schemes. Who's going to protect us from the car-insurance industry? I didn't realize what a racket these birds have until I tried to buy insurance for my 16-year-old boy. I should have handed them my bank card and called it even. On top of exorbitant prices, the insurers warned that insurance for junior would go up $10 a month for three years if he gets a ticket and $25 per month for two tickets. In other words, a ticket will cost $320 above the actual fine. How does the insurance industry get away with this kind of stuff? Gracious! I knew we should have raised canaries instead of kids.

Wilderness therapy programs have had their successes. For example, sweethearts Lee Cunningham and Anna Seymour of Bonner County, Idaho, owe much to the Rocky Mountain Academy in neighboring Boundary County for helping them turn their lives around. Said Lee: "If it wasn't for that school, there's no telling where I would be. I learned a very good work ethic. I learned what true friendship is about." Yet, a cloud hangs over such programs.

Sandpoint video stores probably had a hard time keeping Oliver Stone's "JFK" on the shelves last month. The Sandpoint High School Cedar Post reported in its final edition that the school district had blocked the showing of the movie in a U.S. history class. So, 60 students opted to view the film outside of class and complete an assignment for extra credit. Seems a parent had objected to the movie's steady stream of foul language and offered to loan the class his sanitized version. Teacher George Marker objected, explaining that the film's language is no worse than that heard in school hallways, and told the Cedar Post: "Overlook the language and look at the content." Now, we've reached a bigger problem: Why is a fantasy twisted from Oliver Stone's demented mind being shown in a history class? Stone, who also directed "Natural Born Killers," so craftily mixed fact and fiction together that half of America today believes the theory that the CIA killed John F. Kennedy. Stone's hatchet job on "Tricky Dick" Nixon is even worse. Marker, to his credit, also used films featuring Walter Cronkite and a three-part biography of Lee Harvey Oswald to explain the Kennedy assassination. But from here, it looks as if Bonner County School District administrators made the right call. Don't know much about 'rithmetic either In the National Review on June 3, "The Week" section points out that high-school seniors in Arkansas were asked: What is 27 percent of 100? The item ends: "In order not to wound the students' self-esteem, we carefully report the results in language beyond their grasp: 50 percent of them flunked." And you wonder why half of America believes the CIA killed JFK? Great gobs of steaming gopher guts! As a kid growing up on a Sacramento Valley ranch, I experienced gophers, up close and personal. They tore up ditch levees, burrowed dangerous holes in cow pastures and were a total nuisance. Occasionally, while irrigating, I got close enough to one to slice it in half with a shovel. I, of course, didn't have to contend with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Now, animal-rights activists are frothing about a museum of stuffed gophers depicting life in Torrington, Alberta, population 177 - 31 displays, 54 dead gophers. Some protesters have written obscene letters to the Gopher Hole Museum. The controversy, of course, is good for business. Still, Mayor Harold Ehrman speaks for anyone who ever has dealt with a gopher when he tells PETA activists to "go stuff yourselves."

There's a remote chance Susan Foutz would be alive today if she had lived in Washington rather than Idaho. If her home had been in Spokane County instead of at Hauser Lake, the mother of two could have obtained a civil protection order against her abusive ex-boyfriend, Stephen A. Cherry. If Idaho's domestic-violence laws were like Washington's, Cherry would have had to see a magistrate for trespassing on Foutz's property before bailing out of jail May 30. A jail stretch might have calmed the walking time bomb down.

"Photo-red" wouldn't have prevented drunk-driving poster boy James B. Barstad, 30, of Richland from blowing a stoplight at Hamilton and Mission May 25 and killing two women. That creep, with the sno-cone hairdo and a chip on his shoulder as big as a ponderosa, wouldn't have stopped if the intersection had been barricaded and manned by Police Chief Terry Mangan's finest. Nor would photo-red - a Big Brother system that photographs red-light violators - have prevented Cephas William Parham, 19, of Spokane, from crashing his Olds Cutlass into a school bus April 26 and killing a passenger. Witnesses say Parham was speeding and made no attempt to stop at the light at Howard and Maxwell.

If I had had my druthers, I wouldn't have taken physical education classes in high school back in the '60s. I didn't like running a mile after lunch to prove to LBJ that I could meet JFK's national physical-fitness standards. Besides, the showers were cold. Yet, the four years I was forced to take PE instilled in me a lifelong desire to exercise and stay fit. That's why the Idaho Department of Education deserves a Hot Potato for proposing to drop PE as a requirement. A broad education goes beyond rote recitation and intellectual training. It involves disciplining the body as well. At a time when there's concern nationally about the fitness of youngsters, Idaho is about to take a wrong turn. The 1997 Idaho Legislature can and should shoot down this boneheaded idea. Hey, how about sympathy for the kid, too? Apparently, the shock of Bob Brown's arrest last Thursday for child molestation is wearing off. The crude jokes have begun. In case you've been on the moon, the Kootenai County Democratic leader was arrested and admitted performing oral sex on a step-grandson last August. Incredibly, Brown told a sheriff's deputy that his despicable action was taken to educate the 14-year-old and not for sexual purposes. It is equally incredible that no one in the community who has responded publicly about Brown's crime has expressed concern about his victim. Sure, Brown has done some wonderful things in the community. Art on the Green. Lakeshore preservation, as a former Coeur d'Alene city councilman. But good deeds be damned. A sexual crime against a child lasts a lifetime. Belle, Lemieux belong in jail, too The Colville High School butt-head who knocked out a referee with a head butt after losing a wrestling match will go directly to jail - without passing "Go" or collecting $200. What a way to spend your first June as an adult, huh? But Chad Hilderbrandt isn't the only one who should spend time cooling his heels in the hoosegow for sports hooliganism. Pampered professional athletes such as Cleveland Indians outfielder Albert Belle (who recently broke a much-smaller infielder's nose with a forearm) and Colorado Avalanche hockey thug Claude Lemieux (who busted a rival's jaw with a malicious check) should be charged and jailed for their assaults, too. A monetary fine and brief suspension don't send an adequate message to these rich spoilsports and their fans. Besides, the damage these bullies do has far-reaching repercussions. Kids like Hilderbrandt look up to them and sometimes mimic their misdeeds.

After pulling William Pfeiffer's body from the Spokane River and trying in vain to revive him seven years ago, a Post Falls man made an observation that stands true today: "Once you get caught in that current, you're history." Pfeiffer was one of two adults and two children sucked through the Washington Water Power Co. dam's floodgates at Post Falls on April 24, 1989. The group had launched a 14-foot aluminum boat from a Post Falls park a few hundred yards upstream and was caught in the current when the engine stalled. A boy miraculously survived the plunge over the dam.

In the past, the owner-philosopher of Davis Donuts and I have lambasted non-voters during times of poor election turnouts. In fact, last week, the Davis Donuts signboard proposed suspending the vehicle licenses of the Kootenai County voters who sat out last Tuesday's primaries (81 percent stayed home). I, however, have had a change of heart about low turnouts. I realize now that the lower the turnout, the more my vote counts. Last Tuesday, my vote, theoretically, counted five times as much as it would have if 100 percent of the registered people had voted. Throw in the unregistered people, and who knows? Maybe it counted eight to 10 times as much as it should have. Imagine! If everyone else out there stayed home, my vote would decide elections. Then, we'd get this country turned around. Right? But they're whizzes at PE, basket-weaving Here's a quick four-question test for you. See how you match up with today's graduating college seniors. (1) Who was president when the Korean War began? (2) Who were Germany's two principal allies during World War II? (3) Who was the founder of Protestantism? and (4) Who wrote "The Republic"? Answers: (1) Harry S. Truman. (2) Italy and Japan. (3) Martin Luther. (4) Plato. Between 71 percent and 84 percent of America's "best and brightest" failed to answer those simple questions correctly. If you answered two or more right, start work on your master's degree. (German shepherds need not apply.) Goodbye, Timothy Leary, and good riddance Finally, death has ushered Timothy Leary, the ol' LSD quack, offstage. May the psychedelic '60s and the social decay they ushered in go with him. Leary and his catchy "turn on, tune in, drop out" lured deflowered children into a dangerous lifestyle of drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll. He and others like him taught my g-g-g-g-eneration to despise authority, flout social mores and jettison our parents' values. We're reaping the whirlwind today from this Age of Aquarius excess: rampant social diseases, divorce and crime. Drug use continues to ravage our society. But the erstwhile "most dangerous man in America" remained true to his goofy cause to the end. (There's no fool like an old fool.) After he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, Leary announced plans to commit suicide on-line and kept Internet surfers posted on his daily drug intake, legal and illegal. We were spared a cyberspace send-off when death intervened Friday. Leary, who turned 40 in October 1960, wouldn't have been as much of a nuisance if we baby boomers had listened to our own mantra: Don't trust anyone over 30.

The Nez Perce Indian tribe has completed mission impossible - thanks to help from friends as diverse as Walt Disney's widow, the rock group Pearl Jam and Boise schoolchildren. After months of frantic fund-raising, the tribe raised $608,100 to buy 20 treasured artifacts held (for ransom) by the Ohio Historical Society. Fittingly, the final $2,500 came from students at Boise's Frontier Elementary School, who'd raised money selling pizza bread and collecting pocket change. The 150-year-old tribal treasures, after all, are as much a source of education for non-Indian America as they are part of the Nez Perce heritage.

My, oh my. Look what Kootenai County Republicans have gone and done. They've made Ron Rankin, ol' Mr. One Percent, a county commissioner nominee. From my window on Northwest Boulevard, I'd say Ron will be collecting a $40,000-plus commissioner's salary at this time next year. Why? Chuck Sheroke, environmental activist extraordinaire, is his Democratic foe. The number of people who hate Chuck roughly equals the number of people who hate Ron. So, you go to the tiebreaker. Kootenai County residents are more concerned about property taxes than the environment (although Chuck might get a bump from a property owner's attempt to develop Sanders Beach and from an advisory vote on hydroplane racing). No one epitomizes property tax restraint more than Rankin. We soon may see if the ol' fox is capable of guarding the henhouse. At least, Rankin will support your right to gather petition signatures in the courthouse - unlike defeated incumbent Bob Macdonald. Journalists push Craig to the middle

Sanders Beach has been a Coeur d'Alene battleground for too long. Adjacent property owners and Sanders Beach fans have battled for a quarter century over a host of issues - a sea wall, beach access, curfew, cleanup and, most of all, ownership. West Lakeshore Drive homeowners, for example, balked at routine beach cleanup, fearing it would support Coeur d'Alene's attempt to claim squatters' rights. Now, the city finds itself in a put-up or shut-up position. Spurred by a District Court ruling last month that supported lakeshore owners' claims to submerged land, Sanders Beach homeowner Joe Chapman has applied for a permit to build a duplex or triplex on the beach.