Mar. 23, 2002 - 20:01 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Funny Farm

I suppose kooky things are happening everywhere now. But its the things happening in my general area that come to my laughing, wry and sometimes downright sad attention.

P.C. on the move, again. Seems like there is a team in a small town in our state that used to be called, "Reds" who gave in to the frothing at the mouth people and removed the name, "Reds." So the team needing a mascot or symbol now call themselves, "Whiteys," and I hear that they are calling themselves, "The Fighting Whiteys." There is so much uproar in process now, how can one give a blow by blow account of machine gun fire ?

Like many things nowadays the fights harm the innocent. To quote Colorado Representative Pam Rhodes, R - Thornton, "The creation of a child takes one man and one woman and a birth certificate should reflect that." In our state we have gay parents. People who have devoted themselves to raising a child as he/she should be, lavishing love, care and attention on said child. Now there is all this hooraw going on in the state legislature. "In front of a packed hearing room, the House State, Veterans and Military Committee approved a plan to bar the State Health Department from issuing any more certificates if a same sex couple applies." In our present day there are few things of decent value that a person can do without a birth certificate, from entering school on up. It surely isn't the blue nosed legislators who will suffer - - but the child who can't have a birth certificate because both parents are gay. What if one or the other marriage partner of a supposedly male/female pair, who have a child "comes out"? What is the state going to do ? Are they going to send in the cops to yank the kids birth certificate ? Gaah !

I see in this morning's paper, the Editorial section has created a, "Doofus of the month," Category. Who ever is writing the article says, "Mere stupidity isn't enough to win Doofus of the month award. Were that the case, there'd be no end of politicians and public figures in line to receive it." This month's award goes to a an unidentified group of Littleton (Colorado) firefighters caught playing a game that involved dropping trousers and skivvies and wedging a small rubber ball near their brain storage areas. A kind of cheeky operation it seems. This was done by the guy who lost some game and what the loser had to do was to do dishes in that condition. This was not a public event where tickets were sold and it took place in the off hours when visitors didn't come. It was more or less like some of those ridiculous kids camp activities and pretty well was agreed to by all. But apparently there was a guy facing discipline who shot a few pictures and took them to the brass. What will come of this ? Doofuses indeed. LOL stay tuned.

Back during the McCarthy, Red Hunting era some fifty years ago Robert L. Stearns the Colorado University President commissioned an investigation in 1951 into political subversives among the faculty. This was after McCarthy's group The House Un-American Activities Commission revealed that CU professor David Hawkins had been a member of the Communist Party. So our Patriot University President commissioned the investigation. It is said that at least 15 professors were investigated and as many as 8 lost their jobs because of the report. Seems that the university honcho Regent Bob Seivers in charge of damage control read the report in an attorney's office after the local paper filed its motion on Tuesday, he said potential for personal damage is real, and said if the report is released the names should be blacked out. My guess is that some of those people investigated were totally innocent and later made a name for themselves later in life and the powers that be want it covered up. Denver attorney Dick Bernick, a CU regent for 36 years said a redacted (edited - blue penciled) version would be appropriate to release. And now the latest CYA game is in process !

Latest thing of interest in town is the uproar of the, "Police spying scandal." Reminds me of the 60's when activists names and other data were put in the FBI files. For awhile if a college student said, "Boo," he was in the files. Our mayor named two former judges to oversee the investigation on police spy activities. Seems that the police have some 3,408 files. The American Civil Liberties Union has accused police of gathering intelligence information on peaceful local activists. Our Mayor has pledged to set up an independent review of the files to determine which ones should BE PURGED. (caps mine)

In the same line there is an article this morning alleging that information was obtained during an illegal search by Denver Police to beef up their spy files. It says that police spent three and half hours in the Denver Justice and Peace Committee offices (near City Hall) seizing membership lists, news letters and other materials. The ACLU has alleged that the search was overly broad and violated federal privacy laws designed to protect advocacy and publishing groups. If the court agrees, the use of any of the information obtained during the raid would be illegal. The whole thing is one big ball of gummy yarn in my opinion. The mayor admits that some of the 3.400 files maintained by the police department were inappropriately (illegally) obtained. So I ask is this going to be covered up by the anti-terrorism Patriot thingy, or covered up some other way ? Pretty hard to fight City Hall.

Recently there was a man wanted by the police who when spotted led them on a high speed chase across town before being apprehended. His car was stopped, he attempted to flee and from what I read it appears that he was swarmed while police were attempting to handcuff him. They apparently were waved off by an officer with a Taser who proceeded to zap him twice. Handcuffs were applied to the perp on the ground, one cop approached the perp and kicked him, reportedly in the groin. (in my opinion, no matter if he was wanted by the police and tried to evade them, a kick to him in any part of his body while laying on the ground, stunned with a Taser and handcuffed to boot is extreme cruelty). The kick was taped from a news helicopter. The police admitted the kick and put the cop on desk duty while the investigation is going on. What investigation ? It is on tape that a policeman kicked the guy while he was handcuffed and laying on the ground. And the cop is on desk duty ? Will this be another occasion that after a period of time and desk duty the cop will be back out there as it appears to happen all too often.

Leave 'em laughing. For quite sometime the cluster of towns around Denver have been concerned about growth. Justifiably so, as water is a very precious resource here and can only supply a limited number of people among other things. streets and highways, sewers and sewage disposal would be stretched to the breaking point. But I laughed at their proposals to limit growth. From the beginning it was obvious to me that developers would just move out of but next to town and build their little hearts out. And they have been doing just that. I-25 north out of Denver is lined with developments, which are more of them and all getting bigger and bigger, our foothills are filling up, developments are going on south of Denver too. As much as I have thought about it, seems to me that it would take an extreme dictatorship to come anywhere close to limiting growth. If all cities and areas decide to strictly limit growth, where will our growing population go ? But it seems that these Shadow Cities (notice they have a name for them now, guess it don't mean a thing -- until it is named) are a danger to growth limit. ROTFLMAO in spades. The opinions I have formed from what I read in the papers make me feel that we in Colorado, especially those of us in the Greater Denver Area are living in one giant Funny Farm . . . . . . . . . .

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