{"id":10284,"date":"2010-04-23T13:17:43","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T18:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10284"},"modified":"2010-04-23T13:17:43","modified_gmt":"2010-04-23T18:17:43","slug":"dirt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=10284","title":{"rendered":"Dirt"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m going to the State GOP convention next weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As I’ve said elsewhere – I don’t do endorsements, myself.\u00a0\u00a0 I told the people at my district who I’d be voting for as a delegate; I suspect the campaigns both know.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the record, either Marty Seifert or Tom Emmer would be a better governor than any <\/em>DFLer, living, dead or yet-unborn,\u00a0as the leader of this state.\u00a0 I’ll work myself to exhaustion for whomever wins the nomination.<\/p>\n

Now, over the past few days there’s been a roiling froth about the campaign; the Seifert campaign sent delegates a letter from a Republican activist<\/a>, Sandra Berg (no relation that I know of) regarding a couple of DWI-related charges,\u00a0that his competitor, Tom Emmer, got 19 and 29 years ago – questioning not only his character due to the arrests, but some legislation he backed that’d have had the effect of treating drunk drivers as innocent until proven guilty <\/em>and making DUIs private information <\/em>after ten years of good behavior – in other words, allowing people who’d made\u00a0 a dumb mistake to function and get their lives back.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Drunk driving is an emotional issue – made all the more so by groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the rest of the drunk driving lobby.\u00a0 It’s understandable; anyone who’s lost a loved one to a drunk driver is justifiably motivated to seek change.\u00a0\u00a0 But the .08 blood alcohol level limit is a ludicrious waste of resources, and the resources spent on hammering on first-time, only-time offenders with low levels of intoxication are largely a complete waste.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0 Does saying the above mean I “support” or am “soft on” drunk drivers and drunk driving?<\/p>\n

But it’s ludicrous to treat attempts to make the system fairer and more rational as “sympathy for drunk drivers”.\u00a0 Almost as ludicrous as assuming two mistakes made a generation ago are defining traits about a late-fortysomething guys’ judgment.<\/p>\n

The Minnesota GOP needs to do a lot better than this.<\/p>\n

This isn’t affecting my choice at the convention – whoever he is – one iota.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m going to the State GOP convention next weekend.\u00a0 As I’ve said elsewhere – I don’t do endorsements, myself.\u00a0\u00a0 I told the people at my district who I’d be voting for as a delegate; I suspect the campaigns both know.\u00a0 For the record, either Marty Seifert or Tom Emmer would be a better governor than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-10","category-crime-and-punishment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10285,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10284\/revisions\/10285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}