Photographed in Hamilton, Montana by Mary Warren

See more photos on the New West Images photoblog.

• FLICKR Photo Pool
• View Slideshow
• Our FLICKR Group

When second- and third-graders chanted "Assassinate Obama" on a Madison School District bus recently, district spokeswoman Janet Goodliffe explained that most of the children didn't understand what the words mean. According to The Associated Press, she attributed the chant to the community's being "highly conservative" and overwhelmingly for John McCain.

I admire Janet Goodliffe as a preschool education leader. But as a teacher, she offered tortured excuses instead of capitalizing on a great teaching opportunity.

This is not an isolated incident. As a former teacher and Idaho Falls school volunteer, Luella Hendrickson, wrote on this page Thursday, after the election, children in her daughter's elementary class condemned Obama for being a Muslim, not being a U.S. citizen, selling out to the Arabs, taking away our guns, etc.

Anyone with ears to hear know these children were parroting their parents. Children get the drift from home: The new president is radical, dangerous and not to be trusted.

How terribly sad.

In the November 17th Science Section of The New York Times there was an article by Jim Robbins about the current pine beetle event occurring in the West.

There was a lot of good factual information in the piece about pine beetles and their basic ecology, and on the whole, Robbins did a good job of describing some of the concerns that people have about the beetle situation. Nevertheless, the tone and implied message conveyed an overly pessimistic and negative picture of beetles as well as wildfires. It was not so much that it had a lot of false statements as much as the way it was written. Taken together the various quotes, and background in the article leaves one with the perception that somehow beetles, as well as wildfires are “out of control” in the West's ecosystems.