A South Dakota lawmaker who successfully pushed for a statewide smoking ban is optimistic about the latest developments. Late Thursday afternoon, ban supporters filed paperwork challenging opponent petitions to get the issue to a statewide vote.

Senate Majority Leader Dave Knudson was one of the lawmakers who introduced the ban. He’s hopeful it’ll go into effect.

Read it here.

I suppose it would be bad form to comment on someone who is in the same contest I have a candidate in…..  No matter how much I find government intervention and nanny statism distasteful.

So I’ll just keep it to myself.

I’d been avoiding it due to showing houses and other work, or just being exhausted in the evenings. Tonight, she caught me on a day where the stars aligned, and I was able to go.

After a day of politics culminating with the Palin resignation, I was thinking I’d get a night of no politics.

The first person I saw while walking up to the Cinema 5 in Brookings? South Dakota’s Attorney General Larry Long.

He was also enjoying an evening off, going to the movies with his wife and son, who is attending SDSU.

I didn’t notice what movie he went to, because I didn’t see him in mine.

Of the others -  Ice Age 3, the Hangover, the Proposal, and Public Enemies, I might venture a guess which one it was…..

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Friday she is resigning from office at the end of the month, raising speculation that she would focus on a run for the White House in the 2012 race.

The former Republican vice presidential candidate made the surprise announcement from her home in suburban Wasilla on Friday morning. She said she would step down July 26 but didn’t announce her plans.

Read it here.

The new Obama talking points don’t even include DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as priorities any longer.

President Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, who is himself openly gay, penned a piece for the Huffington Post yesterday that delineates the three “gay” priorities that Congress should focus on: safe schools; hate crimes; and ENDA.

After two weeks of the Obama White House reeling over the gay backlash caused by the anti-gay DOMA brief, which compared gay marriage to incest and pedophilia, we now have the number two guy on the Obama campaign suddenly writing about what our legislative priorities should be. Don’t think for a minute that this essay wasn’t either written by the White House, written at their behest, or at the very least cleared with them. This essay is the White House’s thinking on gay issues.

And what is that thinking? First, that the burden for doing anything pro-gay in the remaining three and a half years of the Obama administration is now shifted to Congress. Obama has no role whatsoever, and no power to influence anything, even though he’s still the leader of the free world. The essay makes clear that the onus is on Congress and no one else.

and…

It’s not clear if some gay group is giving Obama the behind the scenes permission to abandon his promises to our community on the military ban and on DOMA, but it’s increasingly looking that way.

Read it here.

A fractured Obama coalition coupled with a country weary of a government moving towards socialism might just be ripe in 2012 for a solid conservative such as Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney or John Thune to capture the imagination of the nation.

We’re cruising right along to the next election cycle, and providing original reporting, as well as pointing out the day’s best news from other sources so you don’t have to go scrounging around for it.

But little things such as news aggregators, web hosting, etcetera all cost money.  So if you haven’t done so in a while (or ever), your support is what helps keep the South Dakota War College going, and would be greatly appreciated.

Just click on the pay pal donation button link to the right. Or, if you aren’t into using pay pal, you can send it to me personally (Just e-mail me, and I’ll send you the address).

Thanks for your continuing support of the SDWC.

A head count showed 325 people in the grandstand for the midafternoon speeches, though organizer Dr. Allen Unruh later estimated 500 to 700 people attended at least some of the four-hour rally. Either way, the turnout was a fraction of the 4,000 at Covell Lake on April 15 to re-enact the Boston Tea Party in protest of government spending.

Read that here.

I don’t think the event was a failure by any means, as they did get some nice coverage on a regional and statewide basis about the issues that the rally were all about. And the organizers can take heart from that. As well as a lesson that they should have planned it for the 4th itself (a day off) and not talked about those kind of numbers for attendance.

Yes, they were more than a few numbers off the mark, but I think it was a success nonetheless. What have people been talking about the last 3 or 4 days, and what do they continue to talk about? Socialized medicine. Even the Argus was in on the act yesterday with a live on-line event with Senator Thune where the topic was covered.

Ok. So they’ll take their lumps for a bit of hyperbole. But they did an important thing in the arena of political battle - they set the agenda.

And we’re still talking about what they did.

Thune said in a Tuesday news release that he sent a letter calling for an investigation to a top official at the Environmental Protection Agency. E-mails made public by the House and Energy Commerce Committee show evidence, Thune said, of an attempt by one scientist to “suppress” the work of another scientist who dissented with the EPA’s view on greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

“I am concerned about the credibility of the Obama administration’s arguments in favor of increased environmental activism and government regulation now that it is clear that legitimate differences of opinion are not tolerated within the EPA,” Thune said in the news release.

According to Thune, the e-mails show that Al McGartland, director of the National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE), kept Alan Carlin, an economist at NCEE, from presenting his view that the EPA was incorrect in its research regarding greenhouse gases.

and…

“As Congress considers costly climate change legislation that has the potential to reshape our entire economy, a robust debate on the issue is necessary,” Thune said in the release.

Read it all here (in an article which originally came from the Mitchell Daily Republic).

Susan Randall, one of the state’s oldest activists for over reaching state regulation is using the tragic opportunity of a child’s severe injuries (for which an accused was found innocent) to advocate for… what else…  Government intervention and regulation!

From KSFY:

A Sioux Falls advocacy group says there is a loophole in South Dakota child care laws which puts kids at risk every day; a loophole which involves some home based daycares.

‘South Dakota Voices For Children’ is hoping this case helps raise awareness about South Dakota’s licensing for home daycare providers… here’s why they’re concerned. Right now every state in the country requires home daycare providers to get a license if they care for seven or more kids. Some states are stricter than this. For example in Minnesota you can only care for two kids before you need a license. In Iowa the number is six. But in South Dakota, the state doesn’t require a license. Unless you care for 13 or more kids.

and…

Susan says that begins with state licensing. “We are clearly an outlier as a state in the commitment that we’ve made to protecting young children that are in childcare.

Read it all here.

So, let’s understand this. A day care provider was accused of injuring a child. And she was found innocent. But Susan Randall “is hoping this case helps raise awareness about South Dakota’s licensing for home daycare providers…”  Am I missing the logic?

The legislature already has standards in place for day cares.  But is that good enough for Susan “Nanny State” Randall?

Not only no, but hell no.   Of course, she doesn’t mention that all she’s doing is seizing on a tragedy to promote the same measure she’s long been pushing:

The state requires licensing only for those who care for 13 or more children a day. That could change. The 2007 South Dakota Legislature likely will be presented with another bill to require licensing for those who care for fewer than 13 or at least for those who care for seven or more, said Susan Randall, executive director of South Dakota Voices for Children based in Sioux Falls.

Cities can have their own rules. Aberdeen has no ordinances on child care, but building codes address it, with regulations that apply regardless of how many kids are cared for.

and..

“Often a parent’s relationship with the child-care provider is such that the parent would be seen as a busybody if (she or he) went around the house and checked for safety features,” Randall said.

So why not let the state do the checking, Randall asked.

Why does this seem like Deja Vu? It should - this was a passage from the Aberdeen American news in August of 2006!

The injuries that this child suffered are sad enough. And based on the court’s verdict, no one has a clear conclusion on “what happened” or “what went wrong.” We may never know, and at least in the country we used to live in, there is a presumption of innocence.  Especially when someone is found “not guilty.”

But for Susan Randall to use that to foster and whip up a lather to promote the anti-parent agenda she’s been pushing for years staggers the conscience.

It’s little more than the moral equivalent of chasing a child’s ambulance to gain some column inches in the press.

Shame on her.

Of about 25,400 signatures reviewed by the South Dakota Tobacco Free Kids Network, nearly 40 percent were found to be invalid, the group contends.

Read it here.  KELO land had something to say about it too. Too bad they were wrong:

Thursday was a historic day in South Dakota. For the first time a group is challenging a petition to put an issue on a statewide ballot. Supporters of a statewide smoke free law filed paperwork with the Secretary of State’s office claiming opponents did not collect enough signatures to put a smoking ban on the 2010 ballot.

Read that here.  Sorry guys. You’re wrong. It was tried back in the 1980’s.  Petition invalidation has been tired before (my dad was hired as the investigative firm to break a ballot initiative petition) and let me tell you this - it is prohibitively expensive to try to prove. It can involve hundreds, if not thousands of hours of independent investigators reviewing each and every petition, and a ton of court time.

Back then, as it was fought out in court, because of the expense, the plaintiffs eventually gave up. (Dad thought they had the petition broken, but he wasn’t paying the bills on it.)

It may be a new thing under the current law. But it certainly was done before.

And as difficult as it sounds, it appears as if the nanny staters are going to try to do it anyway.

My question - if they’re so secure in their position, what are they scared of?

What are they scared of?

Almost ten-thousand people are expected at the W.H. Lyon Fairgrounds today to attend a health care rally.

Those behind the rally say they want to inform you about socialized Obama administration.

At a brief press conference late speakers and organizers gathered to share their concerns about what a government-run health care system would mean for America

The rally is free to the public and runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today, although organizers say the main events start at 12:30