Lincolnite

If you have ever considered donating bone marrow, now's the time to start the process: from 2:00pm to 6:00pm on Thursday, a marrow drive is being held in honor of Steffanie Roach at Christ Lutheran Church (4325 Sumner St.). Ms. Roach already has a donor, but many patients never find a match that could help save their life. Don't know what marrow donation entails? It's the sort of thing you want to study up on. There are two types of donation -- the patient's physician decides which is needed -- and both are somewhat invasive. If you do decide to get tested on Thursday, the procedure is simple and painless (a cheek swab), and it costs $25 (to cover the testing process).

Like it or not, the City Council voted to spend about $5 per Lincolnite -- $1.2 million -- on studies that will help form the foundation for next year's vote on a new arena. The folks from 2015 Vision will chip in the remaining $1.65 million. I don't know how many members are in 2015 Vision these days, but I think $1.65M comes out to quite a bit more than $5 per member. To me, this feels like money we have to spend. It's only fair that we vote on the arena, and the only way to have enough information to make an educated decision is to pay for it. I, for one, look forward to seeing what they come up with.

Here's a question you won't get asked very often: If you were a celebrity impersonator at bingo night at The Q, who would you be, and why? I'm a pretty crummy impersonator, but I've been told I could pull off a Pierluigi Collina in a pinch. I don't think that's an impression The Q's audience would really get into, though.

I was happy to see the news this weekend that a commercial and industrial area is planned for the northwest corner of NW 48th and I-80. It's an area that, to me, has seemed ready for development for a long time. My only concern is NW 48th Street itself. Is the road still just a narrow two-lane with no shoulders? That's no good for a road serving an industrial area. I've got to think that the road will need some improvements before too much more development occurs in that part of town.

Officer Travis McClintick is back on the job, six days after shooting and killing Scott Gannon. Police Chief Tom Casady put McClintick back on the job after reviewing the department's internal investigation report. A state grand jury and special prosecutor are now investigating.

Mayor Beutler's priorities for this legislative session are roads and a new arena. Do you agree with him? What would you like to see Lincoln get out of this session of the Unicam?

Kansas City is jazz. Seattle is grunge. Austin is country. If Lincoln were a music genre, what would it be?

Most of you know by now that I don't like sex offender housing restrictions because they provide a false sense of security, they encourage offenders to drop out of the tracking system, and they ignore the most likely offenders (family and friends) in favor of the most easily targeted. Senator Tony Fulton's LB735 takes that one step further by limiting how closely to schools and daycares sex offenders can work. Here's a rule of thumb: if a politician proposes legislation in reaction to a single specific incident, it's probably a bad law. The rule applies here. The biggest giveaway that LB735 is all fluff and no substance is that the restriction deals only with distance. It would be illegal to work in a suit-and-tie office 400 feet from a school, but it would not be illegal to work with and/or serve children in a business 510 feet from a school. In other words, the legislation has nothing to say about actual interactions with kids, only how close you are. If proximity were really the problem, why not ban sex offenders from ever being within 500 feet of schools and childcare centers, no matter their reason? Senator Fulton's heart is in the right place, but his head is in the clouds if he actually believes his law would do anything substantial to protect children. Feel-good legislation isn't the answer he's looking for.

Hy-Vee nearly learned a tough lesson about local politics when its liquor license reapplication was nearly denied. Councilman Doug Emery voted against the application because a Hy-Vee store in his district -- at 48th and Leighton -- will soon close, but Hy-Vee won't lease out the space to another grocery store until at least 2013. That leaves the University Place neighborhood with no nearby grocery store. Jonathan Cook and John Spatz joined Emery, making the usually routine reapplication process a 4-3 near-disaster for the grocery chain. I'm not nearly familiar enough with the grocery store business in general or with this situation specifically to if Hy-Vee is behaving badly or just disagreeably. What do you think?

How would you like LES to prioritize sustainable energy projects in 2008? The projects include:

• Promotion of energy-efficient lighting, such as compact fluorescent lights
• Development of energy conservation kits for homeowners
• Incentive programs for customers to purchase ENERGY STAR® appliances
• Energy-efficiency programs for low-income customers, such as energy conservation workshops, energy audits, energy-efficiency devices, among others
• Revitalization of home or business energy audits
• Development of carbon footprint reduction programs
• Promotion and demonstration of hybrid electric vehicles
• Additional wind generation
• Development of a Children's Museum exhibit featuring energy conservation and efficiency
• Funding for UNL's Nebraska Center for Energy Sciences Research

Go take the survey.

The City Council is pondering decreasing the distance that restaurants that sell alcohol must be from homes. The current restriction is 100 feet; the new proposal is 25 feet. 9 South Chargrill, situated very close to homes at 9th and South Streets, is one of the primary reasons for the proposed change. Future businesses in older parts of town would also benefit. I support the change. In fact, I would drop the distance altogether except in situations where harm to the neighboring residents is likely. After all, 25 feet is not very far. Heck, 100 feet is not very far. Not far enough to make any substantial difference, anyway. Who here will defend the current 100 foot limit? Or going the other direction, who's with me for getting rid of the distance requirement and instead relying on other types of regulations that better deal with the type of impact a business can have on a neighborhood?

Hey, whaddaya know? It has only happened a couple times, but this morning I learned that I agree with Attorney General Jon Bruning on another topic: eliminating the insanity defense for a voluntarily intoxicated person. The insanity defense as a whole is a tricky subject, but in my mind, eliminating this piece of it is a no-brainer. A person who makes the decision to alter his state of mind must take responsibility for his actions while in that altered state. As for the insanity defense in general, well, good luck to the politicians who wade into that mess. "Insanity" isn't what it used to be. The more we learn about the brain, the fuzzier the distinction between sane and insane becomes. Heck, even the concept of free will is thrown into question. Seriously, check out some of the research sometime. It's fascinating stuff. Anyway, we as a society are in a pickle. Any line we try to draw between "sane" and "insane" for the purposes of the law is arbitrary and therefore flawed. But if we don't draw a line -- that is, if we get rid of the insanity defense altogether -- we will undoubtedly find that lumping together all mental health statuses on the same moral plane is fraught with its own unpleasantness and ethical quandaries. Ahh, the brain. It's always fun to think about what's going on inside somebody else's noggin. I wonder if we'll ever know for sure?

Many of you may have missed this story since the local media's weekend coverage isn't its strong point. Early on Friday morning, Officer Travis McClintock shot and killed Scott Gannon, who was armed with a knife. KLKN is reporting that Gannon was shot twice. The last fatal shooting by a police officer in Lincoln occurred in 1992. I have been reading a lot of horror stories from around the country about police officers -- and, in some cases, entire departments -- behaving badly in situations like this. The officer used too much force, the department covered up or manipulated evidence, and so forth. Fortunately, there aren't really any indications at this point that Officer McClintock overstepped his boundaries. Likewise, I don't have any reason to doubt that we'll get the investigation this situation demands. Indeed, most of the conditions that tend to lead to the terrible things I've read about seem to be absent from LPD. Thank goodness for that. Any time a police officer uses force in apprehending a subject, it's a matter of public concern. We have to have high standards for our officers, just as we have high standards for how the rest of us should behave when interacting with them. Relaxing those standards leads to, well, the Atlanta Police Department. Let's be sure to demand the full and open investigation of this shooting, and let's continue to insist that the use of force by police be rare and applied only when necessary. And let's hope that it's at least 16 more years before another LPD officer has to make the decision to use lethal force.

Personally, I strongly approve of Lincoln's policy of not plowing residential streets unless more than four inches of snow falls. Most of the time that policy works out in our favor. True, occasionally we'll get a situation like we have now. Mix some ice, a little snow, plenty of cold weather over a long timespan, and a dose of shade, and you'll end up with side streets that are either ice rinks or bumpy messes. I choose to look at those situations from a glass-half-full perspective: at least it forces drivers to slow down in residential neighborhoods. Do you think Lincoln's policy is a good one? How would you amend it? (And how would you pay for your amendments, if necessary?)