What they're saying…

Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Missouri newspapers:

Jan.8

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, on lawmakers' top priorities:

Word from Jefferson City suggests that when the Missouri Legislature convenes its 2008 session, the top priorities will be property tax changes, Medicaid funding and bills tightening laws against sexual predators.

So there probably won't be time for any goofy stuff, right?

Wrong.

The calendar wars. On Dec. 1 in The Year of Our Lord 2007, Missouri state Sen. John Loudon, R-Chesterfield, pre-filed two pieces of legislation to make darn sure that no governmental body in the state of Missouri ever uses dates containing the abbreviations ''C.E.'' or ''B.C.E.'' ...

Apparently, to the extent there is a war on Christmas, there is also a war on the calendar. Some religious conservatives think the practice in academic circles of using ''C.E.,'' for ''common era,'' and ''B.C.E.,'' for ''before the common era,'' is a secularist plot to remove Jesus from the calendar. ...

We would suggest that the Legislature has many more important things to worry about, which might or might not include the aforementioned ...

War on Christmas. Rep. Mike Cunningham, R-Rogersville, has pre-filed House Bill 1351, which requires state agencies, schools and political subdivisions to refer to all holidays by their traditional names.

Thus, the state no longer would observe the ''holiday season,'' but rather the ''Christmas-Hannukah-Kwanzaa season,'' or ''Presidents' Day'' instead of Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays.

Lincoln, by the way, was born in A.D. or C.E. 1809. Amazingly, he never got into this issue. Or this one:

Official state dessert. At the behest of a group of home school kids, Loudon also plans to introduce a bill naming the ice cream cone Missouri's State Dessert.

Official state mushroom. Too busy watching your carbs to get behind the ice cream cone bill? Then House Bill 1416 is for you. It was pre-filed by Rep. Bob Nance, R-Excelsior Springs, and names the morel as Missouri's official state mushroom.

If you must have a state mushroom, morels are the obvious choice. As the Missouri Department of Conservation says, ''If paradise has a season, it must be perpetual April. Heaven knows, Missouri's outdoors are never more paradisiacal than when there are turkeys strutting in the woods, crappie biting in the lakes and fungus underfoot.''

Nothing says ''paradisiacal'' like roasted wild turkey, fresh-caught crappie with a side of morels, followed by an ice cream cone. No matter the date.

Jan. 6

Springfield News-Leader, on ethanol:

There are elements of Gov. Matt Blunt's new proposal to continue heaping tax incentives on the deck of cards that is the ethanol industry that we actually like.

Rather than simply benefiting the corn industry that has been pushing for the incentives for years, Blunt is offering help for the gas stations that have now been forced to sell ethanol.

That's a reasonable political payoff that will benefit some small businesses.

Those businesses were forced to change their business model by another government mandate. They deserve a little help.

And the governor is also offering an actual incentive to consumers to buy hybrid vehicles.

Considering all the giveaways he and others at the federal level have heaped upon industry, that's not such a bad decision.

But still, what are we talking about here?

We're talking about government propping up an industry that can't stand on its own.

We're talking about the government continuing to use its power to turn a food product into fuel.

We're talking about government messing with the free market.

And finally, we're talking about the government not telling us the full story about an industry that has controlled Midwest politicians of both parties for far too long. ...

The fact is, by itself, ethanol is a fine product.

But using corn to make it is inefficient, and study after study, many of them produced by conservative groups who otherwise support the governor's agenda, make it clear that our politicians' love affair with ethanol is misguided. ...

So, like we said, we're glad the governor is at least thinking of consumers this time. But Missouri lawmakers should talk to consumers -- and not just corn industry lobbyists -- before they pass more subsidies supporting a fat industry.

Enough is enough.