The Editor's Desk

I’ll be updating the main site throughout the day with the latest wire reports about the Southern California wildfires.

Though the fires may not be anywhere near here, and we’re probably not in much danger here, that doesn’t mean the fires don’t have an impact on Barstow residents. If your family is personally being affected by the wildfires, please call our newsroom at 256-4121 and let us know.

It looks like I owe Manuel “Gil” Gurule an apology.

He called me at the end of last week about the casino happenings (and lack thereof) in Sacramento. His intention was to point out to me that the meetings between the governor’s staff and four City Council members may have been a Brown Act violation. The Brown Act is California’s public meeting law, which is intended to make sure that local governmental meetings and decisions (with some exceptions) happen in a public forum, with the community appropriately notified.

I blame casino outrage fatigue for not listening, though it’s really a lousy excuse. City Council members aren’t supposed to gather in large enough numbers to define a quorum — three or more in this case — without public notification of the meeting. Their meeting in Sacramento is most likely a Brown Act violation, though they amended the situation by reporting out the content of the meeting at the subsequent City Council meeting Monday.

I was dismissive of Mr. Gurule’s call, because I’ve grown tired of folks on both sides finding ways to pick pick pick at their opponents and trying to get the newspaper involved. I’ve also been made increasingly aware by our readership that most folks out there don’t care about the squabbling, just the results.

But while this particular Brown Act violation was fairly mild — they were just there to receive information, it appears, not to plan anything — there are potential serious repercussions when this happens. What other meetings could have taken place in Sacramento without our knowledge? Could there have been strategy sessions to deal with opposition to one project? Could they have discussed dumping the city’s agreement with one tribe or the other? These are all potential discussion subjects that are obligated to happen in public.

So I apologize for letting my frustration with the nature of this debate cloud my perception about what is happening in Sacramento. Gurule was absolutely right to be concerned and I appreciate his call, in retrospect.

These words have been tossed around by those opposing the Big Lagoon/Los Coyotes casinos as the reasons the state legislatures won’t approve the compacts.

I would classify that claim under the “weaselly ways” legislators have managed to duck the issue. In reality, the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act does not require such ties to the land to be considered for gaming. Here’s what it says:

“Indian Lands” Acquired After Enactment of IGRA. Lands acquired in trust after IGRA’s enactment are generally not eligible for gaming if they are outside of and not contiguous to the boundaries of a tribe’s reservation. There are exceptions to this policy, however, that allow gaming on certain “after acquired” or “newly acquired” lands. One exception permits gaming on lands newly taken into trust with the consent of the governor of the state in which the land is located and SOI: (1) consults with state and local officials, including officials of other tribes; (2) determines “that a gaming establishment on the newly acquired lands would be in the best interest of the Indian tribe and its members”; and (3) determines that gaming “would not be detrimental to the surrounding community.”

That’s it. Now the other tribes the governor is obligated to consult with may object to the fact that the proposed tribes don’t have strong historical ties to the land, and that’s exactly what they’ve done, but that doesn’t obligate a particular decision from the state legislature. So again, they’re using a technicality to avoid taking responsibility for folding for money.

Again, I would point out that it’s not particularly shocking that tribes would use this method to try to stop a completing casino — it’s the legislators who are at fault for wimping out. (It’ll likely cost taxpayers millions of dollars if Big Lagoon restores their lawsuit over the state’s insistence they don’t build a casino on their environmentally sensitive reservation. But why should legislators care? — it’s not their money)

To be fair to the other side, the reverse is pretty much true as well. That the Chemehuevi won’t get permission to build a casino in Barstow is based on similarly arbitrary decisions by the government that work against them (that they already have a casino). We don’t have the power to alter the governor’s judgment in that area anymore than we have the power to alter the legislature in the matter of the Big Lagoon/Los Coyotes project.

Now if gambling were legal, none of this would be a problem at all. Though I suspect none of the tribes would be quick to give up their monopoly in exchange for such freedom.

Somewhere out there is a gentleman who writes us letters to the editor on a fairly frequent basis. I’m not going to name him because it’s absolutely not my intention to embarrass him.

His letters are very thoughtful and interesting, and I enjoy running them. However, they’re always addressed to “editor Hans K. Meyer” who left the Desert Dispatch way back in 2004.

It amuses me to get one his letters when I’m sitting around being far too overly concerned about what I’m going to say in my next editorial. People read the newspapers for a variety of reasons, and most of them have absolutely nothing to do with anything I do.

I’ve put up a new poll on the main page of the Desert Dispatch site today based on a growing serious national discussion. We’re seeing an increased analysis of the possibility of impeaching the president, the vice president, or both.

The volume ratcheted up recently following a Washington Post exposé on Dick Cheney’s behavior and his attempts to claim he’s not part of the executive branch in order to avoid oversight of his office.

I’ve been mulling over an editorial on the matter, but it’s not something I take lightly, even given my extreme dissatisfaction with the administration. It’s important for me to separate my dislike of the administration’s complete lack of respect for civil rights, their bumbling, ignorant handling of military and diplomatic efforts in the Middle East, and their dismissive attitude toward appropriate checks on their authority with evidence of actual illegal behavior.

I am, however, curious as to what Barstow residents think on the matter. Head over to our front page to vote.

We’ve got a new feature in our opinion section of the main site called The Vent. It’s simple to explain: If you have something you want to get off your chest or an issue that’s important to you, feel free to just post your comments there much like you can at the bottom of our stories.

We added this feature due to the increasing interest readers are having with adding feedback to our stories. In The Vent, you don’t have to confine your comments to the stories on the site.

Our intention is to occasionally “reverse publish” comments from The Vent back into the newspaper. I experimented with this last week by reprinting a few comments on some of our stories in the newspaper on the opinion page.

The rules are a little bit looser than letters to the editor, but as a result we (and I assume readers) don’t treat them as seriously, and we’ll only run short ones, so a large screed on The Vent is not going to get you published.

In addition, the same guidelines for appropriate comments in The Vent apply as they do in other parts of the site and in the newspaper. Please report any obscene or inappropriate posts there for removal.

Head over to The Vent at let us know what’s on your mind.

I’m really curious about what readers think of our commentary writers. I’m considering changing things around a bit with the opinion page, but I’m not rushing into any sort of decisions.

So what do you think of the folks who write regular commentaries on our opinion pages? Some have local ties, like Richard Reeb, Carol Jensen, and Barry Gadbois. Others, like Michelle Malkin and Tibor Machan, do not, but provide some interesting perspectives.

Which commentators do you like the most? Which do you disagree with, but read anyway? Which ones just aren’t worth your time at all? Feel free to post comments, but please explain your answers. I’m not going to change or eliminate a commentary writer just because people don’t like what he or she has to say. I’m looking for better understanding about how you interact with our opinion page.

The blogs are new and the commenting system for them is a bit unfamiliar even to us. My understanding is that the first time you attempt to comment on my blog, I’ll have to approve your comment. Once you’ve been approved the first time, you’ll be able to post comments from then on.

We also have a tool in the blog that automatically rejects what is believed to be spam. However, I don’t see these comments at all when they’re rejected by the system, so I have no oversight there.

If you’re trying to post a comment on any of the blogs and it’s just not working, shoot me an e-mail at  scott_shackford at link.freedom.com and I’ll see if I can’t figure out what’s going on.