To solve water issues
I have been told on more than one occasion that I may be the village idiot.
Everyone is running around in little circles, pulling their hair out and shouting, "what do I do, what do I do?"
Well, it seems the groundwater hasn't left planet Earth, it has just relocated itself. Icebergs are melting and water on our coasts is rising. Above-normal heat waves in California are causing drought. Farmers are drilling wells a mile deep and continuing to deplete groundwater to a point of our inability to pump it up to the surface.
What if? What if we took the technology we have had for years--you know, the water-desalinization pump--and placed it on the West Coast, then buried a network of PVC pipe to re-supply reservoirs and farm wells?
Is that too stupid, or am I really the village idiot?
It's not like building an oil pipeline from Canada with all the engineering problems. So what if it did leak a little? So what?
Are we willing to sacrifice some of our pork-barrel spending to salvage a major part of America's economy and food producers, or do we just wait, complain and do nothing until it's too late? Maybe I'm just dumb ...
RONALD SMITH
Little Rock
Tragedy and triumph
We recently witnessed a period that will be remembered for a long time in our country. The country watched with horror at the racist killings of nine people in a South Carolina church by a Confederate flag-waving terrorist. Then, at a bond hearing, the most riveting television moment I've seen in many years. The families of the victims, one by one, forgave the killer in open court.
This brought about a much-needed and long-overdue conversation about removing the symbol of oppression and bigotry. Cloaked in the verbiage of states' rights and heritage by its supporters, the flag is long past its sell-by date.
But that's just for starters. Later, the Supreme Court got tuned up and ruled that Obamacare was the law of the land. Having provided the long-overdue expansion of the U.S. safety net to include access to health care, those who were responsible for its passage, chiefly President Barack Obama, deserve high praise for seeing it through to the bitter end.
Then, the Supremes hit the highest note yet, handing down maybe the biggest social-justice decision in a generation by ruling that gay marriage would from now on be legal in the United States. Spontaneous celebrations erupted from coast to coast. I believe it was the right decision made at the right time, regardless of what the fuming foes of the decision think. The hard-right agenda lies now in a smoldering ruin.
To cap it off, President Obama led the mourners in Charleston in a rousing rendition of "Amazing Grace."
President Obama said in 2008 that he wanted to be a consequential president in the mold of a Ronald Reagan, but in the reverse of the direction Reagan took. After what has been, I believe that legacy has been cemented.
RICHARD MOORE
Little Rock
Help, do not hinder
Let's face it; marriage is not a state which should be restricted to those who (are able and willing to) engage in heterosexual activity. To attempt--or to claim the government has the right--to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples for procreation purposes is to interfere with a strong basic human need to belong to family and society.
Further, such arrogance is also evidence of a mindset contradictory to the Golden Rule to "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," and to the Christian command to "Love one another."
Persons whose minds dwell on the supposedly dirty things that other people may or may not do in the privacy of their own homes would surely find their time better spent in searching for ways to truly aid others in our society. I have good and valued friends who have never married and I feel that no one has the right or obligation to question them as to why or why not.
As a country, we need to strengthen the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, especially as related to the freedom of religion, since militant attempts to foist religious tenets on others (see radical Islam, ISIS, jihad, Crusades, Inquisition, etc.) have been and still are at the root of enormous human suffering.
Politicians who cater to narrow-minded discrimination for fundraising and vote-mongering bring us ever closer to such cataclysms.
DENNIS A. BERRY
Bryant
Values they hold dear
I hear and read the rantings of the religious fundamentalists that America was founded on Christian principles and made great on them.
Tell me how Jesus would have felt about the following: 1. The Salem witch trials. 2. Trial by ordeal. 3. Slavery and indentured servitude. 4. Decimation and relocating remaining Native Americans to reservations. 5. Purposely giving smallpox-laden blankets to Native Americans. 6. Practicing eugenics for a time. 7. Depriving women and minorities of the vote in a country they paid taxes to support. 8. Having police dogs in the dear old South chew on the knees of black veterans who fought for liberty. 9. Holding gays and lesbians answerable to the same laws as the rest of us while depriving them of equal rights. 10. Giving them no tax cuts to compensate for the rights they were deprived of. 11. County clerks paid in part by gay folks' taxes refusing to serve them as equals, yet willing to draw full salaries partly paid by those citizens.
The foregoing are just a few things that I believe show the lie about Christian values they're yapping about. Religious, possibly. There is a vast difference between what Christ taught and lived and garden-variety religion. Christ would, I believe, disavow much of what is called by his name and many of those who claim to believe in him.
I find no church weddings in the scripture, nor any priest or preacher officiating at one. And wedding officiants are required by law to be licensed by the government to do it. It is legally a government-regulated service that the church is allowed to do with permission.
What gay couple would want or expect to be married by a bigot anyway?
KARL HANSEN
Hensley
Can understand law
Kudos to columnist John Brummett. While I am not a political supporter of our governor, Mr. Brummett has appropriately commended Mr. Asa Hutchinson for being learned in the law.
Our governor confirmed this observation in his response to the 24 Republicans in the Legislature who want to "protect" people from the recent ruling on same-sex marriage. Apparently those 24 lack either the understanding of, or ability to simply read, the opinion of the court.
SAM HIGHSMITH
Little Rock
Reducing my anxiety
I don't own a Confederate flag, and I am so happy to see such a widespread effort to rid our country of this venomous symbol. Then I can sleep well knowing that I will not be shot by some kook. Yeah. Right?
RUSS BAILEY
Little Rock
Flags aren't the same
Some letter-writers who are up in arms over the Confederate flag should Google the words "Stars and Bars." The Stars and Bars is not the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia is not the Stars and Bars.
One would think that a Confederate apologist who is quick to fire off a letter on the subject of the flag would know the difference between the two.
JOHN WALLACE
Maumelle
Editorial on 07/09/2015