Gov. Kristi Noem has called the ruling against her in federal court on fireworks at Mount Rushmore National Memorial "arbitrary and unlawful."
I'm no legal expert, but as near as I can tell it is neither. It appears to be rational and lawful.
In a news release, Noem also called her loss in the effort to hold another fireworks display at the memorial a case of the "Biden administration caving in to the radical elements of the modern Democratic Party.”
Don’t you just love it when people accuse old Uncle Joe of dancing to the tune of the radicals? I wonder what actual radical leftists think about that? They must chuckle.
But Biden didn’t rule in the federal case. Chief U.S. District Judge Roberto Lange did. Lange knows something about the law, and how it is applied. He does quite a bit of that work, you know, and from everything I hear and read, he does it pretty well.
The court's decision was not about politics. It was about the law. Pretty simple.
The Biden administration’s decision included an element of politics. It’s hard for a president to escape that. But mostly Biden’s decision was something more and a lot better than politics. It was the simple return of authority to make decisions on what's best in national parks to the people who know them best and are assigned the job -- in many cases for their entire careers -- of managing them and caring for them.
I like it when experts get to decide, instead of politicians.
National Park Service managers made the decision against fireworks at the memorial more than a decade ago. Remember, as if anybody but Donald Trump would need a reminder, that while the sculpture itself is shaped out of granite, the surrounding national forest is — gasp — made of trees. Ponderosa pine trees, mostly, which are often dangerously dry in July. So shooting a bunch of fireworks over and, eventually, back down into that forest is, when you stop to think about it, something bordering on lunacy.
As if the memorial weren’t spectacular enough on its own, especially when lit up safely, with lights, on a warm July night.
The decision against fireworks was based on a lot more than wildfire concerns, however. It included well-established environmental concerns and general safety and public-access concerns since the fireworks show actually limits attendance for the day. Then there are the issues with ongoing construction around the memorial and the very strong tribal concerns.
Last year it should have included health concerns, too, since we were working our way toward an awful autumn explosion of COVID cases that weren’t helped any by the summer tourist season, particularly the Sturgis rally.
The COVID situation has improved. The other reasons not to have the fireworks display remain.
So, Biden made a sound decision, which was to respect pre-Trump National Park Service policies and decisions based on science, safety and NPS management expertise and experience. Donald Trump's decision — and Noem’s decision, too, in a way — last year to force the NPS personnel to do something they didn't want to do and allow fireworks was the political decision in this matter, and a very bad one at that.
Noem and her image makers can send out all the hyperbolic news releases they want, throwing in "radical left" and "kneeling for the national anthem" (a legitimate form of protest, by the way, and to a Catholic like me a pretty respectful one) and "tearing down statues of American heroes" and "trying to cancel the great men of the mountain.”
It doesn’t make last year’s decision any better, or this year’s any less valid.
The claptrap in that news release goes beyond bad writing and bad public communication. It's simply nutty talk, all to further inspire a Trumpish Republican base, further elevate Noem's already soaring persona with the gone-around-the-bend majority portion -- I'll leave it to you to decide what percentage that majority really is -- of the deeply troubled Republican Party.
Beyond the politically driven balderdash, the simple, reassuring, apolitical reality is that National Parks Service pros are now being allowed to do their jobs, once again.
Wow, talk about radical stuff.
