Montgomery Advertiser on high school athletic participation legislation:

Public schools exist for the students who attend them, not students whose parents choose to educate them at home or in a private or church school, but then want to cherry-pick their participation in athletics or other extracurricular activities at public schools.

There are arguments to be made for each of these educational choices, but parents have to weigh the availability of different academic and extracurricular options in making their decisions.

A bill that narrowly cleared the Senate Education Committee would allow home-schooled students or students in church schools to take part in athletic programs at public schools. This year’s version of Sen. Shadrack McGill’s bill is less ambitious than his earlier bills, which would have allowed participation in other extracurricular activities, such as marching bands.

That aside, McGill’s bill is still fundamentally flawed and is justifiably opposed by the Alabama High School Athletic Association, among others.

One of those others is Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, the Senate minority leader, who quite properly asked “If the public school system is not good enough for your children or home-school children to go to on a full-time basis and have the whole experience, why is it good enough for extracurricular programs?”

If passed — which decidedly should not happen — the bill would become “The Tim Tebow Act.” Football fans will recall that Tebow, the former star quarterback of the Florida Gators and now an NFL player, was home-schooled, but played football at a public high school in Florida. ...

It’s a bad bill that should be sent to the legislative sidelines — permanently.

The Tuscaloosa News on the economic impact of hunting:

Many things aren’t appreciated until they are gone. When people interested in conserving wildlife and their habitat noticed that the number of hunters was declining, it was reason for concern. They understood one important fact, hunters pay the bills for conservation.

That was the thrust of a November 2007 article in National Geographic Magazine. The publication that chronicles the natural world, published “Conserving Hunters,” an article documenting the dwindling number of hunters and the impact that could have on wildlife conservation.

Growing urbanization, declining rural populations and limited access to land were feeding the decline. Without the money generated by hunting license and duck stamp sales and the excise taxes from gun and ammunition sales, where would the money come from to manage wildlife and wildlife habitat?

Who would take the place of hunters as advocates for conservation when hunters are gone? Because they have a vested interest in wildlife conservation ... hunters and their organizations wield political clout on behalf of land and wildlife preservation.

Hunting has a more than $900 million economic impact on Alabama. ... It doesn’t create pollution. Once hunters are gone, about the only thing they leave behind is money. And few people object to that.