SCANDAL!!! WE NEED A NEW SCANDAL!!!
And, thanks to those folks in the County COURTHOUSE, we've got one!

"In disguise with all their backing, they don't care what goes on around...
In their lives, there's something lacking, what they needs' a damn good whacking...
(George Harrison's Beatle Song, "Piggies", on the 'White Album'...)

I think that in order to properly address this situation, you would have to take the tone of a dog owner who's just discovered that Fido has chewed his favorite slippers into smithereens. "Bad, BAAAAAD DOG!", you would probably say. And then you would find the nearest newspaper or magazine, roll it up and whack 'im a couple of times. (I can just see foaming-at-the-mouth animal-rights activists trying to find out where I'm at so they can whack ME...)

Well, you would take that canine's admonishment, modify it a bit, and enter the Kootenai County Courthouse, and try to find ANYONE (well, not a judge, but you know what I mean), and say, "Bad Employee...Bad, BAAAAAD employee!" Why? Because it's just come to light that some county employees in the Kootenai County Courthouse have been using taxpayer-purchased computers, to send all kinds of smutty messages to co-workers, during the workday, in which they earn money provided by, you guessed it, the TAXPAYERS. Bad, BAAAAAD Employees!!! WHACK!!!

If you jump on over to www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/hbo, you can read more about what's been going on at our tarnished hall of justice. And, it seems the higher-profile the position, the more likely the employee is going to offend. This thing involves D.A.'s, prosecutors and other courthouse employees, and falls just short of almost being approved by one of the head cheeses, who has viewed all of the clamor surrounding this misuse of computers as a "distraction", something that's getting in the way of everyday business. Well, DUH, you BET it is!

So all kinds of new-fangled computer policies are going to be initiated. It's inevitable. No, they're not going to rig up a system that gives you a violent electric shock every time you type a dirty word...and if you call up an off-color picture and send it to someone, you're not going to get hit in the face with a custard pie by the Computer Nazi looking over your shoulder...those kinds of things, after all, would be too expensive. We wouldn't want to waste taxpayer dollars, after all...

But I have it on good authority, that instead, a preventative measure is being taken. Every courthouse employee who has access to a computer will see the following image after they hit the "on" button...



...I hope it works...but somehow I think this might be a bit too subtle to have any kind of effect...if this message is going to work, the individual reading it needs to have at least a BIT of good ol' common sense. And, tragically, that's a rapidly diminishing entity in ALL levels of government. How do you think George W. Bush got re-elected?
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By the way, there's no truth to the rumor that one of the qualifications for a Kootenai County Courthouse job is that you have a healthy death wish. At least, I don't think so...