[naviga:h3]Cheer [/naviga:h3]

Cheers to state Sen. Lloyd Smucker. The Republican from Lancaster has introduced legislation with harsher penalties for repeat drunk drivers who cause fatal car crashes.

Under Smucker’s bill, a drunken driver responsible for a deadly crash would be charged with third-degree murder if he or she has had more than two prior DUI offenses in the past 10 years.

The bill also increases penalties for repeat offenders caught driving under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs, from a minimum of 10 days in jail to a sentence of two to seven years. The fine would be increased from the $500 minimum to between $5,000 and $15,000.

It’s heartening that overall traffic accidents and accident-related fatalities have fallen steadily over the past five years. There were 1,165 traffic fatalities statewide in 2014, with 333 deaths alcohol-related. These figures compare with 1,324 traffic deaths in 2010 and 459 of them related to drunken driving crashes.

Much of the decline can be attributed to highway improvements, better construction of vehicles and stepped up law enforcement. However, none of these factors matter when drunk drivers are repeat offenders.

Smucker’s proposal would add a much needed deterrent for the repeat offenders. His bill should be passed overwhelmingly and enforced vigorously.

[naviga:h3]Jeer[/naviga:h3]

We’re all outraged and grieving for a lion named Cecil — an animal none of us knew before a Minnesota dentist paid an outrageous sum for a safari in Zimbabwe, where he fatally shot the big cat.

Sure, that’s disturbing — but not nearly as disturbing as the 2008 murder of Dadirai Chipiro in Zimbabwe.

Chipiro, the wife of an opposition political party leader, had her hand and both feet chopped off before she was burned alive by thugs allied with Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe. Her body was so badly charred that it couldn’t fit in a coffin — her arm was burnt rigid.

Others in Zimbabwe have met the same fate as Chipiro during Mugabe’s 28-year reign. First elected president on a pledge of racial unity in the former colony of Rhodesia, Mugabe instead raised an internal security force that killed an estimated 20,000 people through a campaign of ethnic cleansing. The death campaign was code-named CIBD — short for Coercion, Intimidation, Beating and Displacement. The security detachment was trained by North Korean forces, who know a thing or two about CIBD.

White ranchers were run off their land, which was given to poor blacks who did not know how to farm it. The property redistribution ruined Zimbabwe’s already weak economy.

Atrocity and human suffering are not strangers to the African continent. Hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children have died in Rwanda, Sudan and elsewhere as a result of ethnic genocide, civil wars or politically corrupt regimes.

It’s the continent’s ties to widespread lawlessness that enabled unscrupulous guides to accommodate a trophy hunter with money to spend.

So, yes, go ahead and grieve for Cecil and his senseless death. Trophy hunting is as passe as the Theodore Roosevelt administration. Just don’t neglect to shed a tear for the tens of thousands of Dadirai Chipiros who died first, without outcries of indignation.

[naviga:h3]Cheer [/naviga:h3]

Cheers and mazel tov to Emily Csonka. The 16-year-old daughter of Kim and Jim Csonka of Jefferson Township has been awarded a spot in the distinguished Diller Teen Fellows leadership program. She joins a select group of Jewish 10th- and 11th-graders from the United States, Canada, South Africa and Israel to train as leaders.

Emily will be a junior this fall at Knoch High School, where she is the first cellist in the school orchestra. She is a member of the B’nai Abraham Jewish congregation, 510 N. Main St., Butler.

Each year, teens are selected to spend 15 months enmeshed in the Diller program, building a connection to the Jewish people and Israel and deepening their Jewish identity.

As part of the training, Emily and other American participants will host Israeli teens in April, then will travel to Israel for three weeks in July.

Emily is the first member of B’nai Abraham to receive this honor. The synagogue’s leader, Cantor Michal Gray-Schaffer, who nominated Emily, calls her “a born leader” and “a role model for the rest of our religious school students.”