Deserve protection
To Asa Hutchinson and the legislators: Asa, since you are considering calling a special session to pass the hate-crime bill, why not draft a bill which makes it a hate crime to assault police officers and first responders, as Georgia and others have done recently? Since we are spending thousands of taxpayer money for this legislation, why not get both at once?
These are the people who put their lives on the line every day and night to guarantee our safety. Do they not deserve the same protection?
WR CORLEY
Benton
Ready for a whuppin'
In 1775 the Continental Congress established the postal system as a public service for all. It also appointed Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster general.
If he were alive today, I think he would make a beeline to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to beat the occupant into complying with the laws set in the Constitution of the United States of America.
FREDERICK WEED
Sherwood
Cheap political gain
I am sickened and outraged at the way the president debased our uniformed military, our sacred naturalization process and our White House for cheap political gain during this week's RNC convention. Erasing the stark line between governing and politics and normalizing the flouting of laws for personal political gain (with the apparent blessing of members of Congress) cannot be condoned and cannot be allowed to continue.
The future of our nation and our standing in the world is in serious danger. We the people must act to remove this man and his enablers for the sake of the country we have pledged our allegiance to.
NANCY CONLEY
North Little Rock
Need to repair dock
The dock at the Murray Park boat ramp in Little Rock has reached a severe state of deterioration and is unsafe. I think if a private business had a dock in a similar condition that the public used, the local authorities would require that it be repaired, replaced, removed, or closed to the public.
A fair number of boaters use this ramp and dock to access the river, and many people fish from this dock, so I think it should be repaired or replaced. The cost of repairing or replacing the dock at Murray Park would be a tiny fraction of what has been spent over the years to make the downtown riverfront area a great place to visit.
It is time for this dock to be repaired or replaced. I suggest the City of Little Rock Parks Department take the lead and work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to get this done.
JIM RICE
Little Rock
Journalism standards
In Tuesday's editorial "Fits to print," the point may not have been the steady degradation of reporting standards, but that point was surely made nonetheless, and is surely true. That National Enquirer-type journalism has made the jump to "serious" papers like The Washington Post, and "we have been used to this sort of reporting for years."
Juxtapose with this passage from "No Ordinary Time," Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. In this particular passage, longtime Washington correspondent Bob Donovan was asked why FDR's longtime affair with mistress Lucy Mercer was not made public. "Standards were different in those days," Donovan stated. "I'm sure there were some reporters, friends of the White House, who knew about Lucy. But none of them ever thought about exposing the situation. The newspaper business in those days was not so damn serious as it is today, it was a hell of a lot more fun. We didn't think we were angels; we knew all the things we were doing; so to point our hand at someone else wouldn't seem sporting!"
Different standard, indeed. And as for the president's niece's tell-all book and secret recordings of her family members, I will repeat the reprimand my Great-Aunt Blanche of El Dorado, she of the dogtrot house with outdoor privy, would have undoubtedly spoken to her: "Shame on you."
GREG STANFORD
White Hall
Scientific community
A letter to the editor in this week's newspaper, discussing evolution, caught my attention. Mr. Stanley Johnson stated that "Darwinian evolution is a theory, meaning that it has not been proven."
The common use of the word "theory" is that of an idea to account for a situation or justify a course of action. This usage does not apply to scientific theory, a coherent group of propositions formulated to explain a group of facts or phenomena in the natural world and repeatedly confirmed through experiment or observation: the "theory" of evolution.
Information theory, game theory, the theory of general relativity, the theory of special relativity, quantum mechanics--are all scientific "theories," explanations of the natural world that have been substantiated through repeated experiments and testing. Indeed, there is Pythagorean Theorem, which we all learned in high school. None of these are immutable. They may be amended, altered, expanded or contracted as knowledge accrues. But it's disingenuous to apply the common usage of "theory" to its use in the scientific community.
STEVE A. JONES
El Dorado