Letters To The Editor

THE RAGGED EDGE

Conviction stands for something

Through Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that when personhood begins is a matter of religious belief, not medical or legal fact. While recognizing the right of religious groups to follow the dictates of their faith in this matter, we vigorously oppose attempts to restrict individual free choice through acts of violence and domestic terrorism in the name of God.

Since many people fear God, it appears natural to them to want to impose their religion of hysteria on others. When these acts cause harm to other people or their property, it’s government’s responsibility to restrict the activities of these political-religious extremists.

We are very grateful to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, FBI, U.S. Attorney’s office and Spokane County Sheriff’s Department for their investigation, arrest and now conviction of these extremists who attempted to impose their religious beliefs on others by bombing the Planned Parenthood Valley Health Center in July 1996.

Like many fundamentalist groups, we seek to make abortion a rarity. No organization works harder to prevent abortion than Planned Parenthood.

Restricting free choice is not the answer. We promote responsible, accountable behavior while supporting and respecting individual autonomy, freedom and self-determination, mindful that we are social beings. We advocate medically accurate sexuality education and access to contraceptive and family planning services.

We hope this conviction sends a message to other religious extremists that acts of domestic terrorism in our community will not be tolerated. John W. Nugent, executive director Planned Parenthood of Spokane and Whitman Counties

You can’t trust sunshine soldiers

Reading about Faron Lovelace’s frustration with Idaho’s death penalty, and over not being executed as quickly as he had hoped to be for the death of Jeremy Scott, prompts this reminder for some vulnerable young people.

Those of you in Christian Identity-Aryan Nations boot camp, know that when you get into trouble, your leaders will conveniently not remember you. Your sacrifice for blood and honor will not be publicly congratulated.

Lovelace has probably had time to consider what he’s done and those who helped him get where he is. He has probably had time to remember that the group that assisted him in our area fled for some reason. They were not available to defend him, as they were supposed to be.

I don’t really know anything about Scott, but how sad that I am unaware of his family wanting to know where he was and how he was doing.

The Christian Identity-Aryan Nations movement can be a very cruel place for recruits because those who are in it leave out the fact that when the going gets tough and the edges get really ragged, they don’t know you and you can rot in jail. James Gordon Perkins Colville, Wash.

LAW AND JUSTICE

Remove criminals, you remove crime

The Supreme Court is named such because it rules supreme as the highest court. Walter Becker (Letters, July 16) stated that the Supreme Court “repeatedly ruled” on the Second Amendment, yet can only state a Circuit Court ruling.

David Wordinger responded appropriately (July 25) as to the Supreme Court’s understanding of the word “people” as used in the Constitution.

Becker suggests we should be “discussing how to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.” I wholeheartedly agree. Unfortunately, the ridiculous legislation pushed on us by the anti-gun crowd does nothing to accomplish this.

Criminals don’t obey laws; that’s why they’re criminals. Drive-by shootings are against the law and guns are already outlawed in schools. It’s also against the law for a felon to possess a gun. Cities with the most stringent gun laws also have the highest crime rates. Legislation clearly isn’t the answer.

Crime has been declining in recent years, coincidental with increased penalties and incarceration of criminals. Maybe we should take a clue from that.

Boston has developed an innovative program for dealing with street gangs and its gang-related crime rate has plummeted, as has the teen homicide rate. The accident rate involving handguns and children is at an all-time low, thanks in part to programs developed by the National Rifle Association.

When it comes to reducing crime, there are no mysteries and many answers. Unfortunately, liberals have very few of the answers and seem to love the mystery.

When you remove the criminal from society, you are removing the cause of crime. Mike R. Scalera Spokane

Lawyer prolongs everyone’s agony

Heinous, atrocious, cruel! Sounds like a description of some terrible crime. These words make me think of Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and Arthur Shawcross - notorious killers.

“I was happy, exhilarated,” at using the above words, sounds to me like a paradox. You can use such words and be happy? Seems ludicrous to me.

The words were used by attorney Joan Fisher to defend inmates on death row. She uses these words to describe the lives of people on death row. She complains of solitary confinement for as much as 13 years for the people she represents.

These clients are breathing. They are eating. They are watching TV. They are getting free legal help. They are able to take part in an endless appeal process. They are killers.

Solitary confinement? Their victims are in solitary confinement. No air, no light, no food, no TV, no legal help, no appeals. Just a cold box six feet under the ground - not for 13 years, forever.

Fisher, don’t blame me, or society or the law for the fact that they are locked up for 13 or so years. Look in the mirror. You are the reason they are still locked up on death row. Every time you go into court with another mostly technical appeal, they “suffer” a while longer. The families of the victims get to suffer a while longer.

Do you ever consider the victims’ fate? I choose to believe they deserve many more rights than your clients do. Walter E. Lane Spokane

What price execution?

I would like an explanation from everyone who supports the death penalty. Please explain to me how justice would have been delayed or denied if one more DNA test had been done to ensure that you were actually killing a guilty man when you executed Joseph Roger O’Dell Wednesday night in Virginia.

One of the best arguments against the death penalty is that there is always the possibility we will kill an innocent man. If the governor of Virginia, the victim’s family, the prosecutor, the Supreme Court and everyone who supports the death penalty were so sure of O’Dell’s guilt, why didn’t they run the DNA test to prove they were right? If you know that you are not making a mistake, you allow every test possible to be performed to prove your point. And, if you’re wrong, is it really so important to you to keep the death penalty that you allow an innocent man to die?

When the facts come out a few years from now, I pray to God that O’Dell was guilty. I don’t believe in the death penalty under any circumstances, but I pray for your souls if you killed an innocent man by sitting by and doing nothing as he asked for further testing to prove his innocence. Deborah Lawrence Hale Greenacres

BICYCLE RACING

WSP misinterpreting law

The Washington State Patrol recently declared that bicycle road racing is illegal on state roads and imposed a ban in Eastern Washington.

WSP’s decision is based on an interpretation of a provision of the Revised Code of Washington that prohibits cyclists from riding more than two abreast. The interpretation - applying this provision to special events like bicycle road racing - is erroneous.

No legislator would support legislation that would have, for example, made it impossible to hold the Olympic cycling trials in Spokane in 1984 and 1988, the national cycling championships in Seattle last year or the Horse Heaven bicycle road race in Kennewick last May. It is contemptible that WSP officials are trying to impose that kind of ban now.

Bicycle racing can be conducted on state roads without sacrificing the racers’ or others’ safety and without interfering with the transportation needs of the state. What we need is standardized administrative guidelines for bicycle racing, not a ban.

Please urge your state representative to direct the Transportation Commission to adopt the proposed Guidelines for the Administration of Bicycle Racing on Washington Roads authored by Phil Miller. These guidelines would allow bicycle races on highways only under specified conditions and with the approval of the road authority. This approach is working in Oregon and Colorado and will work in Washington. Andrew E. Worlock bicycle coordinator, city of Spokane

THE MILITARY

Reject the immature of both sexes

Ed Weilep decided that the Japanese Kabuki theater had the right answer to male-female behavior problems. When the men kept fighting duels to the death over women, they banned the women from the theater as a distraction. (“Wisdom of all-male policy apparent,” Letters, July 24) From this he concludes that the U.S. military should ban women from its ranks, since men are still so easily distracted.

The problem with analogies is that they can often be bent to mean whatever you want them to mean. How theater companies in Japan organized their productions over 300 years ago hardly seems like an apt analogy for the military today. Kabuki theater could have solved the problem just as effectively by banning the men. It was theater, not national security.

Weilep apparently has very little respect for men, since his solution is to protect them from having to behave like responsible adults by removing distractions. Isn’t this what we do with toddlers who can’t behave?

At the risk of making a broad generalization, I think men are certainly capable of behaving like civilized gentlemen if they want to. Those who can’t shouldn’t be in military service.

I want the military to recruit people with the best skills for the jobs and I expect mature behavior from adults. Men (and women) behaving badly need not apply. Sue Lani W. Madsen Edwall, Wash.

PEOPLE IN SOCIETY

Don’t let hatred genie out of bottle

I have the uninvited and undeserved feeling of being in the position of German Jews when they were made to feel unwelcome in their homes in the period leading up to the Holocaust. You see, I am a Californian.

Although I’ve lived in many places, I consider this my home, having lived, worked, paid taxes and attended church here for nearly 10 years. I am greatly offended by the blatant negative advertising on TV, radio, bumper stickers and jokes.

I am who I am today due to my upbringing and the influences of the people I’ve met and the places I have lived. If there is something negative about me, I must change it.

Likewise, Spokane is the city it is today because different people from all walks of life living here. If you don’t like what Spokane has become, change it. Just know that stereotyping, blaming and hateful propaganda never change anything. Prejudice in any form is ugly, even in supposedly harmless jokes.

You have a beautiful city with nearby snowcapped mountains and powerful rivers. But, as I was taught growing up, beauty is as beauty does. I would not like to see beautiful Spokane become ugly the way many places do when rejection and bias are permissible and even encouraged.

I am not afraid of being sent to the gas chamber. Nevertheless, we can learn from history that when hatred is fed, it’s like putting a match to gasoline. Once done, the flame is hard to put out and people always get hurt. Jenny E. Gower Spokane

Better to lose some wars’ lessons

I can’t remember when last I saw the essence of the Vietnam experience captured so poignantly and well as it was in Russ Moritz’s letter (“War’s lesson lost,” July 24).

Although I enjoyed the relative creature comforts of a rear echelon base, I was afforded a shocking sense of empathy in the form of six Viet Cong infantry battalions that came close to overrunning us, but for the struggle of our Security Police and a couple of 25th Infantry Division units that broke through ambushes to reach us from Long Binh. Most of us were in the demoralizing position of having to flee our cantonment areas because in mine, at least, we were issued only two M-16s for 700 guys (in the senior officers’ view that we would never need more).

The base was saved, but we were then routinely shelled over the next four months and more sporadically thereafter. Then, we came back to 10 years of scorn from our fellow citizens - some of them people who had openly supported a government we were at war with.

What hurt most was our own government cutting back our benefits, denying our travail in numerous other ways, and only unofficially admitting (through the person of former secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara) that they never had a formula for victory.

Like Moritz, I like to believe I came to be able to see further through that experience. But, if I had to do it all over again, I’d probably prefer the quieter life of Andy James. Philip J. Mulligan Spokane

OTHER TOPICS

Cleverness spawns conundrum

Columnist Joe Stroud (“What you see is what you … see,” Opinion, July 23) addresses only part of the problem that stems from manipulation of images.

Where does so-called virtual reality begin? How can viewers know whether the image observed is real and factual or a deliberate distortion?

Photo or video evidence is often central in court cases. “The camera doesn’t lie” has been accepted as a given by the public. When we see a TV image of the president in a given situation and speaking some alleged facts, we, the public, are conditioned to believe it is a true presentation of the occasion.

We need to be assured that false or manipulated images can be as readily detected.I was once an amateur photographer, and my continuing interest keeps me aware of the possibilities of photography. I admire the photographic image, well presented. Yet I doubt that, if I were ever a juror, I would accept video evidence. Others must have similar doubts.

Maybe it boils down to another of those ethical questions which seem to attract much lip service these days but little understanding or action. Resolution is badly needed. Donald W. George Pullman

Columbia basin plan big mistake

I’ve heard a little about the federal government’s proposed plan for managing public lands in the Inland Northwest. It’s called the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project (ICBEMP).

People should know about the many negative impacts this fatally flawed plan proposes. Besides its ridiculous attempt to disguise increased commercial logging in ancient forests as a means to improve forest health, this plan also fails to properly address major problems on our unforested public lands, such as grass lands.

Farmers especially should be concerned. ICBEMP’s inattention to reducing weed invasions will lead to two negative impacts: Weeds will continue to spread, including onto farms, necessitating increased use (and expense) of herbicides; and crop productivity will suffer . Herbicides will migrate into groundwater, streams and neighboring fields. Some will reduce growth of specific crop plants.

The only way ICBEMP could truly reduce noxious weed invasions is to reduce livestock disturbance of the soils and the transport of seeds in their guts and on their fur. This is possible only by reducing livestock numbers, which ICBEMP isn’t doing.

If you care about the future of your public lands, please call or write to the Forest Service and your elected representatives. Suzette A. Ashby Spokane