Posted 8:31 PM by McJangles
I think having a funny edition of the Buchtelite for April Fool's would be funny, but I also don't think it's going to happen. Our paper's leadership sucks, and so nothing gets planned. Nobody write crazy crap.

Posted 5:13 AM by Kristin
Brian,
Are you getting two pages for Opinion? If so, allot me some room, OK? I'll have some time to actually devote to writing something of substance.

Posted 7:37 PM by Ellis
Wait. Do you want serious stuff for the 4/1 issue, or April Fool's stuff?

Posted 3:04 PM by Ellis
For the April 1 issue, I can have an article done about peace activists and why it's time for them to shut up and throw their support behind the war, whether they like it or not. Something about how the time for nonviolent resolution of international conflict is in advance of the problem, not in the middle of crisis.

Posted 9:14 AM by Kristin
Well, I suppose I can write something...for April 1.
By the way, I did have something for tomorrow. I'm sure it'll go over like a brick.
By the way, Brian, there is a story in today's Beacon about a student who appeared in court yesterday regarding his E-bay scam. Thought you might like to take a look.

Posted 3:58 PM by McJangles
Nice lookin' opinion page.

I think that for the Monday, April 1 edition, I'm going to try to take a page away from Janelle and run a two-page opinion section. That means I'll want some copy from everyone who can write. It will have been a week since you've written, so I'm sure you'll all have plenty to say.

Posted 12:39 PM by Martin
What the hell is wrong with the Smart family?

In a surprising twist many people have hailed as a miracle, 15-year-old Elizabeth Smart was returned home to her parents last Wednesday. The Utah girl disappeared from her home last June. Smart’s disappearance made headlines all over the country and was featured on America’s Most Wanted. As it turns out, Smart spent most of the last six months mere miles from her home, where she wore a veil to conceal her identity. Elizabeth was finally found wandering a public street in the company of Brian Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, two itinerant prophets who preached homespun dogma on the streets of Salt Lake City.

The Smart case is turning out to be the fishiest tale since Moby Dick. While its great to see Elizabeth home safe, there are a lot of loose ends. The explanations offered by the Smarts, and accepted by the mainstream media, leave a lot to desired. It’s time we push the sugar-coated answers aside and demand some candor from the Smart Family. There are certainly a lot of inquiries to be made, but they all boil down to one big one: What the hell is wrong with the Smart family?

Ed and Lois

The Smart case was complicated immeasurably by the fact that Ed Smart brought home enough drifters, hobos and tramps to fill a Bob Dylan box set. Members of the Smart family have criticized the police for not solving the case sooner, but it doesn’t seem that there was much more law enforcement could do considering the fact that the suspect list had to be culled from nearly every transient in Salt Lake City. If this case took longer to solve than it should, its only because of the Smarts’ imprudence.

The Smarts are millionaires living in a mansion in the ritzy Salt Lake City suburb of Federal Heights. Why would Ed Smart invite an assortment of drifters and ex-cons into his family’s home to work on various home improvement projects? Here we have two possible explanations for the Smart’s behavior: either Ed Smart is one of the most naïve people in America or he’s greedy.

Some people believe that as good Christian people, the Smarts thought they were helping the homeless people they employed. This sort of naivety could only be borne out of extreme ignorance. How could anyone be unaware of the dangers involved in inviting transients into their home? Have these people never read a newspaper or watched the news on television?

Besides that, its not as though you have to bring a transient into your home to help out their cause. If the Smarts really wanted to help hobos they could have given their money to an organization who would use donated money to get these people back on their feet. These organizations do more than give a handout, they provide programs aimed at rehabilitating people. The Smarts’ money could have done a lot more good in the hands of their church or another charity. Of course that would mean Ed Smart would have to pay someone a reasonable wage to fix his roof.

Another possibility is that Ed Smart is a cheapskate who picked up homeless people to do menial labor to save a few bucks. Unless we honestly believe Smart was ignorant of the dangers involved in his little employment program, this seems like a better explanation. It seems perfectly plausible that Ed Smart knowingly mortgaged his family’s safety by desperate destitutes into his home instead of hiring a reputable contractor.

Smart’s smugness came through in his comments about clearing the names of former suspects. Ed Smart had publicly stated that he believed Richard Ricci was involved in the kidnapping. Both Ricci and his wife Angela steadfastly denied the allegations, but Ed Smart persisted in his accusations. Ricci was imprisoned on supposedly unrelated parole violations (which involved burglarizing the Smart’s home) and died in jail.

After the truth came out last week Ed Smart refused Angela Ricci’s request for an apology. Instead, he patronized her with remarks that insulted the memory of her widow.
“This was one thing that he was not responsible for," he told the Associated Press. "I hope this gives you the peace to know that he was not the one."

Angela Ricci had unwaveringly maintained that her husband was innocent. She staunchly insisted that he was laying in bed beside her the night of Elizabeth’s disappearance. It’s downright insulting that Ed Smart would think Ricci’s grieving widow would need his approval to believe her own story.

At best, Ed Smart’s actions deprived Ricci of living his last few months on earth in the comfort of his home beside his loving wife. At worst, Ed Smart is a murderer. Ricci died of an aneurism, which is a condition often caused by stress. Upon being accused of a horrendous crime and thrown behind bars its pretty safe to say Ricci was under a lot of stress. Ed Smart’s unfounded accusations may well have killed Richard Ricci.

It would seem that Angela Ricci might have a pretty good case for slander suit against Ed Smart. Ed Smart put her family through hell. A jury might be justified in an judgment which leaves the rest of the Smart family living in a teepee.

It doesn’t look like the Smarts will be hurting for cash though: the AP reported yesterday that Ed and Lois Smart are currently in the process of evaluating book and movie deals. This would be a disgusting example of the exploitation of tragedy on par with selling shuttle wreckage. Still, considering the Smarts behavior thus far, no one should be shocked that they’re willing to prostitute their daughter’s plight.

Elizabeth and Mary Katherine

The Smart family claims that Mitchell kidnapped Elizabeth from her home at knifepoint. According to the story, Elizabeth was snatched away in the middle of the night while her sister, Mary Katherine, watched. Mary Katherine didn’t alert her parents for two hours. The first, most obvious question, is why didn’t Mary Katherine, scream out when her sister was kidnapped? Even if she was too scared to scream, why did it take two hours for her to report the incident to her parents?

The Smarts are asking us to believe that Mary Katherine was aware enough to identify a suspect, but not aware enough to report the kidnapping for two hours after the alleged kidnapper had left. While its possible that, as the Smarts say, Mary Katherine was too scared to speak, there seems to be another explanation. It seems perfectly plausible that Elizabeth went willingly and told her sister not to tell what happened.

Its not hard to imagine a scenario where the Mitchell struck up a friendship with Elizabeth while he was taking a break from his work at the family’s home. Perhaps she was wooed by passionate religious beliefs or infatuated by his nomadic lifestyle. Maybe Elizabeth’s sister wasn’t scared because she had already snuck out with him before for a shorter tryst. When Elizabeth didn’t come back she got scared.

This unpleasant version of the story isn’t something people want to think about, but it provides a much more plausible explanation for the events that happened that night. Many people argue that, at the age of nine, Mary Katherine wouldn’t have the capacity to fabricate a story like this. If law enforcement is silly enough to buy into this we’re all in serious trouble. There should be no doubt that nine year old children have the capacity to lie. Also, its not like the Smart parents would put a lot of pressure on Mary Katherine to revel the truth when it would diminish sympathy for their missing daughter.

While Mary Katherine’s behavior is enough to raise some eyebrows, Elizabeth’s behavior begets more serious doubts.

When located, Elizabeth denied her identity, telling police officers that her name was Augustine. At one point she was pulled aside, out of the reach of her alleged captors, where she reportedly told a police officer, “`I know who you think I am. You guys think I'm that Elizabeth Smart girl who ran away.”

At first blush, its shocking that Elizabeth denied her identity. She was now in safe hands, yet she persisted in her lie. But read more closely: Elizabeth denied that she was the girl had “run away.” Is this what a psychologist might called a Freudian slip?

It turns out Elizabeth had numerous chances to escape. She heard her uncle calling for her while she was out in the woods. She was often out in public near people who could have rescued her. She remained in her campsite even when her alleged captors left her alone for an entire day.

The Smarts and their supporters try to explain all this away by saying that Elizabeth was brainwashed during her supposed ordeal. Their appeal to the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, best known as the defense Patricia Hearst used when she was supposedly kidnapped by the Symbianese Liberation Organization.

This brings up another question: why is it always rich little girls who get brainwashed? Plenty of children get kidnapped each year, but most try to escape. In the few cases of the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, the supposed victims seem to have a lot in common with Elizabeth. It seems possible that Elizabeth was a bored little girl wanted to go on an adventure, and that she lied about her identity because she was enjoying her experience as renegade. Even if Elizabeth was originally kidnapped, and feared for her safety if she tried to escape, its hard to explain why she behaved how she did once she was found by police. This may be the most disturbing part of the entire sage.

The story the mainstream media is telling is about an innocent little girl who was stolen from her home in the middle of the night. But given the facts, their story just doesn’t gel. Elizabeth may have been an innocent girl from an idyllic family who was victimized by a fanatical vagabond, but there seems to be a lot of evidence to the contrary.

The alternative account, about a greedy father who put his pliable daughter in a risky situation only to see her run off on an adventure with an insane transient, is much less charming, but also wholly reasonable.

Also, what is wrong with Brian? What a douchebag. Sheesh.

Posted 6:22 AM by Martin
Wait: Are copy editors allowed to be members of this little forum? If so, count me out...

Posted 1:13 AM by McJangles
I think Monday's edition should be pretty good. We may not even have enough space for all the local copy. Martin's writing about the Smarts, I'm writing about Iraq, Obi's writing about Nigeria. Good times.

It would be good, I think, to put copy on here as a universal means of submitting copy. It cuts down on all the crazy line breaks, hyphens to underscores and quotation marks to commas. It also provides a means for all of us to see what's being written. I'll be a good leader and set the example.

It's all about oil--right?
By Brian Bardwell
The Buchtelite

With another war in Iraq looming maybe on the next horizon, a lot of people are inserting themselves into debates on public policy.

Newspapers just recently began giving attention to peace rallies being held across the country and world and even more recently began paying attention to rallies in support of the war.

Celebrity groups diverse enough to include Jay-Z, Kim Basinger and Casey Kasem are coming together to decry a preemptive strike against Iraq.

We’re all certainly entitled to our opinions, but it’s distressing to hear the most common and most sophomoric arguments against going to war: “It’s all about the oil,” “He’s just finishing his daddy’s work for him.” The claims—rarely backed up—are spouted at every chance by most opponents of the war effort. “No blood for oil!” signs pop up in the crowds at peace rallies.

They’re such common arguments that it’s easy for someone interested in politics only casually to buy into them. It gives an activist an arrogant sense of moral superiority to claim that such a serious act would be made over something as trivial as oil.

But the fact is that oil argument won’t hold water.

Perhaps oil in Iraq is a factor in our ravenous appetite for an invasion. With such a large reserve, it’s hard to say that it isn’t even a part of it. If America took control of that oil, the country would benefit hugely.

Nonetheless, however smart you think George W. Bush is, it takes a much purer breed of idiot to launch a war for oil. There are a lot of other factors, most notably the weapons, playing into the situation.

War opponents subscribing to the oil and following-in-your-father’s-footsteps arguments need a serious wake-up call. This isn’t the Cold War anymore. Political leaders don’t make weapons in the name of assured mutual destruction. Saddam Hussein is not Nikita Khrushchev. Saddam Hussein is a crazy man.

What more do we need this man to do? “Weapons of mass destruction” doesn’t just mean nuclear weapons. They’re big bombs and missiles, and this guy has them. U.N. inspectors aren’t supposed to go on a hide-and-seek game to find the weapons, Saddam is supposed to show them that he’s gotten rid of them.

Weapons inspectors found VX gas residue on Iraqi warheads, but the Saddam still denies that the country ever had any VX nerve gas. Weapons inspectors say that the country has what it needs to generate 200 tons of the chemical; Saddam says they’re making it up.

Iraq cannot account for 500 tons of propellant for SCUD missiles or 40 SCUD warheads. It also refuses to show that it ever destroyed 12 aerosol generators, used in helicopters to spread biological weapons.

Saddam has declared several tests it was conducting to implement weapons of biological warfare. Since then, Iraq has failed to show that it has gotten rid of supplies, warheads and materials for those tests and projects. Instead, Saddam claims that his country has no such weapons and never had them. Even as bulldozers destroyed missiles in the streets of Iraq, he maintained that he has never had weapons of mass destruction.

This a crazy man. He’s tried to assassinate our president, he pays the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and he funds terrorist training camps. Do we really believe that he won’t eventually get a bomb or a couple tons of nerve gas inside our borders?

The United States has never started a war and should be applauded. This time, though, were being taunted for a decade by a country that has been building up to attack us for just as long. A fight's going to break out eventually, and we're better off playing the first hand.

[Note: This has not yet had an ounce of editing. Leave me alone.]