Nevada City, MO, police officer playing with his toys. (Click on photo to enlarge)

The December 31, 2011, Coeur d’Alene Press has a guest opinion column titled Cell phone ban is needed.  It was authored by local attorney Steve Bell.  As his title notes, Bell advocates banning all cell phone use, not just text messaging, while driving.  His premise is that, “You remain a distracted and dangerous driver while engaging in that conversation and that includes hands-free use…”.

According to the column, Idaho State Senator Jim Hammond believes Idaho will enact [anti-] texting legislation during this years legislative session.

What do you think?  Is legislation needed?  If it is, what should it include?  More important, maybe — whom should it cover and who should be exempted?  (more…)

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air,
Up, up the long delirious burning blue.
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew;
And while with silent uplifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God!

–John Gillespie Magee, Jr

Several weeks ago in our post titled Better Late Than Never, OpenCdA reported that the City of Coeur d’Alene had decided to suspend monthly collection of its stormwater fee.  The Idaho Supreme Court had ruled in a Lewiston case that city’s stormwater fee was actually a constitutionally prohibited tax.

Now it is reported in a December 22, 2011,  Idaho Press-Tribune news story that a group of Nampa property owners have filed a class-action lawsuit against the City of Nampa.  According to the story, the plaintiffs “… seek to have Nampa’s ordinance declared invalid and require the city to refund all fees collected under the program.”

What do you think about the Nampa lawsuit?  Is it applicable to Coeur d’Alene?

In its December 17, 2011, article headlined County considers fewer precincts, the Coeur d’Alene Press reported that Kootenai County Clerk Cliff Hayes will recommend reducing the number of county voting precincts from 71 to 44.

The Press should have reported that 12 of the 71 precincts already share election day day polling places.  Precincts 13 and 15 share, as do precincts 34 and 35, 38 and 41, 46 and 47, 54 and 55, and 56 and 57.