the coronavirus and immigration

Some federal judges ruled that the Trump Administration cannot bar people from entry to our country, even though we are not able to process them as fast as they would like, while at the same time we are in the midst of an epidemic with a 2-week incubation period.  Trump should tell the judges to take a hike.

The coronavirus is the perfect retort to all those people who encourage or turn a blind eye to illegal immigration or who ridicule the President for his wall.

Should we celebrate Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day?

The Chicago Public Schools decided that Columbus Day is not worth celebrating.  Instead they prefer that the students celebrate Indigenous People’s Day instead. 

If those white settlers had not come to the New World, we can only speculate on what the world would have been like today.  Let me suggest a few things:

1) The newcomers did not find what you might call a civilization.  At least what they were used to.  There were no universities, no cities, and no hospitals.  They were nomadic peoples who moved from place to place depending on food and the weather. 

We have no reason to think that it would have been any different today if no outsiders had come to their shores.  They would not have invented the automobile.  They would still be walking from place to place.

2)         There still would have been slavery.  They would have just landed in different places.  Most likely staying in Africa.  White Westerners did not invent slavery.  They did not enslave the people they brought here.  They were already slaves. 

3)         There would have been no United States to fight in World War 2.  The Germans would have won, and millions of more people would have been exterminated, because they were not the right type. 

The Soviet Union may have taken over the rest of Europe.  Maybe the Germans and the Soviets would have just divided it up. 

4)         The world would not know what freedom is.  The world would not be free.  Europe and most of Asia would be run by communists who also killed millions of their own people who were not the right type.

The parts of the world that the West did not colonize would probably still be illiterate primitive societies without modern medicine or agriculture. 

What are we teaching our kids in school today?

Diversity on the Illinois Supreme Court

Diversity on the bench?

The idea of equality under the law means, or should mean, that the defendant in any case could be unidentifiable to the court as to gender, age, nationality, race, religion, orientations.  The courts interpret the law, not the feelings of the defendants.  There is no black interpretation, white interpretation, Latino interpretation, male interpretation, female interpretation, gay . . ., you get the idea.

You want a black defendant to believe he did not receive justice, because there was not a black person on the Supreme Court?  Wouldn't he need a black majority Supreme Court?

You think there is diversity, because you have a woman, a black, and a Latino?  What about gay, trans, Muslim, Asian, Native American, the disabled, Christian, Jew, and atheist? 

Our leaders and others have tried for so long to divide us into so many competing groups there is little hope of ever uniting us again.  I am losing my optimism for our future as a country.

a letter to a daughter about God

A friend was telling us about her daughter who seems to have no interest in God.  She didn't know what to say to her.  I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about this, and I have long learned to listen to things I hear in the middle of the night.  So I wrote down what I would say to my daughter in a situation like this, and then I sent it to her, hoping it might help her find the words.

Hi sweetie pie!

I am in the middle of an adventure, one like you will probably begin pretty soon yourself. 

There is nothing harder in the world, but nothing brings as much joy and pain at the same time.  You may have guessed that that adventure is having kids.

The very fact that people have children in the first place is one of the most irrefutable proofs for the existence of God, and one that at the same time makes you wonder why God made life like that in the first place.

I believe it proves God’s existence by a simple fact.  Evolution insists that originally all life was able to reproduce its kind by itself, like cells that divide in two.  And then, over the course of millions of years, we are to assume that independently of each other, maybe half of each species began to develop complementary reproductive systems that the body didn’t need, all by random mutations, over millions of years, and then one day this system was finished and the species then reverted to a new way of reproduction, the union of a male and a female.

And all this happened totally randomly.  No oversight.  No guidance.  Chance mutations over millions of years.  Scientists have since studied mutations and have found that they are uniformly harmful. 

Nope.  Human life was created by God, as well as all the others.

But then the original question.  Why would God design it like this?  Why did God design things like sex and families and little babies?  Why did God create childhood and adolescence before adulthood?  Why does it take, say, 20 years before these little new human beings can leave the nest and create their own nests?  What was God thinking?

Well, we have the answers.  Life, all of life, teaches us about higher things.  The fact that human beings eat teaches us that we become what we ingest.  Garbage in, garbage out.  Morally, physically, intellectually.

God created humans at the end of His creating the world.  He breathed into the dust of the ground that He had formed, and man became a living being, created in God’s image.  He put His life into humans to give them their life.

So what?  What does that mean?  We learn what it means when we have children, because that is exactly what happens there.  Two human beings unite, and a new one is formed, bearing images of both parents.

And something happens.  Those two human beings discover that they love this new life more than they ever thought they could love anything.  You should soon discover this when you have children of your own.

And why did God design life like this?  The biggest reason is to show us what His love for us is like.  God loves us at least as much as any parent loves their children.  Then God gives us two chances to get this right.  First, we receive this unconditional love from our parents, and then when we have kids of our own, we learn that we have this same kind of love ourselves for this new little person.

Hopefully you have seen the unconditional love that your dad and I have had for you all of your life. 

But as our kids bear our image and are the recipient of our undying, unconditional love, this is all but a picture of the love that God has for each of us.  We would never believe it otherwise, unless we had experienced a taste of it in our own lives.

God loves you at least as much as we do.  And you won’t really know how much that is until you have your own kids.  And what God wants from that love is a family, just like the one you have now, but seeing God as your heavenly Father.  Nothing has brought us as much joy as when our kids love us back. 

We have tried to teach you about God’s love, and frankly we feel like we have failed.  In explaining about God and what we call salvation, we have talked about things like sin, and Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, and going to church, and reading the Bible, which can all seem like doing chores and trying to please a demanding and unhappy God.

I’m sorry.  We are sorry. 

Everything your dad and I have done for you in your entire life has been prompted by our undying, unconditional love for you, and everything that you have learned about church and God and things like that need to be seen in the same way. 

The Bible is all the things that we have tried to teach you about life, what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong, what is important and what is not.  Church is your other family.  God’s other children getting together like we do as a family.  The pastor gives us a message from Papa God to help us.  Unlike in our regular lives, we are always children in God’s eyes who never outgrow our need for instruction and guidance.  At some point, though, we do need to grow to the point where we teach other people about God and His love for them.

God loves you, baby girl.  Even more than your mommy and daddy do.  And He wants you to love Him back. 

But there’s more. 

People have often complained about the world we live in, why God would make or allow one with so much that is wrong in it.  There is enough goodness in it to give us a sense and taste of goodness, and enough bad or evil in it to realize that something is seriously wrong with it.

People have often talked about the end of the world.  And they’re right.  The plan is to make a new one after this old one.  With all the bad stuff left out.  One of the things that involves is that all those people who don’t love God won’t be a part of it.  Why? 

Because God’s intention in creating people in the first place was to have a family where everyone loves and is loved.  In the world today, God is in the background.  In that new world, after the end of this one, God comes right out in the open, and everyone will see Him.  And those who don’t love Him, they just won’t be able to stand before Him.  Frankly, they will want to run and have nowhere to go.  You know how they say, don’t look directly into the sun.   Those who love God will be able to, and those who don’t will burn up like old newspapers.  Except that those old newspapers can never totally disappear.  They all have a part of God in them which can never be destroyed.

This life, all of life, is about God.  And, frankly, you just can’t do God half-heartedly or parttime.  It just doesn’t work that way.  It won’t work in your marriage, and it won’t work with God.  Marriage too is another picture of what life with God is meant to be like.  Marriage takes a complete commitment to your partner. 

When we omit God from our lives, we are the ones who lose.  Both now in this world and in the next.  I want you in my forever family.

love, 

mom

immigration - some problems nobody wants to talk about

There are about 7.5 billion people in the world who do not live in the United States.  So, theoretically, they are all potential immigrants.

According to a lot of people I’ve been reading, it seems that any one of these people, by virtue of their status of being an immigrant, would make a vital contribution to our society and culture.

I think the immigration controversy, if you want to call it that, exists because people aren’t really talking about what the issues are.

I have a problem with illegal immigration, because a country has the responsibility to know who is coming into our country.  New residents should have background checks and medical tests.  They should also have in-person interviews so we know whether they want to be an American or if they want our country to become more like where they came from.  We have had such a flood of people coming to our border over the years through Mexico, that we have been completely unable to do any of this.

I have a problem with family reunification immigration, because the reason they insist we need immigration is that we have an aging population.  If all our immigrants bring their parents and grandparents, and others, we will still have an aging population, and would still need more workers.

Our federal government is almost $24 trillion in debt, with no end in sight.  Why should we bring people into our country if we have to borrow money to support them from the federal budget?  Our plumber was an immigrant.  He said that, after his court appearance, they wanted to show him all the government benefits he could get.  He turned them all down, saying he can make his own money.  Why are we doing that in the first place?

I have read numerous times that the government generally puts blocks of immigrants in places where the voters tend to vote a certain way.  New immigrants tend to vote a certain way, so the government wanted to turn that area a different color in voting.

And, I have a problem that nobody wants to know how many illegal immigrants actually are in this country and where they are at.  Our electoral voters and Congressional representatives are distributed according to the citizens of our country.  Some will say that the Constitution doesn’t specify citizens.  But then I can’t imagine the Founders ever thought we would have tens of millions of citizens of other countries living here and counted just like citizens of our own country when it comes to electing the President and other government officials.

So, no, immigration in itself is not the problem.  It’s all the ways that the system has broken down or been abused that is the problem.  And that they won’t fix it.

public pensions

If I have one regret in life, I think that it would be that I didn’t make a career in the public sector. 

Eddie Johnson, the former chief of police in Chicago, will receive more in one month in his public pension than I get in a full year with my private pension.  And he didn’t even have Social Security taken out of his checks.  How great is that?

Fifty years ago, our State ratified a new Constitution.  Included in the Constitution was a proviso that public pensions could not be diminished.  One sentence. 

Then, like with all government bills, they are all of an enormous size that must be accepted or rejected in toto.  Nobody but a few lawyers know everything that is in the bills, and the public certainly doesn’t. 

Yet, the governor insists that when the public voted to ratify that Constitution, they entered into a contractual arrangement extending to their children, their children’s children to perpetuity, that people like Eddie Johnson can have pensions that drive the state into bankruptcy.

And what’s particularly sad about the whole thing is that the governor and at least one newspaper, and, we’re told, even the courts believe that all future generations are bound by a contract that cannot be altered.  Don’t most contracts have a time limit on them?  Aren’t people who have contracts who realize that they made a mistake allowed to renegotiate at some point? 

Why is this one point of the Constitution written in stone, but the governor is quite willing and eager to change other parts of it to fit more into his liking?

taxes in Illinois

I read the editorial of the Times today in stunned disbelief (Case for graduated income tax grows stronger with new budget – or budget, February 20).  If the newspapers don’t fight for the people, then the people have little hope against a corrupt and overbearing government.

The graduated income tax is a tax on other people.  We are asking people to vote for a tax on other people.  Is that fair?  Is that right?  The governor assures the people.  Oh, this won’t affect you.  It will only affect a few of those other people.   Don’t worry about them.  They can afford it.  Just give us the permission to do it.

Why does that sound like manipulation?

Then the governor and the paper contend that we can’t possibly remove the one thing that is driving Illinois into bankruptcy more than everything else put together: a line in the Constitution.  The people voted to put it in; they can vote to take it out.

There is a line in the U.S. Constitution that says that no state shall make any law impairing the obligation of contracts.  And this, in the governor’s mind and in the mind now of the Sun-Times forbids any possibility of changing that.  Really?

So why can we change the Illinois Constitution to eliminate the flat tax but not the pension clause?  Why is one a contractual obligation that cannot be altered but the other can? 

I am not a legal scholar, but a contract is between two parties, one party agreeing to perform certain duties under certain conditions.  However, here there are three parties: the state, the people, and the beneficiaries of the pensions.  The state, which exists for the benefit of its residents and which has no money of its own, obligates someone else, its residents, to render payment to a third party.  So, essentially, a party with no resources of its own, and a responsibility to its client (the residents), against their best interests, holds them to a financial obligation that bankrupts them.

And the courts will back them up?

The Declaration of Independence says that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

If our Founders were alive today, they would be up in arms again.  Literally.

Sham Candidates and Sham Elections

A Sun-Times editorial (Who can keep sham candidates from screwing up elections?  You, February 18) sees the problem but not the solution.  Their proposed solution requires the entire voting populace to become political aficionados to see through the chicanery of our political leaders. 

An easier solution not requiring the cooperation of millions of people is to demand that elections actually seek to know the will of the people.  A worthy goal at that.

The point of the sham candidate is that we actually allow people to win elections who don’t have at least 50% of the vote.  Really.  In a three-way race, a candidate can win that election with as little as 34% of the vote.  And we allow this?

Why aren’t our newspapers up in arms over this?  They like to think of themselves as the guardians of the people.  They reward us everyday with their wisdom on how to better our society.  They should be leading the charge here.

Our entire political system and our country as a whole suffers because of the limited choices we have at election time.  A main reason for this is that our system makes more than 2 candidates actually a hindrance to democracy rather than an asset.

The answer is ranked choice voting.  Even runoffs are inadequate, as we saw in the last Chicago mayoral election, where the runoff candidates had less that 1 in 5 of the total votes.  There’s no time to waste on this.  Half the Democratic Presidential candidates dropped out without anyone ever knowing their real chances for victory because of this.  We have to do better than this.

children voting (again)

A Tribune reader (Many youths are politically aware, February 17) says that 18 year olds should be allowed to vote, because “many of our young people are more politically aware and astute than many of our older citizens.”  Yet our society insists that in general these same people don’t have the maturity, knowledge, and experience to buy cigarettes, alcohol, and guns.

Those older citizens have lived for years with the consequences of the policies that our political leaders have put into place.  Those young people have not had to find careers, pay bills, pay taxes, get insurance, buy homes, and shoulder the responsibilities of raising a family.  Those older citizens may not know all the names, but they can tell better when a politician is offering more than they can deliver or proposing things that only offer short-term answers and long-term consequences.

Yes, 18 years olds are eligible to enter the military.  And they will not be required to do critical analysis of contradictory information and provide recommendations.  They will just need to follow orders.  

The voting age was only lowered to 18, because we were fighting a war that we weren’t trying to win, and we were drafting 18 year olds to fight it.   If you want to allow any military personnel to buy cigarettes, alcohol, and guns, I can live with that.  And I think they should be able to vote as well.

But if someone thinks that young people in general should be allowed to vote but not buy cigarettes, alcohol, and guns, then I think that’s what they call cognitive dissonance.

Of course, there are exceptions to everything, but I don’t think anybody wants to create standardized, written, or oral exams to determine who is mature enough to do these things.  So they settle for laws that apply to everyone.

shooting children

I grieve with these parents whose kids were shot over the weekend.  Nobody should have kids who get shot. 

The answer to this is so simple, but our country has turned its back on it over and over.

Contrary to the common thinking, it’s not a gun problem.  Hell, we’ve always had millions of guns in our country.  You could buy a gun in a hardware store like you were buying a screwdriver.  There were no FOID cards or background checks.  We used to have gun clubs in our public schools.  The schools were not locked down.  There were no security checkpoints at airports or ballparks.  We felt safe.  We were safe.  Now we don’t feel safe anywhere.

Our nation was always a nation that believed in God.  It was founded on the belief in unalienable rights, not government-given rights.  And those rights came from God.  A secular country cannot give you unalienable rights, because in a secular country there is no higher power than the government.

We taught our kids that human beings were created in the image of God and intrinsically valuable.  We taught them The Ten Commandments, Thou shalt not kill, Love your neighbor as yourself, and Do unto others as you would have other do unto you.  And guess what?  It worked. 

Now we tell our kids that the human race is an accident of nature and that we just need to tolerate each other.  It’s not working.

freedom of speech in public schools

So, a high school teacher was removed from his job for telling a girl to “go back to your country.”

When I was in history class a long time ago in Chicago, the teacher was talking I think about the Holocaust when a student made a comment, and the teacher said, “Get out, you son of a bitch.”  The teacher was Jewish, the student German.  Is that relevant?  I don’t know.

What might surprise people today is that nobody reported the incident.  I doubt anybody even thought about it.  What was there to report?

I think political correctness has made not hurting people’s feelings the highest virtue to the detriment of our society.  Everybody has to be so careful of anything they say that they are afraid to say anything, and so nothing gets said.  And that’s not the way our country is supposed to be. 

Our country was based on a belief in unalienable rights.  The very first Amendment to our Constitution states that Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech.”  Abridging, from the Webster dictionary of that time, meant “to deprive; to cut off from; followed by of; as to abridge one of his rights, or enjoyments.” 

Nobody is saying it’s alright to yell “Fire” in a crowded theatre.  That would be covered by other laws anyway.  But expressing disapproval for somebody’s behavior? 

The Founders would gladly err on the side of freedom rather than have somebody restrict someone else’s freedom, because they didn’t like what was being said.  The Bill of Rights says nothing about a person having a right not to have their feelings hurt. 

I think our country has simply gone crazy. 

good parenting

The Sun-Times ran a major article (Great athlete, better father, February 13) which instead of resolving and answering questions actually raises them.

A prominent athlete is praised by the author, because he is supporting his daughter who has declared herself to be transgender. 

I am a parent.  You love your kids unconditionally.  That’s what parents are supposed to do. 

But raising kids is more than just providing an unconditionally supportive home life.  Children need instruction, guidance, our superior wisdom. 

The daughter in question is 12 years old.  Very soon, if she hasn’t started already, she will be turning into a woman.  But she, what, believes that she is a man, a boy?  Here she will have breasts and monthly periods, and her parents, in supporting her, are going to be confirming her beliefs that she is a boy? 

How is this helpful?  When she goes to the beach, if she goes to the beach, how will she dress?  As a boy or a girl?

A parent can still unconditionally love their children while trying to guide them in paths less strewn with troubles. 

Reparations

Willie Wilson, the former mayoral candidate and business entrepreneur, penned “An Open Letter to Citizens of Illinois,” an appeal for reparations to the descendants of slavery in America (February 6).

Not being one myself, I’m sure there are those who will suggest I have no right to even comment on this, but we need more conversation on this, not less.

Very soon after the Civil Rights Act was passed, which was passed particularly for those same descendants of slavery in our country, President Lyndon Johnson and Congress gave us The Great Society.  The modern welfare system as we know it.  This also was passed with these same descendants of slavery in mind.

In addition, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson wrote executive orders introducing affirmative action to our country, originally to ban discrimination in hiring but soon to morph into proactively hiring people who were considered as previously having been discriminated against.

And those of us who have watched the government in action know that a program of reparations will morph into something far beyond what it was designed for.  Around that same time as the Civil Rights Acts and The Great Society, our immigration system was changed to favor non-whites almost exclusively over whites.  In meting out reparations, the government will not take the time and effort to determine who indeed are these descendants of slavery and who are those whose family came here well after the fact.

Around that same time too, something else happened in America. 

Our nation was founded on the belief in unalienable rights given to us by God, things we could do without the government’s permission, regulation, or interference.  Now rights are things that the government is required to give people, and that essentially explains why our federal government is $23 trillion in debt.  Our government is driven to spend as much money as possible to solve every problem, meet every need, and soothe every wound. 

If people are not satisfied that all this is not specifically mentioned as amends for past crimes, then I suggest kindly that that time has passed.

The Equal Rights Amendment

The Equal Rights Amendment is in the news again.  It finally got enough states to pass it, but there was a time limit on when this was supposed to have been done, and that is long past.  So, it has been suggested to try it again.

The idea of equal rights sounds so enlightened, so mature, so right, yet I would suggest that it would not be enlightened and mature and right to rush out and pass this thing.

Beware of blanket rules that seem to apply in every situation.  Life isn’t usually that simple.

In an era of equal rights, you have to ask how this will affect all those places where we currently distinguish between the sexes.  The courts will probably call any such distinguishing as discrimination. 

Can we really have women’s sports, women’s colleges, women’s organizations if everything is equal and discrimination is outlawed?  I have been going to some events sponsored by the League of Women Voters.  Would that organization even be legal under the ERA? 

The problem with the Democratic primaries

I am not a Democrat, but I still feel bad for what I see is the lunacy going on now in the Democratic primaries.

Two states, two of our smallest states, have cast their votes in the Democratic primary, and already half of their candidates have dropped out of the race.  Really?

When you have a lot of candidates, the wrong thing to do is to ask people to pick just one.  It tells you nothing about which candidates have the most support or who is the best candidate. 

Sanders won New Hampshire with 26% of the vote, 1 out of 4.  That could mean that 3 out of 4 didn’t want him at all. 

Yang got 2% of the vote and dropped out.  Maybe 60% of the voters liked him but didn’t think he would have a chance against the big boys, so they gave their vote to a big name.

These are questions that the current method of choosing a candidate won’t answer but should. 

In a primary, voters should name their first choice and then another 4 or 5 that they could support.   THAT will tell you who should win the primary.

The difference between conservatives and progressives and why it matters

In political discussions, choosing your words carefully will often determine the outcome.

A recent reader (Reactionary Trump interested more in power than in architectural style, February 9) suggests that we refer to conservatives as reactionaries.  This shifts the focus from what conservatives are for to what they are against and implies that they act more from emotion and feelings rather than from sound reasoning. 

Conservatives believe that history can teach us a lot about what works and what doesn’t work, what is good and what is not good.  The Founders, for example, were astute students of history, and they knew and understood the strengths and weaknesses of possibly every major political system in history.  In the Federalist Papers, where they make the case for our Constitution, they often analyze political systems of the past, most of which people today have no knowledge of at all.

Conservatives believe that the Founders got it right.  Problems that exist today with our system are not inherent problems but acquired ones, like an instrument that falls out of tune.  It just needs to be brought back to how it was supposed to work.

Progressives believe that the Founders were highly flawed and got it all wrong.  Heck, everybody in the past got it wrong, and we’re here now to set it straight, because we know better.  We’re here to fix what everybody else in the past got wrong.

The problem with Progressivism is that they think there is nothing to learn from the past, so we’re back to learning from trial and error.  The problem with that is that it’s often impossible to go back to the start.  We can see that today in countries around the world that have failed systems, but there is little hope of correcting them.

fair voting districts

The Tribune printed a letter calling for fair legislative maps (Illinois needs fair legislative maps, February 7). 

I agree with the writer’s sentiments.  I just don’t think she has the right answer.  There are a number of groups fighting for the same thing, but I think they are settling for anything, just because it is there, and the time is short, rather than on finding the best solution.

We all know the abuses and faults of gerrymandering:  Candidates are discouraged from running.  Voters are discouraged from voting.  Politicians in office don’t even have to worry about campaigning. 

Essentially, maps are drawn either to concentrate the members of one group into as few districts as possible or spread them over as many districts as possible.  Concentrating members into a district can ensure that a member of that group gets elected, as in minority districts.  But the same dynamic works for getting Democrats elected over Republicans.  Or vice versa.

Spreading members of a group over many districts dilutes their political power, so that a political party loses, or a minority group doesn’t get a minority member elected.  Though I would argue that it is better to have said minority in a lot of districts rather than a few, because ultimately, I think they would have more political power, because they would have more leaders who are accountable to them.

But Fair Maps to me isn’t the best solution here.  For one, they want competitive maps.  Does that mean that every district should have equal numbers Republican and Democrat?  So every election the district can swing back and forth, and every election in that district half the voters don’t feel represented right.  To do that, they would still need to draw convoluted districts ripe for political manipulation.  e.g. creating a majority black district to ensure a black winner is also creating a
Democratic district. 

To get a fair map, the most important thing and the simplest solution is to not make public any demographics of the constituents.  Just follow natural boundaries and municipal boundaries as much as possible.  You will end up with some districts that are predominantly Republican or Democrat, and so they should be. 

But trying to move district lines around for whatever purpose you want will not remove manipulation or convoluted districts.  You will only trade one problem for another.

creation and evolution

Somebody on a forum is going to speak for 15-20 minutes in a public school on evolution and creation.  He wanted suggestions on what to say.  These were my suggestions:

I think you are trying to cover way too much in your time frame and not the best arguments.  Focus on the few indisputable insurmountable arguments. 

What would I focus on?

1)      The fine-tuning of earth.  There are at least 25 factors (I have heard that number has reached 100) that must be exact for life to form on earth.  It’s not that life is inevitable, or likely, given the presence of water, but why life exists at all.

2)      If evolution is unaided random mutations, then everything alive today would be in some transition form.  But what we see is everything appearing to be in a finished state.  Everything.  Remember, it took millions of years to form lungs, and fingernails, and nobody was organizing it.  So there should be all kinds of things in the process of forming as we speak, on everything.

3)      Scientists have studied mutations.  They are routinely harmful.  Evolution assumes that most are always beneficial. 

4)      Order requires intelligence.  If you went to the moon and found a computer, or even the words John loves Susan written in the dust, you would say that somebody has been here.  Life is infinitely more complex than anything like those.

5)      Sex.  Originally all living things were self-reproducing.  Evolution is asking us to believe that over millions of years, different organisms were randomly developing complementary reproductive systems that these organisms would immediately use when they were ready, and self-reproductive systems would simply vanish away.

children voting

I understand your passion for getting young people more involved in politics.  (Young Americans will soon have it all.  It's time they vote., February 5)  Politics affects everything and everyone.

Yet all across our country, the legal age for smoking, drinking, and buying guns is 21 or soon to be 21.

Our country more and more is thinking that people under the age of 21 are too immature, inexperienced, or not knowledgeable enough to make wise choices about the use of tobacco, alcohol, and guns.  Yet the legal age to vote is still only 18.

If a person is considered not mature or knowledgeable enough to make certain important decisions for themselves, are they really mature and knowledgeable enough to make important decisions for our country? 

We lowered the age to 18 for voting, because we were fighting a war and drafting 18 year olds to fight it.  Those days are long gone, and a lot of people are now seeing these same people as being still children who need adult supervision.

I find the two stances incompatible, and I think we are wrong to insist on the one measure and not act on the other.  I don’t believe the age for voting should ever be lower than the legal age for buying cigarettes, beer, or guns.  I say we should either repeal the 26^th Amendment to the Constitution or these other laws restricting these behaviors.

schools, integration, and busing

If a school in a white neighborhood is mostly white, it is not segregated, and if a school in a black neighborhood is mostly black, it is not segregated either. 

Segregation is when blacks and whites who live in the same neighborhood have to attend different schools. 

Integration for the sake of integration cannot be justified, especially when schools, and cities, and states are running continual deficits in spending. 

What is needed is for funding of public schools to be done through the income tax rather than through property taxes. 

Property taxes are absurd, because you are taxing fixed assets with no consideration for a person’s ability to pay them.  Property taxes for schools are absurd, because poorer areas obviously will have a lot less money available for schools.

Let the state determine a basic dollar amount for a sound education per student and then raise that through the income tax.  If a district wants to raise money beyond that however they choose, they should be free to do so.

But spending millions of dollars shuffling kids around to different schools, because white kids have better schools is equally absurd.  Stop funding schools through property taxes, and you’ll have your better schools.