Fine for cycling

One mis-click when registering for Bike to Work Day, and I would have chosen Black Hawk as my commute base. This would have been sadly ironic because Black Hawk recently enacted a ban on cycling on most of its streets.

Like many municipalities, Black Hawk has adopted the Model Traffic Code, which says nothing about banning bikes. In 2009 they passed an ordinance citing "engineering and traffic studies" that demonstrate how cycling is incompatible with safe and normal traffic, and gave themselves that right. This year they passed another ordinance that bans cycling on several specific streets based on additional "investigation."

I asked the city for copies of the studies and investigations cited in the ordinances. Imagine my surprise when I receive just one analysis, dated after the first ordinance was passed.

A grand total of two streets were analyzed, although the ban covers eight. It appears the Black Hawk City Council has violated its own rules by banning cycling on streets without a proper investigation. Either that or they violated the Colorado Open Records Act by withholding information I had requested.

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Deepwatergate

Eleven men dead. Wildlife dying. Livelihoods lost. Beaches fouled. Oceans polluted. Unknown deep-sea impact.

Someone must be to blame.

Some say this is President Obama's Katrina. But what can he do but fly to the Gulf, sound sympathetic, and talk tough to BP? Neither Obama nor anyone in his administration knows how to stop the flow of oil, much less eliminate the oil that has already spilled.

Some environmentalists and scientists say Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is to blame and should resign. After all Salazar's Minerals Management Service was responsible for regulating the drilling operation and screwed up. Literally. MMS staffers were partying and sleeping with the people they were supposed to be regulating. Talk about strange bedfellows.

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Arizona, Take Off Your Rainbow Shades

A month ago, Arizona passed a law requiring all police officers in that state to determine the immigration status of anyone they came into contact with if they had "reasonable suspicion" that their presence in the U.S. was not legitimate.

Of course, we liberals and civil liberty huggers were up in arms. That law was clearly a violation of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches, an obvious attempt to add security at the expense of the constitution and our personal freedoms.

I'm not talking about the personal freedoms of illegal immigrants. I'm not even talking about legal immigrants, who are already required by law to carry their papers at all times (as the law's proponents are so quick to remind us). I'm referring to the personal freedoms of legal citizens.

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