AND YOU KNOW THEY WILL

Tuesday, 9:00 AM.  20 degrees F, wind WSW, calm to light.  Humidity 86%, barometer 30.04 in.  The sky is mostly clear with some fog and haze in the east.  It looks like we are having our January thaw, perhaps a bit early.
    Yesterday was a gorgeous day all day, reaching 40 degrees F in Duluth.  The scenery along US Hwy. 2 did not disappoint.  Young stands of white barked birch and aspen were rendered even more starkly white than the snowy background by the nearly horizontal rays of the bright winter sun.  Colonies of shrub willows, young branches bright orange, and red-twigged dogwood greeted us in the low spots.  Ranks of dark green pines marched across the sandy ridges, while spire-like balsam firs stood sentry on the hillsides. 
    The “outing” of gun owners in counties north of New York City by the suburban Journal News     continues to cause unintended consequences, as the prison population is now taunting guards, deputies and police that they now know exactly where all these officers and their families live, since these officers names and addresses were published along with civilian gun permit holders. 
Just because something is a matter of public record does not mean that it should be released gratuitously by the government to the news media or any other entity.  Such requests for public records should only be honored one item at a time, only for legitimate reason, and not as part of some fishing expedition or media extravaganza. 
But gee, wouldn’t it be great fun to publish the names and addresses of all the folks in a community who receive public assistance of any kind…food stamps, supplemental income, home heating credit, Obama phones, welfare credit cards (now there’s an idiotic idea to make your hair stand on end)…wouldn’t that create enough gossip to enliven the winter!  Wouldn’t that expand the class warfare! Wouldn’t that embarrass the truly needy!
Is it really the objective of the left wing press, in collusion with the government,  to inflame every passion, stir every controversy, pit everyone against their neighbor?  And should we really trust the federal government to centralize all these records of private citizens so bureaucrats can give any and all personal information to anyone they choose, probably for a price?
And you know they will.