OUR VIEWS

ADEM can have fresh start

In his early days, first as head of ADEM predecessor, the Alabama Water Improvement Commission, and then as assistant director and director of ADEM, Warr carried out the wishes of a state political leadership that wanted to do as little as it could get away with to regulate pollution of the state environment.

As time went on, Warr became both a convenient target for those trying to bring reasonable environmental regulation to Alabama and a shield for politicians who didn't want to upset some powerful special interests.

He also became increasingly arrogant in dealing with his supposed bosses, the members of the Environmental Management Commission.

In recent years, Warr often failed to inform commissioners in a timely manner of legal actions affecting ADEM or even of potentially controversial actions the agency had taken on its own. Commissioners would first learn of events affecting their responsibilities from other sources and have to confront Warr to get details they should have known before decisions were announced.

When a majority of the commission was inclined to drag its feet in regulating polluters, Warr could get away with his actions. But in recent years, new commissioners have tried to make ADEM an effective agency. That increased conflicts between Warr and board members.

And, as was almost inevitable, Warr and the ADEM bureaucracy left one too many commissioners out of the loop once too often. Commissioner Riley Boykin Smith of Mobile was not told that ADEM was relaxing environmental standards for constructing replacements for beachfront houses destroyed by Hurricane Ivan.

That created a four-person majority on the seven-member commission for getting rid of Warr, which was done Tuesday.

Warr's obstinance in holding on to power has created uncertainty about who is running ADEM in the short term. That makes more urgent the search for a new permanent director. But the firing still represents an overdue opportunity to give ADEM a fresh start as an agency actually working to make a better Alabama.

Turkey and the E.U.

This does not mean that Turkey is about to join the E.U. It means that the leaders of the 25 member nations, when they meet in December, will be called upon to accept or reject the commission's advice. Although there were dissenting voices when the commission recently assembled, the full E.U. is likely to endorse the commission's findings and extend an invitation to Turkey to begin talks.

This is good news for Turkey, which has wanted to join the E.U. for some years; and it is good news for the United States, which has strongly endorsed Turkey's application. Turkish admission is not, however, a foregone conclusion. The process takes a long time, and even Turkey's supporters say that the country has far to go to meet the E.U.'s standards.

In the past few years, the Turkish government has instituted economic, judicial and penal reforms. Human-rights abuses, especially against the Kurdish minority, are now less common than previously. But that such abuses are even part of the discussion gives an idea of the struggle that Turkey faces.

And that's not all. There are many Europeans who wonder whether Turkey, a Muslim country situated mostly in Asia, belongs in any European organization. If Turkey gains admission to the E.U., it will be the largest member, and its inhabitants will be free to cross the European borders for residency and employment. That is not exactly welcome news in France and Germany, which tend to dominate the E.U. and have ambivalent feelings about Turkish admission.

Still, Turkey is, at least for the moment, a democracy; and while most Turks are Muslim, their government is secular. Turkey's economy, meanwhile, though way behind most of Europe's, is dynamic. And the country has belonged to NATO since the alliance's founding, and has sought in recent years to reverse its ancient rivalry with neighboring Greece (an E.U. member).

In any event, if Turkey is invited to apply to the European Union, the process could take a decade or more, and it could engage the passions of the Europeans — as well as the pride of the Turks. This will be a long, sometimes emotional story.

YOUR VIEWS

We, not victims, are terrorists' target

Why? The Microsoft Encarta definition: "Terrorists mean to frighten and thereby intimidate a wider audience such as an entire country and its political leadership."

Terrorists, not having the forces and weaponry to defeat our nation using conventional warfare necessarily have to resort to psychological warfare or "terrorism" to defeat us. There's no question they possess the skill and ability to defeat us through terrorism. Terrorist acts, creating fear and terror in the Spanish citizenry, recently brought down the government of Spain. The Philippine government and others are presently becoming vulnerable to the same psychological or "terrorism" warfare.

The same terrorism tactic obviously continues to be employed and has been increased considerably in advance of national elections in Afghanistan and Iraq in an effort to achieve their ultimate goal: the overthrow of the existing antiterrorism political leadership and replacement with a weaker leadership that it intends to ultimately control or defeat.

Sadly, these terrorist tactics are only a stepping-stone to the ultimate coup de grace, the influence and control of you and me through fear, intimidation and terror and murder of our countrymen so as to effect a change in the strong leadership of our nation, the last remaining deterrent to their worldwide murderous activity.

Hmm, it appears that selected campaign headquarters in the United States are beginning to be attacked. I wonder why.

Will you and I scare easily?

Armond "Si" Simmons

Pell City 35128

Not dictatorship

Wake up, Mr. President! This is a democracy, not a dictatorship! Presidents who send troops into premptive war must be prepared to face hard questions, and not respond with grimaces and smirks like a disgruntled schoolboy!

Bisakha Sen

Birmingham 35242

Still believe

Politically speaking, Americans are 50/50, but religiously speaking? ... Well, it's nice to know God is still holding his own!

Fifty to 100 years ago, I would venture to say God held a 10 to 1 lead, but in today's culture? Just say it was a pleasant surprise to find more Americans than not still believe as our forefathers did: In God We Trust.

Marilyn Schnepp

Birmingham 35205

Litigation raises prescription prices

I have a feeling that Canada and other countries have fewer lawyers and effective tort laws.

In the United States, drug companies have to cover tremendous cost of potential litigation. Just recently, I have seen lawyers on television and ads in the papers asking people to come to them to sue the drug company that produced Vioxx. Lawyers want to sue this company, they do not care if the company goes broke. Their concern is if the company goes bankrupt, they will not be able to sue.

As a business person, I know that most decisions a business makes have to meet the ligation test. This has a cost that is a major cost of all the goods we purchase in our country.

Jim McGriff

Tuscaloosa 35405

Heartfelt thanks

Things are getting back to normal, thanks to all of the people, like your Alabama Power utility crows, who came here to help us in our time of need.

We are so, so appreciative of the Alabama Power employees and you, our next door neighbors, who lent a hand when we needed it most. It is with heartfelt thanks that you have helped us weather these storms. Please know that the citizens of The Sunshine State will always be ready to return the favor, God forbid, that you ever need the help that you gave us during these difficult times.

Thank you to Alabama Power and our good neighbors to the west. Come visit soon. We're back in business!

Kurt Salsburg, vice president

Economic and Workforce Development

Tallahassee Community College

Tallahassee, Fla. 32304

Basically against

Our membership was enraged by Clarke Stallworth's Oct. 9 column, "Basically, thieves, bullies are cowards," which read, in part, ''This is a letter to a thief. You're a coward, basically ... Basically,you committed an assault against me. ..." Stallworth, a self-proclaimed ''writing coach," should be aware of the universal condemnation of this horrible and useless word under any circumstances.

Stuart Vail recently spoke of the "B" word thusly: ''What used to be a somewhat innocuous adverb has turned into one of the most predominant, albeit useless, words of the last decade. Emulating a fast-spreading cancer, it has infiltrated the speech of the majonity of the English speaking world, In an attempt to sound erudite, and 'grouping toward imagined elegance' (as William Strunk, Jr. wrote in the original Elements of Style), everyone from produce clerks to our leaders in Congress misuses and abuses the word."

We first became aware of the misuse of the ''B" word several years ago upon reading a news report describing an inter-family murder in Bessemer. The Bessemer policeman being interviewed was reported as stating, ''What we have here, basically, is a case of extreme sibling rivalry." At that time we took a solemn vow to join the fight against weasel words and to expose those who use emetic proclamations like Stallworth's and all the sports show callers and other semi-domesticated primates who begin with ''Well, basically, uh, like, I mean, you know," etc.

Let us abandon all the politically correct insanity and team to call a spade a spade, never using the prefix, ''Basically."

The Most Rev. Jimmy C. Jones, founder

The Massive Forearm Forum

Birmingham 35242

OTHER VIEWS

Voters should be responsible for knowing how to vote

Consider punch-card voting systems, and "overvotes" and "undervotes." Overvoting occurs when voters mark their ballots for two candidates for a single office. Undervoting occurs when voters do not mark a choice among the candidates for an office.

Only 12.4 percent of America's registered voters live in jurisdictions that use punch-card systems of the sort that Florida made infamous in 2000. But 72 percent of Ohioans do. Last Sunday The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch reported, beneath the headline "Punch Cards May Hurt Blacks," that such ballots cast with no vote recorded for president were in 2000 a higher percentage in black communities (5 percent) than in other communities (less than 2 percent).

The state is being sued about "racial disparities" resulting from punch-card voting in three counties. However, The Dispatch reports several scholars' assertions that race is not the salient variable. Higher levels of unrecorded presidential preferences supposedly correlate with low levels of income and education, appearing also in the predominantly white Appalachian counties of southeastern Ohio.

Punch cards, The Dispatch says, are "prone" to overvotes and undervotes "because so many things can go wrong." For example, if "voters do not correctly insert the card into the voting device, the wrong holes can be punched." But is it unreasonable to expect voters to perform those simple manipulations? Are they victims — disenfranchised — if they do not? Surely not in Ohio, where printed guides to punch-card voting are supplemented by instructional videos on the Internet, and where instructions and instructors will be available at polling places.

Granted, punch-card systems, like everything else in life, are not infallible. They can — remember Florida's hanging and dimpled (aka pregnant) chads? — inadequately record the intent of a voter, particularly one who is careless about the task of handling the simple punch-card mechanism. But how can punch cards be blamed for overvotes?

And how does invalidating such a vote constitute, as is now commonly said, "disenfranchisement"? When poll taxes, meretricious literacy tests, hostile sheriffs and mobs stood between blacks and ballots, blacks were disenfranchised. To be disenfranchised is to have something done to you, not to do something to yourself.

Regarding undervotes, voters can always check to make sure they have clearly punched holes. Furthermore, they have a right — and are often right to exercise the right — to undervote by skipping certain choices on the ballot.

In some Florida jurisdictions this year, electronic touch-screen voting machines will react irritably to undervotes. If a voter skips a choice on the ballot, a message — "You have not made a choice on this race" — appears on the screen three times. What more must be done to deal with the undervote problem — which often is not a problem but a sensible preference?

Should there be more severe prompts? The first might be: "I'm just a machine, but shouldn't you be marking more boxes?" The second might be: "Hey, dolt — yes, you: The right to vote is precious, so even though you neither know nor care about a particular contest on the ballot, vote for someone — anyone — even if your vote is random." Finally, the machine could threaten: "Cast more votes or you will wake up with a horse's head in your bed."

Would such growls from voting machines satisfy liberals that an undervote need not represent either a remediable flaw in the voter or in the technology? Can liberals accept that an undervote usually reflects either voter carelessness, for which the voter suffers the condign punishment of an unrecorded preference, or it reflects the voter's choice not to express a preference? No, otherwise they would not be liberals, obsessive about rights, blind to responsibilities.

On Monday a Colorado judge upheld a new requirement that voters are responsible for producing identification before being allowed to vote. And Florida's Supreme Court rejected the argument that voters are disenfranchised by not counting provisional ballots they cast in the wrong precincts.

Imagine that: Voters are responsible for proving who they are and knowing where they are supposed to vote. There will be charges that both rulings permit "intimidation," which in today's liberal lexicon is a synonym for linking rights to responsibilities.