Speak Out 5/18/07

Abortion decision

EVEN WHEN you take God out of everything, can one justify abortion? We are not given the right to have children. They are given to us from God as a blessing. What kind of parents would not feel guilty, ashamed or sad after witnessing the killing of two of their children? The laws of our country should help us obtain heaven. Who gave man the right to undermine the laws of God? Satan, and his fires of hell that beckon, has many people in his hold twisting morals around. These include people choosing to print articles condoning sins versus morally supportive articles in the Southeast Missourian.

Control the dogs

DOGS ARE fine when properly cared for, picked up after and out of my yard. You take care of your yard and vehicles, and cats walk on your car and dogs urinate on your chrome wheels. It's time to stop this nonsense. We have leash laws, but people let their dogs out late at night to run. I want my yard back. People who own dogs but no longer want them should take care of them through the humane society. Don't dump your dogs on someone else. Take responsibility for your dogs.

Autism research

WE NEED more papers and more state and national politicians to help spread the word about autism and make funds available to do real research into this condition. Our beautiful Olivia deserves every moment of our time spent battling for her and all the other little ones and their families who live with this 24/7. God bless them. Our prayers are with them.

Stopping cancer

IT TAKES a lot of research before a patient, doctors or insurance will OK a procedure such as a prophylactic mastectomy. If a cancer gene has been found in a patient's family history or in the patient, it will only be located in a certain area of the body. If the gene is located in the breast, it will not be in the liver or the lungs. Cancer can spread to another area, but by preventing it with a procedure such as a mastectomy it cannot. Why wait?

Weak remorse

I READ with interest the article on death-row inmates. Jeffrey Ferguson says, "Nobody should die alone in prison. It's about the worst it gets." Dying in prison, serving time for hurting other people in some way cannot be worse than being a small child, stolen from your yard, raped and murdered. It cannot be worse than being the victim in any of the cases profiled in this article. Ferguson's arrogance and lack of concern for the victims of violent crime is yet another sign that any remorse they may claim to feel is weak, at best.

Not impressed

I'M AMAZED at the recent publicity about Sikeston's use of video cameras in solving crimes and the media's use of that as being the rationale for Cape Girardeau doing the same thing. Didn't Sikeston just have some great footage of cars racing down the street with one of them hitting a gas station and causing a fire? If Sikeston is an example of how well the cameras work, I'm not impressed. Sikeston continues to be a mess with tons of criminal activity. This is another case of guys wanting the latest toys. Call it a grant, but we'll end up paying for these things as taxpayers, one way or another.

Modern tools

AS A retired business owner, I cannot disagree more with the comment "Too many gadgets." My grandchildren, a seventh-grader and a high school freshman, not only know the multiplication tables, but use calculators and computers with proficiency. Why would we remove these modern-day tools from their use and force them back to the Stone Age? I have no problem with learning the basics, but the men and women of tomorrow have to be prepared to compete in the modern world. Learning to add long columns of numbers should be required, but then move on to doing it with the speed of today's office tools, and use the extra time to read a chapter of history. Being a business owner, I had to modernize in order to compete or fail. It was that simple. If our schools had the same competitive factors facing them as business does, they would either rise to or exceed the level of their competition or fail, and those that met the challenge would be turning out graduates better equipped to compete with the rest of the world. We owe it to our children to give them the best education possible, not a horse-and-buggy education to compete in the jet age.