Random Thoughts - 3/1

Albuquerque Public Schools commissar Brooks is looking to institute random drug testing for extra-curricular students at La Cueva high school, in response to problems with drugs and misbehavior within the school’s athletic programs. Unfortunately this effort is nothing more than a “we must do something” response that avoids actually dealing with the problem. Random drug testing is a stupid response imposed as it is supposedly a “fairer” way to deal with drug problems. All random testing does is harass innocents and only applying it to one school and one section of students within that school ensures that pot-smoking athletes will just quit and blend back in to the general student population. It is not profiling to apply probable cause to test those suspected of using illegal substances and it is not reasonable to only test only some students in one school. If drugs are that much of a problem testing should be widespread. So-called ‘random’ tests are very much akin to frisking elderly women from Topeka at airports as if they were terrorists, pointless. Tepid measures like this is the reason why the so-called war on drugs is so often cited as a failure.

I have been reading the ESPN the magazine fiction issue in recent days and while some of the stories are somewhat entertaining they are mostly incomplete, incoherent or just not very good. The best story in my opinion was about a 40ish recreation league basketball player who decides to stop being a bum. I had o imagine my own ending though because the story just sort of veers off a cliff where an ending could be, isn’t clear and makes no sense. What’s striking is how monolithically liberal any political mentions are. There is a what-if scenario involving former President Bush being chosen as MLB commissioner paving the way for a diplomatic President Gore, a first-person story of Giant’s pitcher Brian Wilson’s beard reminiscing its days changing the world with Castro. How juvenile and ridiculous. It will always be wishful thinking unfortunately to imagine a world with sportswriters that stick to sports.

Donald Trump was interviewed today on the Rush Limbaugh radio program because of his recent speech at CPAC as a perspective Republican nominee for president in 2012. What a train wreck that would be. Trump meandered for about twenty minutes making generic fear mongering arguments without offering any solutions outside of blaming China, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, etc for everything and anything without really explaining why. Fortunately he has less than a sliver of a chance in a GOP primary.

Red light cameras have come to Rio Rancho. The first’s at Unser and Northern Blvd and the other at Unser and Southern Blvd. Drivers have 30 days to get their speeding in, remember to wave at the camera boxes, before they start to count and sending tickets. Citations will be made for those driving 11mph or more over the speed lime or running a red light as programmed into the boxes.

Overturning an odd statute, the New Mexico state senate has approved a bill allowing the sale of alcohol before noon in restaurants and bars. Well, sort of overturning. The noon requirement will still be in effect for stores that sell liquor for purposes of off-site consumption. Proponents of the noon requirement state that it aids efforts to crack down on drunk driving, which while happy thinking is nonsense. It would have been better to lift any restrictions based on time as they are essentially worthless. The only way to curtail drunken driving entirely is to completely eliminate alcohol consumption. Which is impossible. A nonsensical law like the noon requirement is only another “we have to do something” response that does nothing to help.