KINDER'S COMMENTARY: WINTER LAYS DOWN ITS BLEAK BEAUTY ACROSS STATE'S ROLLING HILLS

I am not one who often complains about the winter weather. I love snow, usually the more the better. One of my earliest and fondest memories is of a snow party, complete with ice skating, sled riding and bonfires held on a friend's farm in northern Scott County when I must have been in kindergarten.

Ice, though, is something else again -- no easier for me than for anyone else, four-wheel drive or none. But it is easy to forget the blessing that this offers as well. Traveling to Jefferson City for this week's start of the legislative session, I was stunned by the bleak beauty winter had laid down across the rolling hills of Missouri.

St. Louis had seven inches of snow, as did Jefferson City, and with temperatures well below freezing it wasn't going anywhere. Nothing was more remarkable, though, than the ice, in the stunningly beautiful tableaus it made coating every tree between here and Ste. Genevieve.

Winter weather can complicate your life but it, too, is one of God's great blessings.

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Nixon watch: Attorney General Jay Nixon was certainly fully within his rights in the Thursday announcement of his decision to oppose the proposed merger of Cape Girardeau's two hospitals. Whether you agree or disagree with him isn't the point for discussion here.

What is worth noting is that Nixon didn't notify key responsible officials in the community until shortly before his five-minute press conference. Not the administrators of the two hospitals, represented by counsel in Chicago, which counsel evidently did receive a telephone call only minutes before the 1 p.m. press conference. Not the mayor. Not the county commissioners. And most certainly not the elected representatives of the people in the General Assembly. All recognize the importance of this decision to our community.

Such a classy gesture, not here extended, would certainly have seemed the thing to do and would have been appreciated. Courtesies of this nature are routinely extended where momentous issues are at stake, regardless of party affiliation. Then again, considering Nixon's track record, could anything else have been expected?

The two hospital administrators, in fact, weren't even notified of the fact that a press conference would be held at all and were able to attend only by having learned of it by means of a midmorning call from the news media. The latter received a fax notice of the press conference Thursday morning.

Again, regardless of what you think of the decision, it came amid unfinished, ongoing discussions between the attorney general's office and interested parties of what the latter regards as crucial matters. In characteristic Nixon fashion it came very much "out of left field," according to one key participant not given the courtesy of any notice of the press conference.

Against an unknown, woefully under-financed opponent in 1996, Nixon carried every one of Missouri 114 counties. Two months ago, on a good night for his party, Nixon lost well over 100 counties in his unsuccessful Senate race.

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The standard back in 1974: Quaint-sounding words from longtime Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes, then a member of the House of Representatives, during the Nixon impeachment hearings:

"Underlying all the constitutional relationships we talk about is the necessity for standards of honesty, truth and integrity. Our system of free government can't operate if those standards aren't honored."

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.