There’s green and long green

In the end, the plaintiffs received $600,000, their attorneys $250,000, and the grass-seed growers of the Rathdrum Prairie now have greater protection to burn their fields.

Nearly six years. Dozens of farmers versus 283 area residents with breathing problems.

And the battle ends in the legal equivalent of a draw.

Neither side is happy.

Alex Heisel, a Post Falls 14-year-old with cystic fibrosis, has to wonder what’s wrong with a law that allows neighbors to threaten her life with field smoke. The farmers must wonder why their complaining neighbors don’t realize that the annual inconvenience of field smoke is offset by all the benefits their practices provide 50 weeks of the year.

If there’s any silver lining for the plaintiffs, it’s this: Grass growing is six years closer to extinction.

The farmers can take solace in two things: The Legislature and Idaho Supreme Court have given them greater protection. Also, a big payday awaits them soon when they sell their land to developers.

The prospect of the prairie sprouting subdivisions instead of green fields of grass seed is another mixed bag to be addressed on some future day.

Law and odor

Capitol Police couldn’t have been friendlier to protester Cindy Sheehan’s anti-war campaign if they’d provided security at her celebrated campout in Crawford, Texas.

Sheehan showed up Tuesday at President Bush’s State of the Union speech wearing a T-shirt tallying the number of U.S. war dead in Iraq.

Capitol Police led her out in handcuffs and charged her with unlawful conduct, later to apologize for what their boss called a mistake.

Yes, Republican Congressman C.W. “Bill” Young’s wife received similar treatment. Beverly Young, wearing a “Support the Troops” T-shirt, avoided cuffs by leaving voluntarily, but she was still arrested. Meanwhile, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., was upset that a foreign-born U.S. citizen who was there as Hastings’ guest was also removed. Thanks to her energetic dogging of Bush over the war, Sheehan’s experience is commanding most of the post-speech publicity.

All this at a speech in which the president was championing the spread of democracy and freedom around the world. That burst of light you saw Wednesday morning was Sheehan’s previously dimming celebrity bursting back into full glow.