Havelock Scoop

Rats!

New Bern’s summer wood bat league is taking a hiatus for the 2008 season, the River Rats announced on their Web site. The team will remain in the Coastal Plain League and may field a team in ‘09, according to the team’s news release.

It’s a sad day for baseball fans in New Bern. Maybe a season without the River Rats will make folks realize what they’re missing — and tell their elected officials to lend a hand by building a public sports complex the Rats can call home.

U.S. senators adopted an amendment to a defense bill today that adds federal penalties for so-called hate crimes, according to a news release from Rep. Walter B. Jones, a Republican representing our District 3.

The amendment to the new fiscal year’s Defense Authorization Act stiffens penalties for certain crimes based on gender, disability and sexual orientation, Jones said in the release, which was faxed to us here at the Havelock News.

Jones criticized the inclusion of an “extraneous measure” into a military bill and said the Senate should place such legislation into freestanding bills. The congressman is an opponent of such legislation and voted against a hate crime bill that passed the House in May, he said in the release.

Jones is spot-on. Prosecuting hate crimes is unconstitutional because it punishes someone for acting on a prejudice — an opinion that he or she is entitled to have and to express, no matter how wrongheaded it may be.

If it’s perfectly legal to express an irrational bias against race, gender or sexual orientation, how can we penalize someone for doing just that?

Andre Gide admonishes me to “Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”

Bertrand Russell chimes in: “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts.”

These zingers were accompanied by links to seedy Web sites and posted as comments to the Havelock Scoop. Because all comments must be approved before they show up, you don’t have the dubious benefit of seeing all the spam I get to wade through.

Most spam comments are purely advertisements, but these stood out from the pack. The sales pitches came with punchy, poignant quotes — pearls of wisdom from porcine spammers. Now I’ve seen everything.

Well, I bet it’s nothing compared with the state I found mine in this afternoon.

It’s that time of year when Tar Heel State journalists enter the state press association’s annual newspaper contest. Here at the HaveNews, Ken and I have spent all day searching the morgue for old editions and clipping our contest entries.

Wish us luck — the contest deadline is Oct. 5. Maybe my office will be clean by then.

Friends in the Havelock business community will occasionally give me some good-natured ribbing about my columns championing students’ expressive rights. In one such recent exchange at a Chamber of Commerce event, a dear woman asked why I’d stick up for the young hoodlums who wear long T-shirts and baggy pants.

The answer is simple: Because they have the right to express themselves. This right applies whether the message is substantive — “President Bush has bungled the Iraq war,” or frivolous — “I’m emulating rap stars and gangsters through my choice of clothing.”

I don’t like sagging pants any more than most old-fashioned folks who criticize the trend. But I’m willing to defend something I dislike, because I understand that the same shortsighted policies that ban drooping drawers could be used to forbid other student expression, like antiwar T-shirts or even those What Would Jesus Do? bracelets.

A federal judge in New Jersey recently ruled that a school can’t censor an anti-dress code button depicting the uniform-clad Hitler Youth. An Arkansas judge is forcing a high school to allow its students to wear black armbands in another dress code protest.

Our nation’s courts have proven school students do have some First Amendment rights — whether you like it or not.

It’s Constitution Day, and a sliver over half the nation’s high schoolers don’t know, the Associated Press reported.

It’s Constitution Day, and the expressive rights guaranteed us in the First Amendment will be silently trampled, since most of us don’t fully understand the basics of free speech, religion, assembly, petition and the press.

It’s Constitution Day, and colleges and universities — including our own Craven Community College — continue to enforce bans on protected expression under the guise of punishing harassment.

Today’s a day to contemplate as much as celebrate.

Proud members of Pirate Nation, River Rats fans and prep football diehards, check out Yeah, we’re on the record, a new blog written by Sun Journal sports editor Randy Jones.

There’s sure to be plenty about the Havelock Rams and their Coastal 8 Conference rivals, so follow that link and tell Randy what you’d like to see in the SJ’s sports pages.

When I wrote about the idiocy of the Craven County Schools ban on baggy pants in a recent column, I wasn’t suggesting I liked seeing teens’ drooping drawers.

To the contrary, I find the trend unquestionably dopey and hope kids everywhere learn to pull up their pants. But school administrators shouldn’t be the arbiters of fashion. Sharing my opinion is St. Petersburg Times columnist Bill Maxwell, who explains how the baggy pants now worn in defiant pride originated in subjugation and shame.

“People who study such trends offer two main versions of how this subculture originated,” Maxwell wrote. “One states that during American slavery, some white masters would rape their African male slaves, and after the criminal deeds were consummated, the victims were forced to wear their pants sagging so that their masters could identify them for future pleasures.”

As a fashion statement, baggy pants are an uninteligible non-sequitir. But I can’t make the quantum leap from disliking something to believing it should be banned.

It’s hard for me to see how any free person can advocate such a heavy-handed solution to a denim dilemma.

Two supermarkets. A half-dozen or so fast-food joints. And two — as in plural, multiple, more than one — independent pro wrestling groups.

It’s rare that a city of Havelock’s size would have such an array of sports entertainment. A Community page story in Wednesday’s paper highlights the ICWF and Crash Wrestling, the indie circuit and promotions group, respectively, that are bringing leg drops and powerbombs to the Gateway City.

Crash has a show at 9 p.m. Friday at 238-A U.S. 70 West, and the ICWF is bringing its Labor Day Lashing to the Havelock Recreation Center at 7 p.m. Saturday. Check our coverage for ticket information.

Seen through my windshield earlier this afternoon:

Either someone’s flatulent and proud of it, or it’s a vehicular reference that escapes me. Any ideas?