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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (44105)	4/27/1999 9:50:00 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Don't be a goof. Oops, too late...

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (44105)	4/27/1999 10:47:00 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

HORROR HIGH: THERE ARE QUICK FIXES By DICK MORRIS ALL that we hear in the aftermath of the Littleton, Colo., school massacre is that we need to revisit what triggers teen violence and reassess how we raise our children. Colorado Education Commissioner William J. Maloney, for example, said on the Fox News Channel that ''there are no quick fixes.'' There are. Those guns and those bombs could not have made it through the front door of that high school if an armed guard with a metal detector were standing there screening students as they went in. How could two shotguns, two handguns, and thirty bombs have passed, unnoticed through a detector? To say that the issue in promoting safety in schools is to migrate the teen propensity toward violence is like saying that we have to lower the level of anger and criminality on the planet to make our airplanes safe. No. We just made the passengers go through metal detectors and everything was fine. In a statement that defied credibility, Dr. Moloney said that ''schools aren't like airplanes. There are multiple entrances and once a plane goes up, you don't have to worry about it, but you have to monitor a school all day.'' Somehow, the problem of securing access to a school building does not seem too daunting to challenge the ingenuity of the human race. We secure courthouses, White Houses, and statehouses. We can secure schools. We are witnessing a coalition of the crazy left and the crazy right, bolstered by a president who lacks the guts to say what he thinks. The left doesn't want us to make ''school into prisons.'' They would rather risk the lives of our students than to compromise their idyllic, imaginary, palaces of learning with something so crass as a metal detector. Not for them to worry that kids are afraid to go to school and that 13 innocents died in a hail of gunfire. The aesthetics matter so very much more to their sensitive souls. The right is scared to death that somebody will actually propose that we limit guns and bombs. They worry that Americans will no longer ignore the fact that if the NRA didn't kill efforts to limit these weapons of death and destruction, they would not find their way into our schools. For the right wing, metal detectors are the first step in blaming the hardware. First metal detectors and then, who knows what? Their message: Clean up your movies, but don't take away the guns and bombs. Amidst it all are Bill Clinton and Janet Reno espousing an end to violence and confrontation, blaming the culture and calling for making gentle the ways of man. Of course they are right, but how about metal detectors? Neither Reno nor Clinton have the guts or the political capital to violate the shibboleths of the left and the right. Bill Clinton knows damn well that metal detectors are the answer and he supports putting them in schools. So why the silence? Not because of a lack of knowledge, but a shortfall of courage. The usual problem. In 1996, he and I discussed allocating money from the Safe and Drug Free School Act be allocated to states for guards and for metal detectors. He supported the idea and asked me to figure out how much it would cost to provide every high school in the nation with a cop and metal detectors. He has always backed the principle. He just isn't talking about it these days, which is too bad for the kids who will die in the next copycat massacre. Attorney General Janet Reno also turned away from suggestions that parental liability be tightened in situations such as these. Are not parents who permit their minor children to hoard weapons - and who ignore other signs of a propensity to violence - responsible for the acts of their children? And while we are at it, what about the school system itself? There were warnings. One of the Trench Coat Mafia killed his father in 1997 and then committed suicide. Is it not too far a stretch to realize that it would be wise to beef up security in the school where his confederates are still in attendance? Part of the problem is that expulsion from public school is about as easy as firing a tenured teacher. States have no place to put students who don't belong in the normal school environment. Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist has pioneered an unusual and important answer to this problem by helping to create a school in each district specifically for kids who have been expelled from the regular system. These behavior problems and violent threats get special help and attention in these schools and do not place the other students throughout the system at risk. Interestingly, the data about the students thus diverted to alternate schools is very encouraging. They have higher graduation rates and lower incidences of violence in school than did similar students before these alternate schools were developed. Obviously, Hollywood must do its part to reduce the images of violence. Certainly, we need counseling and better early warning of the potential for student violence. But the ''quick fixes'' here are likely to work well ... and quickly! Metal detectors, alternate schools for the violent and disruptive, stricter parental liability and enforcement of school-system liability will all act to reduce the potential for more mass and sickening slaughter. These days its getting harder to distinguish Kosovo from our schools.