Whatever compulsion it is that motivates vandals is one of the more perplexing of human traits.

On the roster of crimes, vandalism, because it targets objects rather than people or animals, ranks relatively low.

Yet it is the utter mindlessness of such acts that’s so puzzling.

Annoying, too — especially when the target is a publicly owned park that opened just a few weeks ago.

The Wallowa-Whitman National Forest has a problem with its rules limiting how long campers can stay on the forest.

Two problems, actually.

The first involves the rules themselves.

The second has to do with making sure campers can easily find out what they can and can’t do.

Fortunately, both issues ought to be easy to fix.

We understand that several dozen Republicans were elected last November to the House of Representatives in part because they pledged to pursue fiscal sanity in the Capitol.

We recognize too that those lawmakers don’t want to appear, in the eyes of their constituents, as spineless sellouts less than a year later by voting to increase the nation’s debt ceiling.

Baker County ranchers have a rare chance to prepare for, rather than react to, the listing of an endangered species.

We hope a lot of them take advantage.

The species is the sage grouse. About one-third of Baker County, mostly in the sagebrush-rich eastern and southern sections, is habitat for the chicken-size bird.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided that federal protection for the sage grouse is warranted, but that other species are higher priorities.

There’s a whole lot of hands reaching for a share of federal dollars these days.

But few can make a more compelling case than the one presented by counties in the West, including Baker County.

Here’s why: In dozens of western counties the federal government owns a majority of the land. But the feds don’t pay property taxes on those tens of millions of acres, which deprives the counties, and their public schools, of a significant source of money.

It’s easy to forget the soldiers.

Too easy, for those of us who live, almost without exception, lives of tranquility.

The headlines tell of debt ceiling debates and prospective presidential candidates and mothers acquitted by a jury but convicted by the court of public opinion.

Iraq and Afghanistan can begin to seem more distant, more historical.

Until you read about Spc. Christopher Soderholm, a National Guardsman from Baker City whose story, in the July 13 issue, is like a dash of frigid water splashed on your cheeks.

The Baker School District’s new EAGLE CAP education program has us intrigued, and excited about its potential.

The program’s name is an acronym for Education Alternatives Guiding Lifetime Engagements through Career and Planning.

The concept — that for some high school students college is not the ideal goal — is hardly revolutionary.

But the program that EAGLE CAP principal Barry Nemec described in an interview with Herald reporter Chris Collins sounds to us like a more promising one than the “alternative” schools the district has operated in the past.

The Oregon Legislature took a meaningful step last month to try to ensure elderly and disabled residents can stay in the homes they own.

But a couple of the details in House Bill 2543, combined with a short timeframe for homeowners to re-apply for a property tax deferral program (the deadline is July 25), could end up harming some of the Oregonians the legislation is intended to help.

First, though, the good parts.

HB 2543, which the Oregon Senate passed by a 29-1 margin and the House by a 56-4 vote, makes needed changes to the state’s Senior and Disabled Property Tax Deferral program.

We support the rights of Native Americans to hunt wildlife in parts of Northeastern Oregon where their ancestors hunted for millennia.

But those rights have limits — geographical boundaries foremost among them.

Tribal members who ignore those boundaries should be punished just as non-tribal hunters are who stray outside the area where they’re permitted to hunt.

We were pleased, then, when Judge Greg Baxter ruled last week that James Bronson Jr. is guilty of poaching two bighorn sheep rams in eastern Baker County a few years ago.

We like that more local teenagers are willing to get outside and run around.

But we don’t want them hightailing it through somebody’s backyard.

That might be healthy in a cardiovascular sense.

Unfortunately it’s also trespassing.