Bright Bulb: Deal me in. Washington, D.C., police are printing playing cards with cold-case information on them. Their hope is that when they distribute the cards in jails, inmates will come forward with information relating to the cases. It may sound like a silly idea, but the cold-case cards have worked twice in Florida, helping to solve killings. That’s definitely worth the printer’s fees.
OUTRAGE: Between the sheets
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- Who: Frederick County Commissioner John Thompson
- What: Thompson wants to make it a violation of state ethics law for state elected officials to have sexual relationships with employees under their supervision. Of course, there’s a provision that if they’re married they can. How magnanimous.
- Why it’s a bad idea: Sure, it’s a slippery slope to allow employer-employee relations. It opens the door to all kinds of harassment claims. But it’s an even slipperier slope to start prohibiting types of relationships. Now it’s sex, but maybe in a couple years it will be dating that’s prohibited. These days, dating eventually leads to sex for the majority of adults — and it’s not a crime to ask a co-worker on a date. Once. There’s too many people in the bed here. The government needs to get out. Let common sense and decency rule on this one. Obviously, if public employees abuse public trust to get anything — whether sex, gifts, money or free labor — out of subordinates, they should be arrested for breaking laws already on the books.
- Why they’re doing it: Thompson said himself that this comes in response to a specific incident. In general, it’s not a good idea to develop a broad policy applicable to everyone based on one specific incident.
- Where to vent: co.frederick.md.us
Quote of the day
“Certainly there has been some problems here. But then, we were in tent cities when Katrina hit. I think people now were more prepared, and the storm wasn’t as bad as many had feared.”
– Sgt. Serafin Avitia of the Maryland National Guard, talking about post-Gustav Louisiana
