Doug Floyd

What went so haywire in the lives of two 13-year-olds that it could explain a $100,000-plus vandalism spree, rationalized by one of them as "something to do"? The question has answers, if we're willing to act on them. But if we truly want to understand the mayhem a week ago at Sacajawea Middle School, we also need to ask what has gone right in the lives of youngsters who, sometimes against stiff odds, spurn such misconduct. That question has answers, too.

If the sponsors who underwrite commercial television programming had to worry about defending murder, mayhem and marital infidelity, their investments would change in a hurry. Violence and sex course from the home screen like a river at flood stage, but advertisers seldom flinch - if the audiences are there.

It's been a hard day at the silversmith shop and Paul Revere arrives home with barely enough energy to draw a tankard of ale. He kicks off his boots, sinks into his La-Z-Boy and flips on the Zenith just in time to see a 30-second spot that questions King George's mental stability and accuses Tories, Redcoats and the British Parliament of conspiring to undermine the American Way of Life even before anybody creates it.

"The opportunity to learn in an environment that stimulates rather than limits and to associate with one's peers is not a special favor," says Cynthia Fine, Spokane. Fine, one of several readers who support a magnet school for gifted fifth and sixth graders in Spokane public schools, fears the program will be too small to accommodate all the children who could benefit from it. She also thinks transportation needs should be addressed.

There's a scrap of irony in the $1.1 million civil judgment a former Gonzaga University student won against his alma mater Tuesday. If Ru Paster had obtained the teaching certificate he wanted and if one of his students had come to school showing signs of possible child abuse, Paster would have been required by law to tell authorities.

Spokane School District 81 has decided to create a full-time magnet school for gifted students in the fifth and sixth grades. This first-of-its-kind option in Spokane public schools is likely to rekindle the debate that usually accompanies special educational offerings for the brightest youngsters. Even the current one-day-a-week Tessera program has been accused of being, among other things, elitist. Parents whose children qualify for such programs now will have the option of sending them every day to a classroom filled with similarly intelligent classmates.

If you aren't familiar with Washington state's Basic Health Plan, you're lucky. It's a plan for people whose low-paying jobs lack benefits like health insurance. For those whose premiums the state subsidizes, the Basic Health Plan can be what gets them off, or keeps them off, welfare.

The mayor of Millwood has a problem with the ban Spokane County commissioners are considering on motorized watercraft on free-flowing stretches of the Spokane River. It doesn't go far enough.

You deserve an explanation for the piece of trash that appears on the facing page under the headline, "Letter shows the ugly and hateful face of racism." Please read it, but first brace yourself. It's obscene, in more ways than one. It has no redeeming merit. It violates the standards of decency as well as several Spokesman-Review standards for letters to the editor.

The great Pacific Northwest, home of natural splendor, and endless recreational opportunities. God's country. Trouble is, all those recreational opportunists sometimes smudge up the splendor. Shimmering waterways that beckon irresistibly to boaters and Jet Ski enthusiasts pay the price that comes from overuse. What price?

They are the chosen people, these Rogers High School students - chosen as targets in an anti-abortion campaign Operation Rescue is waging at teenagers in some 120 U.S. cities. When they arrived at school Monday, Rogers students were met by demonstrators bearing posters and placards and brochures and graphic photographs of aborted fetuses. Some students argued with the demonstrators, some smiled in agreement, some darted away and some stood around to watch.

For a city that's too strapped to repair its wretched streets, Spokane is pretty cavalier about paying $2.78 million for the former Salty's property. It's not just the purchase price. The treasury also will kiss the revenue from private property, business and sales taxes goodbye.

From the outset it was hard to justify the state Medical Quality Assurance Commission's interest in disciplining Spokane County Coroner Dexter Amend. Certainly Amend's public displays of intolerance and insensitivity deserve censure. And the retired urologist's controversial conduct no doubt embarrassed many members of the medical profession. But that's no reason that Amend's license to practice medicine should have been in jeopardy over acts that had nothing to do with his being a physician.

The Spokane City Council is under heavy pressure to defend TV-watching households from an infiltration by unwanted smut. Specifically, a group of petitioners wants the city to require the community's cable television provider - which is about to change from Cox Cable to Tele-Communications Inc. - to black out the unwanted signals for so-called adult channels such as Spice and Playboy.

Even Supreme Court justices have personal opinions. Within reason, they have a right to express them. And that's all Justice Antonin Scalia did the other day when he said in a speech at Catholic University's School of Philosophy that the Constitution does not extend a right to die.

Three men, all county employees, were having a conversation one day in early summer when one of them made a suggestive remark. They thought they were alone, but a female colleague overheard the comment, which she believed referred to her. She heard a second man add something she couldn't make out, and she heard the three men laugh.

Washington voters approved legalized gambling 24 years ago. At the time, few people were talking about slot machines or casinos or even a state lottery. They were talking about bingo. "It's foolish to fear that this type of amendment would open the state up to Las Vegas-style gambling," said state Sen. Gordon Walgren, who was leading the movement.

It's disappointing, though not surprising, that the Board of County Commissioners backed down on Tuesday from making it illegal for minors to smoke in Spokane County. Chalk it up as one more confused, indecisive message to youngsters about smoking, a health risk about which there is nearly universal agreement: Kids shouldn't smoke.

All the Republicans you saw on television this week were pro-choice. Not about abortion, maybe, but about involvement. All of them have chosen the arduous work of citizenship. So have the Democrats who get the spotlight week after next. So are the enlistees in Ross Perot's Reform Party, and Libertarians, and Greens.

If the Founding Fathers had intended American democracy to be effortless, Thomas Jefferson would have extolled life, liberty and the delivery of happiness. But self-governance is work, and when it falters, no magic incantation will fix it.

When it comes to escapism, Saturday morning cartoon shows have nothing on presidential election years. So, there was President Clinton on Monday, streaking out of the sky like a caped superhero to rescue America's children from certain calamity. How? Easy (for a superhero, anyway). He ordered four commercial television networks to broadcast at least three hours a week of educational programming for kids.

Lorrene Hughes of Spokane has never been on public assistance. Jocelyn Silva of Pullman has. But they agree that welfare reform should deal with low-income mothers' need for skills and resources such as day care. "It would be very logical," said Hughes, "for women that need affordable day care - and a lot of these are unskilled women who make minimum wage and are not going to make any money after paying day care - to have some kind of a county-operated day-care center where they can work and earn not only free day-care time but also schooling to increase their skills."

Traffic-jam veterans know the experience. A tingle of expectation, just before the congestion actually does break up, that it's about to. In the Spokane Valley there are puffs of hope, like burps of diesel smoke from an idled semi coming back to life, that the rush-hour coagulation along Sprague and a series of Interstate 90 off-ramps may someday unclot. Spokane County commissioners have given their blessing to a one-way couplet using Sprague and portions of First and Second avenues, between University and Thierman.

A Richland lawyer did nothing to spruce up his profession's battered image last week when he recommended that a convicted felon - and fellow attorney - be allowed to keep practicing law. Fortunately, the state Bar Association's disciplinary board and the state Supreme Court will have a chance to apply soberer reasoning before the issue is decided. It was the disciplinary board that appointed Thomas Heye as a hearing officer in a disbarment move against Spokane attorney Ronald Kappelman. Kappelman, one of the defendants in a major cocaine case known as "Operation Doughboy," pleaded guilty in 1994 to three federal charges involving cocaine use. His license has been suspended.