Letters To The Editor

The Dallas News claims that, "letters will be edited for length, clarity and style." This one appeared on their Community Opinions page October 10, 2008, while the editor either had a day off or a hangover.

'Sin taxes' send wrong message
On returning from an early morning run to Target to pick up a few nonperishable food items and snacks for the Frisco Ballet's upcoming production of The Nutcracker, my daughter and I returned to our apartment to find lit Camel cigarette butts near our front door.
I am not a smoker. My husband, a former superintendent of public schools, used to smoke in high school and college, but he is no longer a smoker. (He was at work in Celina).
Our state uses the sin taxes placed on alcohol and tobacco to help fund public education. We as citizens need to send a strong message to Austin and tell them, "no, thank you" on the "sin tax" funding to help support public education in our state.
Are we telling our youth the only way we can pay for their deserved public education is through these types of taxes?
Cathy Burks, Frisco

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Does the reader need to know that she went to Target, what she bought, what the purchases were for and the brand of cigarette? That's just the first sentence.

Does the reader need to know the past profession of her husband or that he was in Celina at the time? That's the second sentence.

As a matter of fact, does the newspaper even need to print this letter, other than to make their readers laugh?

Blogger You Assholes

Your kangaroo court decided to block this blog because of a possible "Violation of Terms of Service." You weren't specific as to which term. There was no way for me to address the issue. Your "help" area sucks. And now you've finally decided to unblock it (good) without any indication of what was questionable.

Use a watermelon for a suppository you bunch of inbred reprobates!

Smoke-Free Dallas Nazis

Once again free enterprise faces government oppression. Remember when some Johnny-come-do-gooders wanted to tax patrons of topless bars $5 each with receipts going to a fund to aid sexual assualt victims? Rational people failed to see the correlation and that idea was deep sixed.

The Bronx Cheer Army has been attacking smoking (and smokers) since at least the 1960s. Most early battles were easily won and many victories were noble. (Smoking was once allowed on airplanes? Get real.)

But now the Crusade of the Pompousness is surrounding the castle of the last bastion of adult-only public Nemea where the world's problems are truly solved — the neighborhood bar.

Their argument is simple. Secondhand smoke kills. Frightening isn't it? Yet no one is forced to go into a bar. They're not grocery stores. Generally children are not allowed. No one is forced to work in a bar. The job requirements fit many other venues of employment. And most important of all, if there was a vast market for smoke-free bars, don't you think it would have been tapped?

Between the Nazis of Smoke-Free Dallas and the righteous indignation vigorously expressed by MADD, is the neighborhood bar on life support?

Paris Match Taliban Photo

One of the photos of the Taliban wearing French uniforms. There's outrage in the City of Lights.