LETTERS

— Execution is indefensible

Society must protect itself from the actions of criminals. How is that protection achieved? Constitutionally, the people of the United States have given themselves the right not simply to prevent future bad acts, but to commit, as is stamped on the death certificate of each inmate executed in Texas, homicide.

Doing less than the minimum necessary to prevent the convicted from repeating criminal acts invites recidivism. Doing more is exacting revenge. Should the thirst for revenge be our guiding principle in assigning punishment? If so, what elevates our collective will above vigilantism or even the acts of the criminal?

As a society we must seek moral high ground whenever we contemplate revoking a citizen’s constitutional liberties. If we have the means to rehabilitate, why punish? If we lack the ability to rehabilitate, we may morally retreat to protecting society from future criminal acts through incarceration.

Capital punishment, because it provides no protection beyond that of life imprisonment, is simply revenge and an irrevocable tragedy if applied in error. On moral grounds it cannot be justified.

Fear of punishment may prevent some crimes, but is it moral to kill one person in an effort to prevent bad acts by others? Executions, even after legal due process, are homicide and by definition premeditated. Premeditated homicide is murder. Until capital punishment is no more, we will all have blood on our hands.

DENNIS BRADDY Little Rock

Watch out for snakes

Recently my little dog was bitten by a copperhead snake. It was mid evening when I took her for a walk along our street around Lake Windsor. There, along thick brush and trees on a vacant lot, she stopped beside the road in the grass.

She jumped and it was just light enough outside for me to see the snake coiled in the grass. She crawled to the concrete and couldn’t walk. I picked her up and hurried her into the house and called the emergency vet hospital in Springdale. I then rushed her there while she lay in the back seat of my car crying.

The veterinarian said copperhead bites are excruciatingly painful and of course poisonous, and if I hadn’t gotten her there quickly she would have died. She spent overnight there and they saved her life. (They are only open during the night.) She had to spend two more days at her regular vet hospital and a week on antibiotics. The veterinarian said that copperheads and rattlesnakes are prevalent in Northwest Arkansas.

I just wanted to warn residents that though we are aware that there are snakes around, we must be more watchful of them as they could be anywhere and just a few seconds away from attacking our animals, or worse yet, a child. Be alert and warn your children. Keep your eyes open and your pets and children safe.

BETTY SEWARD Bella Vista

Comment confusing

Re the state Health Department’s refusal to provide details of heat related death “because of privacy laws”: Each and every day we read about highway accidents that have claimed lives on our state’s roadways. The details of the auto collisions or motorcycle mishaps are given, along with, usually, the victims’ names, ages and cities of residence.

Someone is shot to death, raped and beaten to death, drowned, stabbed, poisoned or falls off a building, and his name, age and city of residence are given in the news account of the incident.

How is it, then, that heat-related death victims cannot be identified, or the location where that occurred, because of privacy laws? Say what?

LINDA DIXON Arkadelphia

Legislation necessary

Right now over 100 million Americans are at risk of severe injury or death in the event of an accident or terrorist attack happening at a highrisk chemical facility in their community. In Arkansas, we have 64 of these high-risk chemical plants, each endangering the lives of 10,000 people or more.

The problem with many of these facilities is that they’re using and storing very large amounts of lethal poisonous gas such as chlorine gas. If one of these giant storage tanks wereto become ruptured, this gas could flow into our communities and kill thousands. This stuff is so nasty it was actually used as a chemical weapon in World War I.

The good news is that there are some very simple and common-sense changes that plants can make to be much safer. For example, they can use safer available alternatives wherever feasible, and where a cost-effective alternative does not exist, they can use and store smaller amounts of the most dangerous chemicals at a time.

Right now there is a bill in the Senate that would require that these high-risk facilities do exactly this. Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, should work with his colleagues to pass strong chemical disaster prevention legislation and protect vulnerable communities.

SUSAN K. GATELEY Ozark

Regulation is needed

The number of letters that prescribe solutions to the problems of 50-60 years ago never ceases to amaze me. Any day now I’m expecting to read rants from the same letter writers denouncing the territorial ambitions of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

The Gulf of Mexico is on life support today because of ineffective regulation by a federal agency. We only narrowly escaped a total meltdown of the national economy a few years ago, and the cause was similar-inadequate federal regulation of financial markets. Both crises point to the need for government agencies powerful enough to keep business under control. In the absence of a sufficiently powerful regulatory apparatus the public at large is defenseless in the face of unchecked greed.

But what do we read in letters to the Democrat-Gazette? That government is our enemy and “socialism” the biggest danger that society faces. The very opposite is true.

Do these correspondents even believe their own propaganda? If they want an entirely unregulated economy, I could recommend some Third World countries to which they could emigrate and presumably live supremely happy. Citizenship in those countries confers few rights, whereas wealth can buy unlimited privilege there. A U.S. government that addressed dangers of the mid-20th century instead of the threats of the 21st would leave no hope at all for our republic’s survival.

BILL SHEPHERD Little Rock

Laugh due to Lyons

Obamanoid Gene Lyons’ recent pathetic drivel concerning deficits was comically proved false for me in a commentary on the opposite page titled aptly, “Left-wing forgetfulness.” Heehee.

GREGG MEDLOCK Sherwood

Just assert statehood

Why can’t the Palestinians declare statehood without the permission of Israel or the rest of the world? Israel did in 1948. World bodies never recognized states establishing themselves within the borders of another state. However, they turned their heads when Israel did it.

Israel doesn’t want Palestine to become a state. If it was a state, it could establish diplomatic relations with other states and have a standing army and acquire military hardware for defense.

As it stands, Israel can invade Palestine with impunity. All the Palestinians have to defend themselves with is sticks and stones. The Israelis can use their massive military to raze homes and confiscate Palestinian land with little opposition.

The people settling in Palestine are not Jews, they are Europeans. The city of Jerusalem was razed by the Romans circa 72 A.D. That was about 1,076 years until it declared itself a state. If the people in America support them reclaiming Palestine, why would they not agree that my maternal ancestors, the native people of this country, have that same right? They were displaced less than 200 years ago.

The reason that political leaders support Israel is that they welcome a European state in the middle of the Arab world. The Christians support it because they are held hostage to the idea that they will rule with the Jews in the new kingdom.

JAMES BROWN Pine Bluff‘Warming’ is a scam

Paul Greenberg’s recent column, “The latest whitewash,” was spot on. The global warming ruse is just that. The question he didn’t answer is why supposedly reputable scientists would participate in such a scam. Answer: for the same reason that Bernie Madoff built his elaborate Ponzi scheme-money.

Every three or four decades, scientific laboratories, universities et al.must come up with a scare tactic to attract funds from corporate foundations and the U.S. government. In 1972, it was global freezing. “A new ice age is upon us,” the men in long, white lab coats screamed. See Time magazine’s cover that year.

That silly prediction didn’t happen because it was built on junk science and an advocacy for grants and tax dollars, just like the current global warming ruse.

Not to worry. Global warming will not devastate planet Earth. Mankind couldn’t destroy the world if we wanted to. It’s not ours to destroy. Read the Bible if you want to know how the world will end. Or you can shudder at the bilge of such acclaimed scientists as Al Gore.

Otherwise, sit tight. The end of all things will come just as written. Meanwhile, we can expect the next pseudo-scientific scare tactic to raise big money in about 10 years, after we’ve grown weary of wasting billions on the current fraud.

BOB L. WARNER Hot Springs Village

Feedback War is dangerous

In about February 1968 in Vietnam during the now infamous Tet Offensive, I spent 12 hours preparing myself for what was likely to be Baker’s Last Stand.

With a handful of men armed with only an M-16 rifle, I was to defend the perimeter. My commander was very little use and the enemy was just three miles away. There is no doubt that I could not have held that position. They did not challenge my position.

Lt. Col. Oliver North and “War Stories” prompted this letter. This is the first time I have written of this experience. I just want the people to know there were wars just as dangerous as the war on terror.

JAMES BAKER Trumann

Fat cats are costly

The reimbursement by state officials and workers at 15 cents per mile just about covers the cost of gas. The taxpayer is stuck with vehicle cost plus maintenance, wear and tear, and depreciation.

These overpaid fat cats cost taxpayers a lot of extra money by driving top-of-the-line SUVs and cars that the average taxpayer would love to be able to drive when there are plenty of nice vehicles that are priced about one half or two-thirds the prices paid for the ones they get to drive.

These folks are not royalty, though they seem to think otherwise.

FRED LUCAS Sherwood

Editorial, Pages 15 on 07/29/2010

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