With the holidays, most people are not reading blogs and if you are like me, you are spending time with family and playing with new toys.  There have been a few things that caught my attention over the past few days, like Montana’s failure to combat drunk driving, Max Baucus slurring his speech, security, and Texas Tech football. 

More on drunk driving in Montana:

“Memorial service planned for two girls killed by alleged drunken driver”
That story should make you sick. My prayers go out to the families.

Then I read this:   “Billings woman charged with 7th DUI”

The Montana Legislature must do something to tighten up the Driving Under the Influence (DUI) laws in this state. Jail time. Forfeiture of your right to drive and own a vehicle in Montana for life for the third offense.

Max Baucus:

A video surfaced on the web showing Max Baucus slurring his words, repeating, repeating, and repeating phrases on the senate floor when he was debating healthcare. It was not a good showing, which has been the norm for the Senator over the past few months.

Was he under the influence? I don’t know because I was not there, but I do know that Max Baucus is one of the poorest public speakers in the Senate, the House, and frankly, in the whole United States. The short prepared video statements shot out over e-mail by his press team to the local news stations over the years are totally rehearsed. They probably take hours to film just to get two or three coherent sentences.

With the ethics problems that Baucus has faced recently, it just shows that what goes around comes around.

Safety and National Security:

Our country took another hit when the “underwear” bomber almost blew up a plane heading into Detroit.

We should take this incident as chance to improve our security and not use it as an opportunity to score political points.

It’s time to review our security systems. Ensure we have better communications between the agencies, and understand as a country that to travel we may have to face some delays because our safety and security are paramount.

Texas Tech:

First the leaders at Texas Tech University suspended head coach Mike Leach for this Saturday’s Alamo bowl game. Today the fired him. By the way, Leach was due an $800,000 bonus on December 31. Supposedly, he mistreated a player who had a concussion. It was not just any player, but the son of an ESPN analyst (Craig James).

Although ESPN may have tried to be neutral, anytime they had a commentator discuss the incident, I was wondering if they were good friends with their co-worker Craig James. It was poor journalism I believe. They should have just read the story from another source and kept the father and other commentators off the air.

Plus, it must be tough on a father and the son when you were a star in high school and have been riding the bench in college.

Just this last February, Leach and Texas Tech agreed to a five-year, $12.7 million contract. The Texas Tech football program had the highest graduation rate in the Big 12 Conference in 2008. They were eight in the country. Not too bad leadership from the head coach.

Leach won’t be out on the streets. Reportedly, he gets $400,000 per year for the remainder of his contract if he is released. Leach has been with Texas Tech for 10 years and averaged over eight wins per season. I believe he took the school to a bowl game each of those ten years, too, when they had been a doormat before his tenure. Bowl games put buckets of money in the school’s pockets. .

I wonder how the players will react for the game on Saturday? Will they play all out, or will they all get the flu? Some may sit out in protest.

Who knows what really happened, so let the lawsuits begin.

One thing for sure is that as a society we are soft.