SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET:

A RARITY – FROM HEATSTREET:   A small group of conservative students have launched a Change.org petition calling for the University of Nevada Las Vegas not to become a sanctuary campus.  Since Donald Trump’s election, students and faculty at as many as 80 universities have pushed for their administrations to officially declare as sanctuary campuses, which offers protections to illegal immigrants attending those schools.  UNLV is one of them; a petition delivered to the university president last week had almost a thousand signatures, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Now, the Campus Conservatives have sponsored the counter-petition, with four or five members drafting it.  “We oppose becoming a sanctuary campus because we don’t think a university—especially a federally funded university—should be deciding what federal laws they follow,” says Jordan Escoto, a senior who co-founded the Campus Conservatives a month and a half ago.  Escoto is a legal U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, and he says he’s tried to help his fellow students understand the other side of the sanctuary campus argument. “The people who are pro-sanctuary campus try to make it an argument about opposing hate speech and bigotry,” Escoto said. “That’s not what it’s really about. They’re opposing rule of law and equal treatment of students.”  This is a great kid.  I hope they don't throw him out of his school.

WE'LL FOLLOW IT AND SEE HOW IT WORKS – FROM AP:  DENVER (AP) - A rural Colorado school district decided to allow its teachers and other school staff to carry guns on campus to protect students.
The Hanover School District 28 board voted 3-2 Wednesday night to allow school employees to volunteer to be armed on the job after undergoing training.  The district's two schools serve about 270 students about 30 miles southeast of Colorado Springs, and it takes law enforcement an average of 20 minutes to get there. The district currently shares an armed school resource officer with four other school districts.  Board member Michael Lawson backed the idea not only as way to protect students from a mass shooting, but also as protection against possible violence connected with nearby marijuana grows, which he believes are connected with foreign cartels, the Gazette of Colorado Springs reported.  If done correctly, it's a perfectly valid idea.  It assumes good training.  "Call the police" has little meaning when an active shooter is already on campus and the police are minutes away.  I hope this works out.

THE COST OF DISRESPECT – FROM THE STAR-TELEGRAM:  DALLAS – Police recruiters are trying to bring in hundreds of new police officers in Dallas.  Nearly 100 officers in the Dallas Police Department have quit or retired since October, according to multiple reports, worsening the department’s deficit of personnel.  Interim Police Chief David Pughes told City Council members Monday night that the department wanted to fill the next academy class with 60 officers but has only hired 30 for the February class, the Dallas Morning News reported. The department is down to 3,252 officers and would like to have at least 3,500.  CBS 11 reported that most of the 99 who left since Oct. 1 were some of Dallas’s most experienced officers, according to the incoming president of the Dallas Police Association.  The recruitment/departure rate problems stem from the last fiscal year, which ended in September, in which 294 officers left and 142 were hired.  The Morning News reported the department has a rising crime rate on top of troubled pension funds and low salaries compared to other cities.  You'll recall that five Dallas officers were murdered recently in a single incident.  It's tough to be a cop, tougher when certain political elements seem more interested in the welfare of criminals.

December 14, 2016