eisely

I cannot imagine what Alex's father is doing to himself. Mike, You and your boys deserve full credit for the support you are providing to the family in this time. Helping them is the best way to heal one's self. Good luck to all of you. PS How is that little girl doing? Ed

On any day during the season there are probably 20 to 30 crews arriving at Philmont from different directions. I would think that it is highly likely that at least one other crew would be coming through Colorado Springs on the same day and would be happy to share a ride. However, how you go about identifying and contacting such people is beyond me.

A hunting accident. Father shoots son. Is the Mike Long quoted here the same Mike Long who used to be active in this forum? ______________________________ Hunting Accident Victim Remembered As True Boy Scout Thu Jan 22, 7:29 AM ET Family and friends gathered Wednesday morning to remember 14-year-old Alex Plucknett, who was killed Saturday in a hunting accident at a Baker County hunt club. Authorities said the teen was mistakenly shot when his father mistook his black cap for a hog. Services for the Plucknett were held at the Isle of Faith Methodist Church in San Pablo, his family's church where also attended Boy Scout meetings. His mother has asked that, in lieu of flowers, people contribute to the Alex Plucknett Scholarship Fund at any Educational Community Credit Union. Some mourners, like scoutmaster Mike Long, remember Plucknett as a "go-getter," and a good Boy Scout. Long called Plucknett a true outdoorsman and someone who wouldn't let anything stop him from achieving his goals. "When you had something that captured his attention, something that captured his mind, he pursued it with a tenacity that you don't see that often," said Long as he looked through pictures of Plucknett on various outings with the troop. In addition to Troop 623's trips to the Smoky Mountains, Ocala National Forest, and Cumberland Island, Plucknett and the troop also participated in community service projects at schools, churches and parks. Long said he thought the world of Plucknett, saying he showed incredible maturity and that the others boys looked up to him. "He held multiple leadership positions in the troop where he was dealing directly with younger boys and teaching them a lot of skills," Long said. When the scouts learned that Plucknett had been killed, they took it very hard. At the time, the scouts were on an outing that Plucknett had decided not to attend. He went hunting with his father and older brother instead. Long summed up the loss with a quote straight from the Scout tradition. "A Scout is a friend to all and a brother to every other Scout. And they lost a brother," he said. Plucknett also loved baseball, and he pitched a no-hitter game last season. He has been named to the scout's National Honor Society. Baker County Sheriff Joey Dobson said he is meeting with the state attorney's office to review the shooting, but is certain it will be ruled an accident.

I think most people were surprised that Gephardt did not do better. With all the focus on the three top finishers in Iowa since Monday, I haven't seen much comment about Gephardt. I have a theory... Gephardt was totally locked into an anti free trade position with his union supporters. Iowa's economy is still dominated by farmers and the parts of the economy that support agriculture. Agricultural interests have a long history in this country of favoring free trade. Iowa exports a lot agricultural products to other countries. It could be that the bulk of the Iowans saw Gephardt's hostility to free trade as opposed to their economic interests.

I am not aware of any "time requirement" for adults to be nominated from the district. As far as I know, both the rank requirement that applies only to youth, and the nights camping requirement that applies to all candidates coming out of a unit, do not apply at the district level. A few years back I noticed a new DE, who happened to be a young woman in her 20's also going through an ordeal. I inferred that all professionals were put through this process. I could be wrong about that, and I did not ask. Perhaps the Man of Steele can shed some light on this.

I agree that there is an inequity in Venture Crews not being able to elect members to OA. I don't see that this should be a reason why male members of a Venture Crew who are members of OA should not be able to wear a pocket flap if they want to. I agree that wearing a pocket flap appears to be optional. According to my understanding of the rules, the only way a female venturer, youth or adult, could become a member of OA is to be nominated by the district committee based on service to the district. The unit has to elect at least one youth candidate during an election cycle for a unit to be able to nominate an adult candidate. Just as cub scout leaders are not eligible for OA at the unit level, so are venture crew leaders ineligible, since no election for youth candidates can take place.

So people will have something to trade at conclaves?

Zahnada, Unfortunately you are probably correct. We don't know how much counseling this boy got enroute, but it is difficult to close this barn door after the horse has escaped.

I had to learn both for First Class, but like all unused skills, both are lost to me now for many decades. One of the footnotes of interest about Hollywood regards the recent Tom Cruise movie, "The Last Samurai". In the final battle the bad guys are shown using the semaphore flags to communicate on the battlefield. Semaphore flags and heliographs (signal mirrors), along with Morse code, were vitally important means to communication in the military before there were field telephones and reliable radios. If I am not mistaken, the navy still uses signal lamps between ships when radio silence is required.

As others noted, it is an acceptable practice to wear the sash over civvies at Ordeals to distinguish members from candidates. I would not run an OA sash through the wash with regular laundry. I have hand washed OA sashes in luke warm or cold water using a cold water detergent such as Woolite.

BW, Is the Philmont operated bus between Base Camp and Raton really free? When we used that bus a few years ago, we had to kick in an extra $5.00 per passenger. That was still a very reasonable price, but I am curious about this. In any event, one of my earlier points was that even taking a train as close as it can get you to Philmont, still requires another leg. People taking a train from Colorado Springs (if such a service exists) still have to get from the airport in Colorado Springs to the train station. Hiring a bus door to door from the airport to Philmont certainly is simpler, and possibly even cheaper.

Bob White's response is on target. Expectations for fulfilling a leadership position need to be established and communicated before the boy assumes the position. The requirement is that he actively serve in the position, not that he be either effective or particularly successful. My view is that the boy should put in the effort and grow through the experience even if he makes mistakes. It sounds like this guy hasn't really tried. The physical abuse/harrassment of other scouts is another matter. If it has stopped then he has learned and the issue is off the table. If it still going on then there is a different problem than just the leadership requirement issue.

You did not say when you are going. The information packets distributed by Philmont to crew advisors lists several providers of transportation services. It sounds like you have two crews. You ought to be able to do better than $100 per scout. I don't know what rail connections exist between Colorado Springs and Raton, NM, but if you were to try that, you still have a bus ride from Raton to the base camp. Personally, I would not include such a short rail link in my itinerary. If you are already flying into Colorado Springs, you would increase both your cost and hassle by taking a train for such a short hop, and add to the risk of missed connections.

Maybe I misconstrued something, but I think the F preceded the intervention by Jesus. Anyway...a fresh start is a good thing, however it comes about.

I count myself a conservative, but Gephardt is one of the adults on the liberal side of things. Further he's a Missourian so he automatically gets some sympathy from me.

It is difficult to have a great deal of sympathy for Mr. Hamdi. Whatever the circumstances of his capture, he was not where he should have been, at a minimum. This does not mean that he should be shot out of hand. It is too easy to take the position that these people have no rights whatsoever. However, there is yet another reason for treating captives humanely in at least the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. That is, we want our people treated well when they are captured. Of course Al Queda is not a government and is not known to take captives. Even so, we do not want to acquire a reputation for inhumane treatment of captives, if only out of consideration for our own people.

I don't have a problem with a hatless troop. I personally don't care for the baseball cap and haven't worn one in years. Hats on the trail are another matter. The baseball hat is not very good for that purpose either. If the boys vote to not have a hat as a standard uniform item, then that should be their prerogative. I disagree with other modifications to the uniform. Units should comply with the rules on insignia, etc., but if they don't want the hats, let them go bare headed.

Picking up the discussion on other threads about civil liberties and the response to 9/11, I have pasted in below a piece written by Nat Hentoff. I have always respected Hentoff's views and his writing. He is one of the most consistent journalistic defenders of civil liberties in America today. While he probably can be fairly classified as very liberal in his views, he is also very critical of violations of basic rights in other countries. Among other things he is one of the few American journalists paying any attention to the abuses of the Castro regime. In any event, this piece appears to have appeared initially in The Village Voice. It raises once again this knotty question of how to treat people captured in Afghanistan. ____________ George W. Bush's Constitution Nat Hentoff Village Voice Saturday 3 January 2003 'Does It Take a Lifetime to Question a Man?' It is hard to imagine that America would look kindly on a foreign government that demanded the right to hold some of its own citizens in prison, incommunicado, denying them access to legal assistance for as long as it thought necessary, without ever charging them with a crime. Nevertheless, that is the position that George Bush's administration has tried to defend in the courts with regard to American citizens whom it has deemed to be "enemy combatants." --The Economist, London, December 14, 2002 The imprisonment of "enemy combatant" Yaser Esam Hamdi in a naval brig in the United States is not a matter of concern to most Americans, since they do not know of Mr. Hamdi's isolation from the Bill of Rights, and might not care if they did. But the Supreme Court will ultimately decide whether George W. Bush's Constitution will replace--in significant parts--the Constitution that most Americans are also not familiar with. When Mr. Hamdi's case--though not Mr. Hamdi personally--came before federal judge Robert Doumar in Norfolk, Virginia, that veteran jurist, appointed by Ronald Reagan, was astonished at the sweep of the government's declaration that the president had the right to personally put Hamdi in the brig and strip him of all his constitutional rights after claiming that he was an "enemy combatant." It is also the government's contention that the courts have minimal jurisdiction over the commander in chief as he locks up Americans he calls "enemy combatants" during our war against terrorism. Nonetheless, Judge Doumar insisted that the government explain itself, and was handed a two-page sworn document, written by Michael Mobbs, a Defense Department official, justifying the president's totally depriving Hamdi of his freedom indefinitely--without his being charged with any crime. Before getting to the judge's angry reaction to the Mobbs statement, it's necessary to note that just about every reference to Hamdi in the media has said--as printed in the November 1 New York Law Journal--that "Hamdi was seized while fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan." How do we know that to be true? Don't you trust your source--your government? As Katherine Seelye wrote in The New York Times (August 13, 2001) of Judge Doumar's response to the official Mobbs document giving the government's evidence: "He made very clear that he found the statement lacking in nearly every respect." A fuller account of what Judge Doumar said is in an extraordinarily valuable report by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights: A Year of Loss: Reexamining Civil Liberties Since September 11. Released last September 5, the report quotes more of what Judge Doumar indignantly said to the government prosecutor who had handed him the Mobbs document: "I'm challenging everything in the Mobbs declaration. If you think I don't understand the utilization of words, you are sadly mistaken." Mr. Mobbs had declared that Hamdi was "affiliated with a Taliban unit and received weapons training." Bolstering the government's case--or so it seemed--were photographs in some of the media of Hamdi carrying a weapon. So what was Judge Doumar's beef? The Mobbs document, Judge Doumar said bluntly, "makes no effort to explain what 'affiliated' means nor under what criteria this 'affiliation' justified Hamdi's classification as an enemy combatant. The declaration is silent as to what level of 'affiliation' is necessary to warrant enemy combatant status. . . . "It does not say where or by whom he received weapons training or the nature and content thereof. Indeed, a close inspection of the declaration reveals that [it] never claims that Hamdi was fighting for the Taliban, nor that he was a member of the Taliban. Without access to the screening criteria actually used by the government in its classification decision, this Court is unable to determine whether the government has paid adequate consideration to due process rights to which Hamdi is entitled under his present detention." (Emphasis added.) Think about that. This American citizen was officially stripped of all his constitutional rights and this flimsy two-page document is the government's explanation before the court. If the government had more information, why didn't it show that evidence in camera (to the judge in his private chambers)? I doubt that the relatively few Americans--not counting constitutional lawyers--who have been following this crucial case know how thoroughly Judge Doumar discredited the government's explanation for its indefinite punishment--without charges--of Hamdi. Another point, this one entirely ignored by the media, is in an amicus brief to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers: "[The government claims] that Mr. Hamdi 'surrendered' not to U.S. forces, but to a group of counter-insurgent Afghanis popularly called the 'Northern Alliance.' However, [the government then proceeds] to repeatedly claim that Hamdi was 'captured'--an important distinction when evaluating his legal status vis--vis the United States and under international law. One who surrenders before engaging in 'combat' can hardly be classified as a 'combatant' logically, much less legally." In addition to Mr. Mobbs's pieces of paper, the government prosecutor also told Judge Doumar that the Defense Department had to hold Hamdi for interrogation. And since the war on terrorism has no defined end in sight, he must be "detained" indefinitely. Said Judge Doumar: "How long does it take to question a man? A year? Two years? Ten years? A lifetime? How long?" Under this intensive fire, the prosecutor, Gregory G. Garre, an assistant to Solicitor General Theodore Olson, had only this response: "The present detention is lawful." As Judge Doumar said after he had denounced the two-page declaration: "So the Constitution doesn't apply to Mr. Hamdi?" I will follow this case through the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and then, I expect, to the United States Supreme Court. Those nine men and women will decide whether the essential liberties in the Framers' Constitution have been removed by George W. Bush. It's a pity the Democratic Party cares much less about civil liberties than about Bush's tax cuts.

I am not sure that BW is right on this one. It is my understanding that the chartered organization, through its institutional head and/or chartered organization representative can remove members, both youth and adult, from the unit, but not from scouting altogether. This is not the same thing as approving membership in the first place. Units can refuse membership to applicants, although this power is seldom exercised. For example, a unit may set a limit on the number of new youth members it will take in. It has been a long time since I looked at an application for a youth to be in cub scouts. Doesn't somebody in the unit have to sign an approval of the application on this form? A scoutmaster or cubmaster refusing to approve an application would not, IMHO, require even the knowledge, much less the approval, of the chartered organization or any of its representatives or agents. I have never heard of a general requirement for a unit to accept all applicants from the chartered organization, in this case a school, although I can envision situations where that might be the case. Unfortunately, I don't think there is a single good source to refer you to. If you are seriously concerned about the legalities, you should seek from your district executive executive access to the official BSA rules and regulation on membership matters. You probably also should look at the charter agreement between your school and the council. Having said all that, I think it is perfectly within the power of the unit to accept the youth membership while refusing the membership of the parents. Somebody has to be willing to communicate with the parents in this situation just what the conditions are for the boy's membership. We had a somewhat similar situation many years ago in our pack. That situation resolved itself when the parents transferred their memberships to another unit.

The following column was written by George Will. OK, he's a conservative, but he is also a baseball fan. I think he has much to offer on the subject of integrity and baseball. Is there a teaching moment here regarding scouting values? ______________________________ Sorry, Charlie By George F. Will Thursday, January 8, 2004 hustle:verb to work or act rapidly or energetically. -- Webster's New World Dictionary But "hustle" also is a noun: "A way of making money, esp. a dishonest way." Pete Rose, who walked 1,566 times in his major league career but always sprinted to first base, was called "Charlie Hustle." His new hustle is his book, for which he reportedly received a $1 million advance, in anticipation of sales generated by his coming clean about having bet on baseball, which no one seriously interested in the subject doubted he had done. No one, that is, other than professional contrarians, or commentators emancipated from facts by not having read the 1989 report that caused Rose to accept "permanent" banishment from baseball. Rose's coming clean is the most soiled conversion of convenience since . . . well, Aug. 17, 1998, when DNA evidence caused Bill Clinton to undergo a memory clarification. On the diamond, no one ever wrung more success from less natural talent than Rose did. But his second autobiography, which refutes the first, makes worse the mess he has made. The supposedly truth-telling book contains this patent lie: "During the times I gambled as a manager, I never took an unfair advantage. I never bet more or less based on injuries or inside information." But he also says -- does he even read his autobiographies? -- "I began betting regularly on the sport I knew best -- baseball." Managing the Reds, he knew -- he decided -- when a tired or injured star would be played or rested. And the network of bookies handling his bets knew that he knew. While saying, "It's time to take responsibility," he cunningly exploits the zeitgeist of today's therapeutic society. He is, he insists, a victim. A victim of an addiction -- gambling while managing the Reds substituted for the "high" he had gotten when competing as a player. And he is a victim of a double standard: He would have been treated more leniently -- more therapeutically -- had his problem been drugs rather than gambling. But baseball has especially severe sanctions about gambling because competitive integrity is baseball's raison d'etre. Americans, a forgiving people, are forever refuting the proposition that there are no second acts in American life. Almost anyone can recover from almost anything by convincingly saying, "I'm sorry." Rose lied -- and charmed the gullible -- for 14 years. Now, with the clock running out on his eligibility to election by baseball writers to the Hall of Fame, he pugnaciously says: I lied but "I'm just not built" to "act all sorry or sad or guilty" about it. "Act''? Rose's critics have said that repentance is a necessary -- not a sufficient -- prerequisite for restoring his eligibility to the Hall of Fame. Many, probably most, of Rose's critics are revolted by the moral obtuseness of his synthetic repentance. His dwindling band of defenders responds that it is unfair to judge Rose not by what he does but by the way he does it. Yet regarding repentance, the way you do it is what you do. Cooperstown primarily honors players for, in players' parlance, the "numbers they put up." Hence it is widely believed that selection to the Hall is exclusively about the statistical residue of players' careers and should not involve a "morals clause" -- consideration of character. But the rules for election by members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America include: "Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played." The rules for voting by the veterans' committee similarly mention "integrity, sportsmanship, character." Some will say that if admittance to the Hall were limited by a strict calculus of character, the Hall would be much smaller. Yes, Babe Ruth might have hit even more home runs if he had gone to bed earlier, and more often with Mrs. Ruth. But not all character issues are equally pertinent to the proper criteria for honoring athletes' achievements. The crucial criteria concern the integrity of the competition. Rose has said, "I was raised, but I never did grow up." He is not the only ballplayer who will be forever a boy. But what distinguishes him is not mere boyish roguishness but a hard, calculating adult amorality. There is a constancy to it that goes beyond recidivism, which implies episodes of recovery between relapses. On the evidence of his book, he should never be back in a major league uniform as a manager or coach. And he should not be admitted to the Hall of Fame unless its character criterion is declared irrelevant, which is not what the nation needs from the national pastime.

le Voyageur, What's the point here? What is democide other than a coined word? Is it supposed to mean something?

KS has it right. To live in civil society means giving up some freedoms. Only a hermit can live without impinging on others or being impinged upon in turn. It is a question of where to draw the line. I too get paranoid about the government from time to time, but right now I want the government doing all it reasonably can to protect me and my family. As I commented in a different thread, we have been attacked on our own soil at great cost, by people who hate us for who we are and who feel unrestrained by any rules or conventions whatsoever. This requires a sophisticated response that nevertheless is willing to call evil by its name. (Post modernists need not apply.) So far I think our government (and by that I mean all branches except the 9th circus) has gotten it right.

OGE, I am Type II diabetic on no medications. The two suggestions I would make is (1) directly inform at least one other adult on the outing of your condition, and (2) be alert to signs of low blood sugar as well. I have found that diabetes means fluctuations in blood sugar, not just high blood sugar. On a serious trek it is just as easy to get too low. Consequently I snack at late mid morning when lunch is a few hours off yet. My condition is not serious enough to warrant too many special concerns about diet on the trail. While trail food tends to be high in carbs, as it needs to be, you are burning a lot up.

Excellent post.

Up kind of late aren't you? At least it is not midnight yet here.