LETTERS

LITTLE ROCK — Emphasize quality over color

Letter writer Anika Whitfield wants unity and a stop to the name-calling. OK, how about the "Group of Four"? If the use of the word "gang" offends her, there are other options, such as group. However, unity, as she suggests, is not going to be accomplished with the current majority in power.

Deborah Springer-Suttlar, to paraphrase her letter, says the black community supported Mike Daugherty because he is their own. Never mind qualifications, or lack of; put him back on the Little Rock School Board because he is black. Good plan. Really going to get results with this idea.

With ideas like that, no wonder the Little Rock schools will continue to slide. Whitfield wants unity. Hard to accomplish with the ideas of Springer-Suttlar flying around. Voting a candidate in because of color instead of credentials is ludicrous. Will Barack Obama garner the black vote? Hillary Clinton the female vote? Just because? Credentials, not color, matter to most voters.

Whitfield should develop some thicker skin. "Gang" is not offensive. Springer-Suttlar should rethink her ideas. Advocating color over qualifications is very shortsighted thinking and planning. Unity comes from the majority accepting an idea. With Springer-Suttlar's idea of what is best for the LRSD's District 2, I am afraid that Whitfield's idea of unity will never be achieved. There are more problems and dilemmas to come to the school district. Bet on it.

DAVE CORNWELL Maumelle

Real needs not priority

The recent news story, "7 diseases cost state billions, study says," was interesting and challenging.

I have a photo of high school girls in a marching band during World War II. Every one is a perfect size 10. During WWII, families ate fresh vegetables from our "victory" gardens. There were no, or few, pesticides. Little red paper tokens were used to buy meat, a once- or twicea-week supper ingredient. Pizza had not yet crossed the ocean. The French were still sitting on their fries. Super burritos had not made much of a dent, either.

Spending billions to treat diet-caused or diet-complicated diseases is not a good use of money. We could have a cancer research center on every corner in Little Rock for the money that has been donated to find cures. Also, spending more billions to get answers that in many cases we already know is even more foolish.

In much of Europe, doctors are allowed to let their patients decide whether to use chemical or herbal, drastic or dietary, means to treat their diseases. My favorite line in the news story, though, is this [paraphrase of a comment by Dr. Joe Thompson, Arkansas' surgeon general]: "The state should invest in managing and avoiding chronic diseases to keep its competitive edge."

Somehow we knew it had more to do with maintaining capitalism than with serving the true health needs of our "democracy."

J.L. COLVIN Mena

Lottery a tax on poor

I have no connection to any organization opposed to the lottery. However, I believe that a state lottery is a direct taxon the poor.

If Lt. Gov. Bill Halter would go to a neighboring state that has one, he would not find any of the country club set lined up to buy tickets. A large percentage ofsales are to people who can ill afford it.

If we get a lottery, it will probably pay back no more than 50-60 percent, and a person fortunate enough to win a substantial amount will be taxed around 40 percent by the state and federal governments. Politicians like Halter make payday lenders look like model citizens.

DALE JONES Hot Springs Village

Children will pay price

I would like to congratulate all the forward-thinking liberals who advocate safe sexual practices. Job well done. They have convinced one middle school in Maine that it should be able to give birth control to sixth- through eighth-graders without the knowledge of their nosy parents.

As a mother, it really gives me peace of mind that an 11-year-old girl has accessto contraception. Now she may live the rest of her life with severely scarred selfesteem because she will most likely fall into a pattern of promiscuity, and she will be a lot more likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases. But without sexual freedom, what freedoms are we allowed?

I suppose we have the freedom to live, vote, make free speech. But shouldn't children be given sexual freedom? Let's try viewing this situation as progress instead of social degradation. After all, there are some very educated liberals trying to convince us that it is futile to try to teach children chastity.

Is it not silly to think that we can teach our children any kind of morality? We should just give up on parenting altogether. We should create communes for children and leave them to their own devices, without any parental supervision. I'm sure they would do very well. For about five minutes.

It really is sad to see society come to this degraded state. Progress has become synonymous with moral bankruptcy, and our children will have to suffer for it.

JENNIFER BULMANSKI Little Rock

People rule, not clergy

Mike Huckabee a threat to democracy? If he is elected president through his efforts to rally Christian conservatives to his cause, we will be dangerously close to having a theocracy. Theocracy has always favored the one religious group in power at the expense of all others.

Rule that leads to theocracy is not compatible with democracy. Imagine control of our government by members of the priesthood and lay preachers who will in effect be interpreting our laws. Democracy means rule by the people. Theocracy means rule by God dispensed by clergy, who attempt to force their concept of morality on non-believers. Politics and religion must not be mixed.

Examples are the theocracies in the Middle East that the president is trying so hard to convert to democracy. All nonbelievers and those of all other religions are treated less than civilly in their countries. The same abuses occurred in the early Christian countries controlled by Christian religious leaders.

The only way to stop the problems in the Middle East is to remove the mullahs who brainwash youngsters early on to believe that if they kill those of other beliefs, they will go to Heaven and be in a special place at the right hand of God.

Citizens, don't support this ignorant effort to control morals by laws. Like Prohibition, the efforts always fail. Morals can taught by parents, churches and educational systems. I pray you make wise choices.

ALBERT H. DAVIS Little Rock

Votes could be altered

I wrote to the state Board of Election commissioners to express my belief that there are far too many ways to rig an election when computerized voting machines are used.

Secretary of State Charlie Daniels replied, explaining that states are required by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 to use electronic voting machines. He indicated that state law requires voting machines purchased after Jan. 1, 2006, to include a voter-verified paper audit trail and that the audit trail is not compared to the votes recorded in the machines' internal hard drive as a matter of routine.

I am concerned that the screen and audit tape could show a vote for one candidate while the vote stored in the machine's memory device could be for a different candidate. This could be due either to a program defect or an intentionally rigged program. Also, data stored in any computerized device can be altered.

We should urge the state board to require two procedures to detect rigged machines: Audit at least one voting machine at each voting location and audit any machine that has a statistically significant higher percentage vote for a candidate than the median percentage of the other machines at that location.

COY SCOTT Little Rock

Protection is paramount

Most of the politicians running for president base their abortion choice on which will get them the most votes, but the truth of the matter is that life is the division of human cells, a process that begins at conception.

The Supreme Court abortion ruling was unjust. The life of the unborn should be protected at all costs. Human life, even at its earliest stage, which must be recognized, [has] the right to be born, the right to love and the right to grow old.

Abortion is not the answer to our society's problems. What happens to the mind and the moral fabric of a nation that accepts the abortion of a life without a pang of conscience? When history looks back to this era it should recognizethis generation as one that cared about human life and fulfilling its responsibility to its children from the moment of conception.

BILL AUSTIN Hardy

Hope races across land

Re this year's Race for the Cure in Little Rock: They bent over. They pulled. They stretched. Then it happened. The cannon fired and the doves flew skyward.

The sight I saw next was greater than any painting: a throng of humanity 45,000 strong headed literally and figuratively in one direction. It was a human tsunami of hope, breathtaking in both presence and purpose. The wide ribbon of these selfless souls spread from one city to another. The ribbon moved with an order that would make any military general proud.

This army seemed to move with a singleness of purpose. They were walking for others, and they were armed, indeed-armed with sneakers, T-shirts, hope and a spirit of giving.

Take on this army at your own risk and to your own peril. This army will no doubt move from victory to victory. By the way, they seem to have a secret weapon. God is on their side.

BRADLEY J. BOLTON Benton

Damage has been done

Counterfeit Christians led by John Hagee are on the march with a mission to bomb Iran, thus bringing salvation for Israel and preparing for the messiah. Onward Christian soldiers as they lobby Washington to do a pre-emptive strike against Iran.

Meanwhile, other right-wing, bloodthirsty, evangelical radicals have, via their commander-in-chief, created the most evil guerrilla army imaginable. This 180,000-member army, referred to as contractors, is a stumbling block and a detriment to our troops, and they area ccountable to no one except the radical right's counterfeit Christians.

Sleep on, America. Many were duped by these deceivers into attacking Iraq. It will cost true Christianity centuries to overcome the damage they have done to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and his command to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations.

JIM GLOVER Heber Springs

Ignorance plainly seen

It's amusing to listen to atheists' diarrhea of the mouth when truth about their false religion is exposed. They whine and desperately try to defend the indefensible.

Letter writer Jeff Hunter apparently studied comics and skipped history. His ignorance of the eugenics movement and the role it played in the Holocaust is plainly seen. Adolf Hitler's views were based on core Darwinian principles, widely echoed by leading Darwinists of the time, who said racial annihilation was a natural and beneficial part of the evolutionary process. Pre-Hitler Darwinian biologists believed that Darwinism overturned the sacredness of human life. They voiced Hitler's views on racial extermination. Thus whatever improves the race by favoring the strong and eliminating the weak was ultimately embraced by the Nazis.

The unchangeable truth is that Hitler and Josef Stalin were atheists with no fear of God who assumed that they were more evolved than the millions they killed. They assumed that by preventing these inferior people from reproducing, they'd speed up evolution. Evolution has been the pseudoscientific foundation of every "ism" to come down the pike. Hitler was turned aside by the evolutionary platitudes of atheist Friedrich Nietzsche. Stalin murdered more people than Hitler. When asked what should be done with the more than 15,000 Polish officers who had been captured, he said that they were just Poles, they haven't evolved as far as his people had, so shoot them. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was a eugenic devotee of Hitler also.

JULIA SLOCUM Edgemont

Feedback

Release older records

Letter writer Stuart D. Soffer of White Hall wants Hillary Clinton's papers released to the public. I think Hillary should wait her turn.

Let's begin by releasing the Reagan presidential documents that were to become public on Jan. 21, 2001. Then we'll move on to George H.W. Bush's records. It can begin as soon as George W. Bush rescinds his executive order of January 2001 restricting release of presidential records by giving sitting presidents the power to delay the release indefinitely.

Records from earlier administrations will give us a better understanding of the current and former presidents' goals and achievements. So many of my Republican friends tell me that I just don't understand Bush, but if he would release these records, as the law provides, I think we'd all understand him a lot better.

JILL COMBS Mena

Allin was one of best

My condolences go out to the family of Richard Allin. Allin and the late John Robert Starr were two of the best columnists to ever write for a daily newspaper. Please consider running a series of Allin's columns. I can think of no greater tribute to this exceptional newspaperman.

CHARLES BAKER Alma