Alcohol and high school proms are, sadly, linked.

Joseph Malone, who’s the principal at Portland’s Grant High School, doesn’t claim that he has devised a way to sever that link.

But he’d sure like to fray it some.

Malone will require all students to be tested with a Breathalyzer device before they enter Grant High’s prom on May 14.

The Oregon Liquor Control Commission will supply the Breathalyzers and monitor (but not actually administer) the tests.

Students whose breath shows any amount of alcohol won’t be able to attend the prom, since Grant High School has a zero tolerance policy for alcohol.

Policy aside, it’s also against the law for anyone younger than 21 to drink alcohol.

We like Malone’s idea. And, although surveys show most Oregon high students don’t drink alcohol, we also believe it’s an idea officials from all high schools ought to consider.

There’s a curious situation playing out along Brownlee Reservoir and we’re trying — and in the main failing — to make sense of it.

Perhaps this is because the federal government instigated the whole episode.

At issue are 31 privately owned structures, 28 of them on the Oregon side and in Baker County. In most cases the structure owner also owns the land.

Each of those structures, or a portion thereof, encroaches on property that belongs to Idaho Power Co.

By way of brief background, the company, before it built Brownlee Dam in the late 1950s and so created the 58-mile-long reservoir, bought the strip of land that starts at the reservoir’s high water line and extends eight vertical feet up the bank. That means Idaho Power owns the reservoir shore below an elevation of 2,085 feet above sea level (the high water line being 2,077 feet).

With a few exceptions where Idaho Power’s property extends considerably farther above the water, much of the land above the 2,085-foot mark belongs to other private landowners.

Unfortunately, even Idaho Power admits that the 2,085-foot line is not marked on the ground.

Actually I just touched off the dead grass which lay in the irrigation ditch, flat as scythed hay.

This spawned a brief, but satisfyingly intense, blaze.

A little too intense, as it turned out.

I had to sprint to the shed and grab another section of hose when it looked as though the flames were going after one of the fledgling lilacs.

Except the hose, a cheap brand that probably was fashioned from the bald tires pried off some kid’s tricycle, was frozen into its coil like a winter-sluggish snake.

And was about as cooperative.

Anyway I saved the lilac.

Let’s say you own a business and you’re looking to hire somebody to keep your books.

Do you care more about applicants’ credit scores, or their arrest record?

We’d wager that most employers would rather know whether their prospective accountant has been convicted of embezzlement than find out that the person sent a mortgage payment late.

Which partially explains why we applaud the Oregon Legislature for passing Senate Bill 1045 during the recent month-long special session.

The bill, which takes effect July 1, prevents most employers from perusing the credit history of job applicants.

The biggest benefit of the bill is that it should get Oregonians off the unemployment rolls sooner.

There are plenty of people in the state now whose credit score has plunged since they joined the list of more than 125,000 Oregonians who have lost their job during the recession.

Not another Baker City Council recall.

Please.

We don’t need it.

A recall is far more likely to hurt this city than to help it.

We hope, then, that former Councilor Dick Haynes, who is running ads in this newspaper seeking help with a campaign to recall Councilor Milo Pope, gets so few responses that he decides not to take the next steps of filing a recall petition and gathering the approximately 605 signatures needed to force a recall election.

Haynes is upset because Pope has expressed several times over the past nine months his belief that four of his colleagues botched things when they voted, on June 9, 2009, to fire City Manager Steve Brocato.

We understand Haynes’ complaint.

We, too, find Pope’s predilection for criticizing his fellow councilors over Brocato’s firing occasionally tiresome.

A majority of city voters, after all, made it clear last fall that they don’t share Pope’s dissatisfaction.