I have a question about state Rep. John Knight. Is he completely out of
his mind? Where does he get off asking a federal judge to overturn
Alabama's constitution, just so he can raise property taxes on Alabamians
without their consent? What part of "no" does he not understand? Federal
judges do not have the right or the authority to change Alabama's
constitution.
I guess since U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson got away with
violating the U.S. Constitution and reversing a legal election in Alabama,
Knight felt empowered enough to ask another judge to rewrite our
constitution.
It is not, as Knight claims, the property tax system in Alabama that
prevents adequate funding of schools. It is, in fact, people like Knight,
state Sen. Hank Sanders, state Sen. Roger Bedford, state Rep. Alvin Holmes
and others in the Legislature who refuse to give up their own pork
spending and slush funds for noneducational projects in the education
trust fund that prevent adequate funding.
Alabama's school-funding problem is like meeting a man on the street
who is down on his luck and asks for a couple of bucks to get something to
eat. Being charitable people, we give him more than enough to buy a decent
meal, and he runs off and buys whiskey with it. He can forget about coming
back to us complaining about being hungry.
Knight and other state leaders can't have any more until they learn to
spend what they have in the way in which it was intended.
Gary W. Hearon
Jones
Support new DHR chief :
Our state was blessed to have a change in leadership at the Department
of Human Resources. Commissioner Page Walley came in at a time when the
morale was at an all-time low for foster parents and staff.
This man walked in the door having to put out fires. Walley faced many
problems that should not have been his to fix. The previous commissioner
should have finished the things he started before leaving, but the fact
is, he didn't.
Walley has made more strides in fixing the wrongs in a few weeks than I
have seen in years as a foster parent. I wish all of us would come
together and help support our commissioner. Rome wasn't built in a day,
and it wasn't built by one person, so all of us foster parents, staff and
citizens have to come to the aid of Alabama's 6,000 children looking for a
face to trust.
Linda Williams
Trussville
Ballot access law un-American :
Alabama has the worst ballot-access law of any state in the nation. Our
state requires an independent or third-party candidate to have 3 percent
of the signatures of registered voters before their name can appear on our
ballot. If a party's candidate does not receive 20 percent of the votes
cast in an election, that party cannot have candidates on the ballot for
the next election without a petition.
In most states, a candidate need only have 1 percent of the signatures
of registered voters to have his or her name placed on the ballot, and a
political party needs only 5 percent of the vote to appear on the ballot
in the next election.
Alabama's law is great if you happen to be a candidate of the two major
parties in this state. However, the right of a citizen to have more than
two choices to vote for is thrown right out the window. We are
shortchanged every election because of this law.
In a free country, anyone who wants on the ballot should be on the
ballot, regardless of the problems we are told this creates. Our freedom
to vote for more than the candidates of the two major parties is what is
lost here. We might want former Chief Justice Roy Moore to run for
president in 2004 as an independent, but under our current ballot access
law he could not.
I did not serve in this country's military to have a few party bosses
limit who I can vote for. Allowing this law to stand in Alabama is, well,
un-American.
Billy E. Price
Ashville
Don't celebrate Lee's birthday :
Last week, while I was attending to business in the Jefferson County
Courthouse, I saw a notice that the courthouse would be closed on Jan. 19
in observance of Martin Luther King Day and Robert E. Lee's birthday.
While Lee opposed slavery, celebrating his birthday is a thinly veiled
attempt to celebrate the Confederacy.
King gave his life to make sure equality included all races and to help
end racism. Unfortunately, there is still a group of people in the South
who give Southerners a bad name. These people defend the legacy of the
Confederacy as "heritage, not hate."
Those who seceded from the Union because they couldn't enslave blacks
anymore were nothing but traitors. King wanted to bring people together,
and to celebrate the Confederacy on Jan. 19 only helps to divide us.
Rob McArdle
Vestavia Hills
Media portray Israel as bad guy :
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach wrote an article in January 2003 in which he
asked: "How is it that half a billion hostile Arabs have managed to
successfully portray themselves as the victims of 5 million Jews? How did
more than a dozen Arab tyrannies successfully portray Israel, the region's
lone democracy, as the bad guy in the Middle East? And how did the
Palestinians, whose contribution to civilization is the suicide bomber,
ever garner the sympathy of the world?"
The media are partly to blame. The Associated Press recently reported
that Israeli troops opened fire on a large group of Palestinians throwing
stones in a "demonstration," killing three. However, the photograph of the
incident tells a different story. The "rocks" being thrown from a rooftop
on Israeli soldiers were actually huge building blocks.
Hamas is a Palestinian terrorist group with this goal: "Israel will ...
continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated
others before it." Yet, the media refer to Hamas and other terrorist
groups as "militants" and "extremists." The recent female suicide bomber
"chose martyrdom over motherhood." No. She chose murder over motherhood.
There were almost 4,000 terrorist attacks against Israeli targets in
2003, yet the world condemns Israel for trying to protect her citizens.
Anti-Semitism is an evil that has reached America. If America abandons
Israel, if Christians remain "neutral," America is doomed.
Kitty Carr
Vestavia Hills
Michael Jackson display sickening :
It was sickening to see Michael Jackson, after his arraignment on
pedophilia charges, blowing kisses and dancing atop his SUV before
hundreds of admirers.
If he is convicted, never before would there have been such a public
display of affection between a pedophile and his pedophans.
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