SPEAK OUT

What's next? ABOUT THE article on the Jackson School District's discipline policy: If they can't control the kids while they're on campus for doing things like smoking, why should they be able to punish them when the kids aren't at school? What is this world coming to? If the schools think they can control the kids when the kids are on their own time, what's next?

Losing control

PARENTS, WAKE up. Your children can go to local health clinics and be placed on birth control without you knowing it. We're talking about 13-, 14- and 15-year-old children. You know what else, parents? They can sign out of school because they're forging your name and going to clinics and getting birth control. Also, the people who work at the clinics have no right to talk to you, as a parent, but they're providing birth control for your children. It's scary what this world has come to. Parents have very little control over their kids. It's a shame.

Outdoor cafe?

I JUST went around the roundabout. It was OK. But what is with the brick walkway on the inside curb? Is the city going to put tables and chairs out there for people to sit and have coffee? I don't see its purpose. With it in the way, I do see a real problem for larger vehicles such as ambulances and fire trucks.

Virtues of work

CONSERVATISM SHOULD be all about the virtues of hard work and not about the inevitable corruption caused by inherited wealth. Down with the death tax.

His own complaint

STATE SEN. Peter Kinder recently said U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft will likely investigate alleged voting irregularities in St. Louis during the November general election. He might if he has time, but he could be preoccupied with defending himself against alleged campaign fund-raising irregularities when he was a U.S. senator, since a formal complaint against him has been filed with the Federal Elections Commission.

100 percent Democrat

BEFORE YOU Republicans blame the Democrats as a "spend, spend, spend" party, you need to check the history of your own party. No president spent more and caused more debt than your wonderful hero, Ronald Reagan. To your chop-logic thinking, what the Republicans do is great, moral and ethical while anything the Democrats do is immediately bad. Yes, I know why I am a 100 percent Democrat.

Restoring dignity

EVER SINCE the election, Democrats have been acting like sore losers. A lot of you will read this and say, "But the vote was unfair." My advice is to get over the fact that the people in this country didn't want four more years of Clinton-Gore scandals and immoral behavior. So we put G.W. into office to return honor and dignity to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. My only concern is that in 2004, Clinton might return to the White House as the nation's first husband.