BishopAccountability.org
	Chaput's Clarifying Action By Vincent Carroll Rocky Mountain News [Colorado] May 26, 2006 http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/ article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_4727266,00.html If a 31-year-old professional quarterback really did what Jake Plummer is accused of doing on a public highway, he's a menace with a screw loose. You know the story of course: After cutting off another driver in traffic (this much Plummer admits), he allegedly sprang out of his car at a stoplight rather than endure the angry honking he'd provoked, kicked the headlight of the vehicle behind him and then, for good measure, backed into it before speeding off. If Plummer has anything going for him besides his denials, it's the fact that most people don't yet associate him with your average street thug. "Image tarnished, whatever, role model, blah, blah, blah, I'm here to play football and win games," Plummer declared in his usual cavalier style at a press conference. Have no fear, Jake. The question no longer is whether you're a role model. It's whether you're a nut. Chaput's clarifying action Whatever comes of Archbishop Charles Chaput's offer this week of independent mediation to settle claims against the church of sexual abuse, it at least is helping to clarify the interests of the plaintiff attorneys. No sooner had Chaput announced his offer than Jeffrey Anderson, a Minnesota lawyer representing a number of litigants, dipped his brush into the ever-handy tar pot. "This action by the archdiocese to make public this initiative is simply an attempt to avoid having to answer questions in open court on what he (Chaput) knows and what he's done to protect known pedophiles," Anderson said. Never mind that all allegations reach back at least 27 years, that one of the two suspected priests left Colorado more than 30 years ago and died before Chaput even landed in Denver, and that the other had already retired. Anderson airily accuses the archbishop of protecting "known pedophiles" as if it were common knowledge that this is what he does. Thankfully, Richard Dana, a former chief district judge and co-founder of the mediation group that would handle the cases, managed to keep his focus on what is important. "The archdiocese has set aside a sum of money that the panel we've been asked to put together can expend largely at its discretion without having to go back to the archdiocese . . . in other words it's largely been vested in my discretion . . . the purpose being, as I understand our charge, to give specific consideration to the needs of each claimant and to try to resolve and to give some assistance to those claimants in the course of the process." Dana's assumption, of course, is that individual victims' needs are what these lawsuits are all about. We shall see. These little piggies get hosed Eric Doub is the first beneficiary of Xcel's Solar Rewards Program, pocketing a $31,000 rebate this week to help pay for solar panels on his Boulder home. Xcel will disburse $20 million annually in such rebates as it attempts to meet the onerous solar energy mandate that voters approved two years ago in Amendment 37. Doub says he's "OK being a guinea pig" for the program, which is very good of him, but the true guinea pigs are those of us without solar panels whose higher bills pay for the generous subsidies. After all, we are the ratepayers who most accurately fit the dictionary definition of guinea pig: "A person who is used as a subject for experimentation or research" - with the accent on "used." Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes On Point several times a week. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.
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