Columns

After months of conjecture, the shoe finally dropped last week and all but the most notorious of the cheaters from the biogenesis scandal accepted suspensions from Major League Baseball and agreed to sit out the rest of the 2013 regular season. And yet, this resolution leaves me feeling like the integrity of our national pastime is still suspect from at least a couple perspectives.

During the 1983 session of the Colorado General Assembly, state Rep. Arie Taylor of Denver introduced legislation to prohibit a person from holding more than one elected office at the same time. She was unhappy that Bob Crider was simultaneously serving on both the Denver City Council and the Denver Board of Education. The bill easily passed its first committee vote and appeared headed for passage in the House of Representatives when a freshman legislator from northwest Colorado, Dave Wattenberg, got up to speak.

Curbside parking of recreational vehicles and trailers has posed a problem for some Jefferson County neighborhoods in the last several months. The Sheriff’s Office is responsible for enforcing the parking ordinance. The ordinance does not prohibit the parking of recreational vehicles and trailers outright. It simply limits the amount of time such vehicles may be legally parked on the street to 28 days in a year’s time.

Oh, to be transported back to a more innocent time, just a few weeks ago, when the greatest problem with the exercise of federal power seemed (merely) to be the Internal Revenue Service’s selective targeting of a handful of political organizations. Compared to what we’ve learned since, the IRS scandal seems a passing trifle.