Some responses to Speak Out

To the editor:

Here are some random thoughts for Speak Out participants:

The Missouri Legislature didn't pass a new tax on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Kansas City Star. It ended a sales-tax credit.

Calling state Rep. Jason Crowell "out of control" and state Rep. Rod Jetton, a former U.S. Marine, a "threat to our country and freedom " is just absurd.

What makes anyone conclude that everyone in favor of keeping the Southeast Missouri State University Indian as a mascot is a knee-jerk conservative?

As a sixth-generation Missourian, I apologize for what my great-great-great-great-grandparents may have done to the Mormons. I also want monetary reparations from the Egyptians for holding my Jewish ancestors in slavery.

Just which critical countries has President Bush alienated? The ones being indicted in the oil-for-food scandal? The ones that sold illegal weapons to Saddam? Syria, whose citizens were arrested this week in Jordan attempting to detonate an explosive chemical weapon that was estimated to have been able to kill 20,000 people? Or the ones with dictators who are sending insurgents to fight against a free Iraq and blow up little children on their school buses?

JOHN MITCHELL

Jackson