School Bus Safety Should Be Priority

I’ll always remember March 4, 1972, and the big puddle of blood on the winding road east of Lincoln, Calif. Bleeding children on a church outing had left the mark as they frantically got out of a bus that had skidded and toppled onto its side. The inside of the Chico Neighborhood Church bus was a deadly maze of twisted metal seats. Five people died that sunny Saturday.

The accident hit home hard. Not only was it the first major story of my newspaper career, but I also was attending that church at the time. I know how deadly buses without seat belts can be in a crash.

The Lakeland School District at Rathdrum, Idaho, is extremely lucky that no child has been injured seriously in the five crashes involving its buses this year. District administrators should do everything possible to return to the sterling bus-driving record of yesteryear. One crash is one too many.

Call my lawyer; I don’t like green Jell-O

Dirty Harry once asked a groveling scumball: “Do you feel lucky?” The punk didn’t know how many times the rogue cop already had fired his gun and was trying to get up the nerve to go for his own. Ultimately, Harry bluffed him with an empty gun. Similarly, inmates should have something on the line - such as their television, or an extra blanket, or their cigarettes - before they’re allowed to tie up federal courts with their frivolous lawsuits. Such suits tripled from 1992 to 1994 in Idaho; 13 were filed last week alone. But inmates are thinking twice about filing their petty grievances now that Idaho, like some other states, has begun taking away privileges as payment for unsuccessful suits. Of course, the American Civil Liberties Union is griping. But what else is new?

You’re a rotten Nazi, so there

The National Rifle Association has a tough enough sell trying to persuade Congress to overturn a ban on assault weapons without selfdestructing. But the gun lobby did just that by comparing federal agents with “jack-booted government thugs.” Some agents involved in the deadly snafus at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, deserve criticism, but the NRA is way over the line comparing them with Nazis. Former President George Bush was right to send the NRA a wake-up call by dropping his membership. But right-wing groups aren’t the only ones guilty of such inflammatory statements. Liberal U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., has compared the GOP “onslaught” on children, poor people and the disabled with crimes committed in Nazi Germany. Oh, please. Both sides need to tone down the self-serving Nazi rhetoric.

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