Thumbs up

To the NCAA, to Minnesota and to St. Peter for key roles in bringing high-profile women’s winter sporting events close to home.

Division I and Division III women’s hockey Frozen Fours will be played in this northern state this weekend, and for good measure a Division I women’s basketball sub-regional also will be played in Minnesota. The University of Minnesota hosts basketball and the D-I women’s hockey tournament starting Sunday. We’re especially pleased that Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter is hosting the D-3 Frozen Four.

Gustavus had less time to prepare than the U of M, as the NCAA announced only last week that the winner of the Wisconsin-River Falls vs. Gusties quarterfinal would host. Why? The governing body wanted to have the finals west of New York State for a change.

Good idea. But should it have been remarkable that the NCAA might hold the finals in Minnesota, the country’s No. 1 hockey hotbed?

Tobacco regulation

Thumbs up

To the Food and Drug Administration using its new authority to outlaw free samples of cigarettes and banning the use of tobacco brand names on promotional gear and in the sponsorship of concerts and sporting events.

The rules come as the FDA exercises new powers granted by Congress to regulate tobacco companies. They are precisely the kind of common-sense rules needed to keep tobacco companies from targeting kids and a good example of why giving the FDA the authority to do so was overdue.

The agency also added a federal ban on the sale of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products to people younger than 18 and banned the sale of cigarettes via vending machines except in locations closed to people under 18. For many states, including Minnesota, those practices are already illegal, but other states have different regulations.

It’s estimated that each day about 4,000 people younger than 18 try smoking for the first time and 1,000 of them become daily smokers. Tobacco companies, faced with declining smoking rates among most adult groups, knows targeting kids is good business for them.

That’s why they produce black cigarette boxes with pink camels on them to entice girls to smoke and why they appreciate unregulated vending machine sales of cigarettes.

Not a bright idea

Thumbs down

To several GOP lawmakers who have launched an effort to let Minnesotans keep buying conventional light bulbs after the federal government bans selling them by 2014.

State Rep. Dean Urdahl and state Rep. Tom Emmer, a Republican candidate for governor, are pushing the legislation here.

This is not a bright idea.

Why would you discourage conserving energy in Minnesota when everyone else is in the country is moving in that direction? If conservation measures lead us away from dependence upon foreign oil, then it’s in the country’s best interests. To protest a plan just because you don’t like government telling you what to do is a waste of time and effort. 

To count, you must complete form

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To those who got their census form this week and filled it out and returned it (or definitely plan to).

No matter your income, gender, age, ethnicity or household situation, there are always skeptics who are suspicious about the government collecting information about them. Protecting their privacy like pit bulls, they think the answers to the census questions are nobody’s business — even though they give up such information for a credit-card application.

The census form answers are protected by law. The government does not identify the providers of the information for 72 years. And after that time, the information would mostly be used for historic and genealogical purposes.

The advantage to providing the information is that you may be helping to secure funding for the area where you live or helping retain congressional representation.

To be counted, you have to fill out the form.