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Brown-Waite should resign over her Iraq, vet policies

Congresswoman Virginia Brown-Waite, R-Brooksville, should not be allowed anywhere near a Veterans Administration clinic or any other place, including cemeteries, designated for military veterans.

Brown-Waite is no more than a pandering, bobble-headed, sleep-walking politician who is only interested in her own political career. Her support of the invasion and occupation of Iraq make her equally responsible for each military member who has been wounded, maimed, killed or otherwise harmed.

Her political posturing led her to introduce a bill to dig up the bodies of our fallen military members who lie in peace in France. Her political interest in veterans has nothing to do with our welfare; she just counts heads and realizes that we vote. So, she does her best song-and-dance routine while being the rudest politician I have ever encountered when questions of policy are put to her during her appearances.

The best thing she can do for this veteran is to resign immediately - right after she reads the names of each person killed in Iraq and acknowledges her responsibility for each death.

Jurists need to weigh effect of sentencing

Re: William Thornton sentencing:

A black female correspondent, now a visiting journalism professor at St. Bonaventure University, has written a story that was excerpted in USA Today on Oct. 13. In it she states that her brother was not at the Million Man March a decade ago and would not be going this year either, nor would her father. The brother is in prison with a life sentence, the father with a 45-year sentence.

She tells about growing up without a father, of last seeing her brother free at her high school graduation and "seeing him every day" when, as a reporter, she covered courts and would see young black men standing before a judge in orange jumpsuits, with shackled hands. She wrote of sharing an unfortunate bond with hundreds of thousands of other black women and girls who grow up without a father at home. She ends her article by stating that the Million Man Movement in Washington was a call to end the herding of black men and women into prisons, stating that the true tragedy that black people and the entire nation face are the societal ramifications, immeasurable, of warehousing "so many of us."

The truth, despair and poignancy of the article compelled me to realize this tragedy reaches right where we live. Two black men from Citrus County, in the same family, scheduled to be warehoused at public expense forever, despite mitigating circumstances (the William Thornton case). And what of those left behind to cope in another fractured black family?

John Roberts, the new chief justice of the United States, stated in one of his preconfirmation hearings: "I never lose track of the fact that these (people appearing in his courtroom) are real persons living real lives."

One can only pray for this realization from local jurists.

Where's the justice? One gets 30 years, one is free

I am a 63-year-old white woman. I am so furious about the 17-year-old boy who got 30 years from Judge (and I use the term loosely) Ric Howard.

I was especially incensed after seeing in the newspaper that the little rich girl in Tampa got house arrest after hitting those African-American children and dragging one of them and leaving the scene. Then, her father cleaned the car because the sight of the blood upset her.

Explain to me why he wasn't charged with evidence tampering. They must know some real powerful people.

What has gone wrong with this world? Why isn't somebody trying to correct this situation?

Judge Howard, how can you sleep at night?

My heart goes out to the mother of those children and to the family of the young man in prison.

Somebody, do something please. It's a travesty.

[Last modified November 14, 2005, 01:03:13]