Service to our nation
You don't understand how many of our servicemen come home to see an newborn baby for the first time. You don't understand how many servicemen and servicewomen fly home from overseas to bury a loved one, then fly back overseas to continue their duties to this country. You don't understand how much a president saying something like "what was it in for them" stings us.
Your friends, your loved ones, may not know of the sacrifice. Those of us who are serving, and those of us who have served, know of our sacrifices to this country. Our service was our cross to bear. We did and are doing our duty. Our duty comes with our patriotism to this American idea of a people governing themselves.
What was in it for us? Pride.
STEVE FOSTER
Greenland
Geriatrics in charge
I am a funny person. Always have been. Let me aim my humor at politics. Joe Biden spends an inordinate amount of time trying to prove that he is much younger than his actual age.
Word has it that this year will be much different when he accepts his party's nomination. This time he won't be able to sprint out on stage to show everyone what a youthful body he has. I'm told that he will be driving a hopped-up motorized wheelchair. When he is introduced, he plans on laying rubber as he storms out on the stage, popping wheelies with two Playboy bunnies in the side car.
At this point he takes off his Hell's Angels jacket, approaches the podium and says, "Let's see old man Trump match that. I'm still as vigorous as I've ever been. Crazy Donny says I'm too old to be president. Isn't that kind of like Charlie Manson telling Jeffrey Dahmer to stop murdering people because he's giving serial killers a bad reputation?"
Whichever is elected, it will be the first time a head of state will carry around with him a box of Depends, a spare set of dentures and some Carter's Little Liver Pills. Some of his aides say Donald Trump asks himself questions and answers them in the same breath.
Trump calls Biden Geriatric Joe. Biden has nicknamed Trump Demented Donald. Here's the question that every voter should be asking themselves: Which is better, a president clanging his tin cup on the bars of his cell while yelling, "When are we going to get some chow around here?" or the commander in chief pleading, "When are you guys gonna let me out of this nursing home?"
GARY USELTON
Benton
Speech is embattled
Free speech is a critical reason why the U.S. is the greatest country on Earth, but it has had a rough few years. First, the government strong-armed and threatened social media to censor "misinformation" about covid vaccines. (This censorship is now under U.S. Supreme Court review.) Next our state's governor banned racial or gender-based "indoctrination" in our schools. Now, Congress is considering an outright ban on "TikTok" (which has over 100 million American users) due to its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.
In none of these cases did the government prove actual or forecasted harm from the banned speech. In all of these cases, more speech, not less, would be the American solution.
RICK MASSEY
Little Rock
No sympathy for him
Donald J.'s attorneys stated: "Defendants' ongoing diligent efforts have proven that a bond in the judgment's full amount is 'a practical impossibility,'" according to NBC News, even after approaching about 30 surety companies through four separate brokers.
Wow. A supposed billionaire cannot get a bond.
First: Donald J. is a pre-eminent, consistent, 24/7 snake-oil-selling liar. Second, who cares?
Why is there not more concern and news attention given to those who cannot make bail and, thus, remain incarcerated, even though they are "innocent until proven guilty." More than 400,000 people in the U.S. are currently being detained pretrial. Or those who are forced to return to jail because they are unable to make the onerous parole payments, such as fees for general supervision, electronic monitoring, costs incidental to residence in community center or halfway house, house arrest program, day reporting center fee, mandatory drug or alcohol testing, costs of lab tests or series, an alcohol abuse deterrent fee and a medical fee set by the court, administrative fee of $100 for felonies and $50 for misdemeanors separate and apart from supervision fees, etc.
The Council of State Governments found that 45 percent of all U.S. state prison admissions stemmed from probation and parole violations. These figures do not include people locked up for supervision violations in jails, for which there is little nationwide data. Black and brown people are both disproportionately subjected to supervision and incarcerated for violations, according to Human Rights Watch.
So send Donald J. to jail if he cannot make the bond. And for those who assert that debtors' prisons are a thing of the past, they are not for BIPOCs and the poor. Yes Magazine reports: "The people most likely to languish behind bars are Black, Latino, Native American, and poor. It's a legacy rooted in Jim Crow-era policies that continues in the thinly veiled racism of the war on drugs, as lawyer Michelle Alexander points out in her book 'The New Jim Crow.'" Note: Ms. Alexander's book is an enlightening and upsetting read.
MIKE KARCIS
Fayetteville
Steinbuch's health
I'm worried because I didn't have to use a dictionary while reading the last two columns by Professor Robert Steinbuch. I do hope his health is robust and his spirit yet flies high.
MIKE COOGAN
Little Rock