Printed: 9/12/08

The misguided idea that public dollars are limitless was on full display in the recent state Legislative Audit Council review of cell phone use among state employees.

The prevailing attitude was adolescent: Dad’s paying, so the sky’s the limit.

Two flagrant misuses stand out – for their audacity, and because they originated in the same agency: the Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon.

One employee made 150 hours in personal calls – equal to nearly a month’s vacation – to a girlfriend in Texas. Another placed 87 hours of personal calls to her husband.

Remarkably, this agency has never – until the LAC audit, that is – required employees to reimburse the state for personal calls. Neither did it occur to agency heads to monitor cell phone records. They will now, they assured the LAC. “We’re taking suggestions for improvement very seriously,” director Cheryl Mack Thompson said.

That’s little comfort to taxpayers out close to $15,000 due to these abuses, plus game and ringtone downloads and calls to directory assistance by employees who apparently don’t know how to open a phone book.

Of the 96 state agencies that issue cell phones to their employees, 26 have no written policies on their use.

This is inexcusable. State taxpayers are neither Daddy nor Santa Claus. Agency heads should have their budgets frozen until they put this right.

Printed: 9/12/08

Since January 2007, South Carolina school districts have been required by law to track, limit and punish school bullying in all its permutations, including cyberbullying, the trendy term for electronic harassment by cell phone or computer.

This isn’t an overreaction. Bullying is a serious problem in the public school culture, which extends far beyond the physical school campus, thanks to an Internet cyberworld that makes second-by-second contact a virtual reality for America’s youth.

A reputation can be destroyed in seconds and on a far-flung stage. A recent national study found more than 75 percent of middle school students had visited a Web site that bashed another student.

Not surprisingly, children so targeted suffer academically. Absenteeism is common. It behooves schools to care.

The good news is schools are becoming more vigilant, especially at the middle and high school level, where such behavior is most expected. The bad news is it doesn’t start there. As Journal writer Cindy Landrum reports this week, those who target bullying are learning the real training fields are the elementary grades.

Research tracked by the International Bullying Prevention Association indicates three-quarters of 8- to 11-year-olds report being bullied. Worse, nearly six in 10 admit to participating in some type of bullying in the past year.

The torments reported tend toward those that fly under adult radar: rumor-spreading, social isolation, secret feuds. Researchers received strong responses to questions like “I get left out of games on purpose” and “at recess, I play by myself.”

Elementary schools should not shrug off such experiences as routine rites of passage. Without intervention, a child who is a bully in third grade makes a career of it throughout school and is at increased risk of criminal behavior as an adult, says the National Institutes of Health. The headaches, sleeping problems and school-related fears of the victims have equally long-term consequences.

Schools must address bullying head-on, starting by increasing teacher visibility in the areas bullies typically haunt: restrooms, playgrounds, the cafeteria, the halls. Students know the hot spots unique to their school: find out with an anonymous survey. Train teachers, parents and students what to look for and how to react. Intervene consistently.

Most important, convince victims and bullies alike of these truths: bullying is wrong. Under no circumstances will it be tolerated at this school.

Printed: 9.12.08

In line at the drugstore the other day, I wondered what it would be like to be Sarah Palin: Tabloid Sensation.

Her face dominated the magazine rack beside the register, dwarfed only by the headlines: “Babies, Lies and Scandal!,” “New Embarrassing Surprises!” “Baby Not Sarah’s!”

I hadn’t heard that last one. Apparently the latest blogosphere conspiracy is that Palin’s youngest child is actually her daughter’s baby. Palin supposedly faked the birth to spare herself the embarrassment of admitting her 17-year-old got pregnant. (Why she wouldn’t do it twice, the bloggers don’t address.)

Unfortunately, some mainstream media aren’t far behind. A McCain spokesman told ABC’s Katie Couric that reporters have asked campaign staffers to supply them with paternity tests proving young Trig’s parentage.

Another fine moment in American journalism. And we have seven weeks to go.

Yet somehow, when I picture Palin’s grin while delivering that delicious line – “The difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick” – it doesn’t matter how low the piranhas swim.

She didn’t just say the line, either. She pointed at her own mouth. That would be me, folks. Bring it on.

And they will, because Sarah Palin just changed the script for the 2008 presidential race and nobody – not the media, not the campaign staffs, not the candidates – have the slightest idea how it’s going to end.

For a great many people, that’s a terrifying place to be in the last act of a 15-month campaign the Democrats had already guaranteed would shatter history, whether or not they take the White House. The script said they would take the White House. Bush is the pariah president. By all accounts, 2008 is the Democrats’ year.

Now, maybe not. With a wicked grin of his own, John McCain catapulted a small-town Alaskan rebel onto the

Minneapolis-St. Paul stage and electrified not just his base, but everyone – Republican, Democrat and independent – paying the remotest attention.

Why? For the same reason John Kerry posed for so many gun-toting photo-ops in 2004, and Hillary drank whisky shots across Indiana, and Barack Obama even considered picking up a bowling ball in Altoona, Pa.

It’s a truth any political operative will tell you: voters search for a candidate they can see themselves in; a candidate they know.

People in all those flyover states found her when Sarah Palin looked into the camera Sept. 3 and took her stand with the good people “we grow in our small towns.”

They do some of the hardest work in America, she said. “They grow our food, run our factories and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America.”

It’s the kind of line blue state sophisticates gag over, but I swear I could almost hear the huge sigh of relief across the heartland. Americans may be unhappy with George Bush, they may thrill to Obama’s oratory on change, but a great many still believe this country is the greatest in the world, and they want a candidate who believes it, too.

Palin does. You can feel it. She’s the real deal. That’s why her opponents are desperate for anything to bring her down.

They may find it still. They’ll be relentless. The stakes are tremendously high.

But thanks to their genuinely unhinged attack on his running mate, these opponents have already done something tremendous for John McCain: they delivered 39 million viewers to hear him say this in his acceptance speech:

“I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else’s. I loved it for its decency, for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. … My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her as long as I draw breath, so help me God.”

I read a lot of commentary in the national media that sneered at that. McCain means it, though. You can feel it. He’s the real deal. And America was listening.