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4A Daily News – Saturday, January 12, 2013 Opinion DAILY NEWS RED BLUFF TEHAMA COUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 Greg Stevens, Publisher gstevens@redbluffdailynews.com Chip Thompson, Editor editor@redbluffdailynews.com Editorial policy The Daily News opinion is expressed in the editorial. The opinions expressed in columns, letters and cartoons are those of the authors and artists. Letter policy The Daily News welcomes letters from its readers on timely topics of public interest. All letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and cannot exceed two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section of those submitted will be considered for publication. Letters will be edited. Letters are published at the discretion of the editor. 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Dave Iverson, Red Bluff Congressional salaries Editor: Last Sunday on national television, Face The Nation, Nancy Pelosi said she thinks congress members should be paid like CEO's, meaning in the millions. Is she kidding? Absolutely not. How would they base their pay comes to my mind? Congress appropriates money to some really ridiculous projects, even when we have to borrow to do so. Everything they enact is poorly run, over-regulated, and many times just plain stupid. They approve money in billions of dollars, and never oversee that it's used for that purpose and much is stolen by our elected officials, etc. One thing they're good at is raising our taxes so they can spend like drunken sailors. This never ends. Many times the crooks are found out, nothing happens. Remember the congressman who hid money in his freezer? $90,000. He was re-elected. Obama's second-term is going to be an eye-opener to to hit the wall and then maybe us all. Here we are in the middle something will happen. Too of the month and the hand- bad they won't suffer as much writing is on the wall. Agenda as the rest of us. Acorn too, still getting tax21? Ban the two-term limit payer money even for presidency, after they were that's been tried Your exposed teaching before, but it may young women the happen this time. prostitution business. Obamacare reguStrip Club women lations are so comgetting subsidies even plicated, many don't know how to operate under though they work. This counthem. This is only the begin- try has gone to hell. I can't ning. Healthcare premiums even imagine living a life like some of those people. I, pergoing down? Not so. It doesn't surprise me, this sonally, would rather be dead community organizer and his than live the low life some bandits don't have any sense have. We've had bad times at all. They're so bloated with before, we have to keep fightpower they can't see the dam- ing, and when the money runs out and even the poor and lazy age they're doing. They're so focused on suffer, maybe they'll wake up opposing the other side, we'll and pay attention. Real life be in limbo forever if this sometimes teaches what is keeps us. It's not about help- real and the truth. We can ing our country, it's about get- only hope. Bernice Cressy, ting their way. Cottonwood A gang of bullies. We have Turn Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN — Dan Logue, 1550 Humboldt Road, Ste. 4, Chico, CA 95928, 530-895-4217 STATE SENATOR — Awaiting results of special election GOVERNOR — Jerry Brown, State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 5583160; E-mail: governor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Doug LaMalfa 506 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, 202-2253076. U.S. SENATORS — Dianne Feinstein (D), One Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 393-0707. Fax (415) 3930710. Barbara Boxer (D), 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94111; (510) 286-8537. Fax (202) 224-0454. Commentary Finding a new tone about Newtown Editor's note: This is the first in a three-part series. I had a chance to skim the Daily News for the two weeks we were experiencing winter, the holidays, and grandsons in Wisconsin and Minnesota; I was glad to see that the "flag issue" was less prominent in the various letters to the editor. Taking its place in volume are responses to the terrible event in Newtown, CN on December 14. Those responses reminded me of something that H.L. Mencken once said: "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." Various reactions to Newtown are good illustrations of his point. Just before we left on vacation, a friend of mine told me she was upset that instead of giving us time to grieve and pull together, various proponents of "solutions" are asking us to take sides rather than think through the issues involved. Indeed, there has been a lot of pulling from one side or the other about how to prevent such tragedies. As an example, we received a "Christmas poem" in an email from a relative in which Jesus is welcoming the souls of the massacred children from Newtown with the proclamation "Let My power and presence re-enter this land! May this country be delivered from the hands of fools! I'm taking back my nation. I'm taking back my schools." I wondered if this was the same Jesus whom we proclaim the Prince of Peace and about whom we sing "He has the Whole World in His Hands." The evil of that Friday morning unleashed pent up anger about seemingly tangential issues, obviously held at bay until just the right event; my guess is that much of the anger had been pent up since the 2008 election. A local wordmonger, neglecting the spirit of the season, and assuming a position of demagoguery, chimed in that he "condemn[ed] President Obama for never shedding a tear over dead Mexicans that foreseeably [sic] resulted from his Fast and Furious gunrunning scheme." It is good that all of us do not claim the omniscience that wordmonger assumes, that we are not so full of enough selfrighteousness to be so judgmental, and that we hesitate to display the buffoonery of telling everyone to buy more guns. Even worse comments than his were posted on the Internet by angry football fans when our President read the list of the children murdered at Newtown. Those fans wanted to see a football game, not an African American memorializing child victims. Apparently those angry posters were happy watching people of various races play football, but seemed to think our President didn't know "his place." Guns, more or fewer? Beyond those kinds of comments there was the strong tug from those who wanted more gun control and those who thought we did not need more control, as if those were the only two options for dealing with what happened in Newtown and elsewhere. I want to make it clear that I do not believe that gun control alone is the answer to what happened in Newtown and other places; nevertheless the arguments for and against gun control have overshadowed our ability to deal with all the essential issues about guns, violence, and mental health. The current arguments "gun rights" legislation The Second reminded me of someAmendment, which thing that happened to had been fairly well me a couple of years understood for almost ago when I made the 200 years in spite of remark that the Second its grammatical comAmendment was writplexity, was persisten over 200 years ago, tently attacked by the and we are still trying to NRA by its paid understand what it researchers and means. That innocent lawyers. The Second remark put me on the Amendment was NRA watch list! Being eventually reinteron that list is more a Joe preted by the courts comment about the as an individual right picayune nature of the to possess arms when NRA and its petty and the Supreme Court narrow minded paranoia overturned a Washthan it is about what I said or any threat I posed to the ington DC law in 2008. So far that reinterpretation is about NRA. I had thought I had done a lit- hand guns, but it may logically tle research, including reading be extended to other weapons of the Bill of Rights, before I made war. There is a fringe group that that mild observation; even staunch conservative Supreme insists that the Second AmendCourt nominee, Robert Bork, ment is included in the Bill of who preached "orginalism", said Rights to assure the citizenry the the Second Amendment works right of armed rebellion if neces"to guarantee the right of states sary. Kevin Williamson of the to form militia, not for individu- National Review claims "The als to bear arms." Warren Burg- purpose of having citizens armed er, former Chief Justice of the with paramilitary weapons is to Supreme Court, said the NRA's allow them to engage in paramilinterpretation of the Second itary actions. There is no legitiAmendment was "one of the mate exception to the Second greatest pieces of frauds, I Amendment for military-style repeat the word 'fraud', on the weapons, because military-style American people by special weapons are precisely what the interest groups that I have ever Second Amendment guarantees seen in my lifetime." My com- our right to keep and bear. The ment seemed pretty tame com- purpose of the Second Amendment is to secure our ability to pared to those legal scholars. The NRA has become a big oppose enemies foreign and political player; it was once a domestic, a guarantee against respected advocate of gun safety disorder and tyranny." To be continued. education and safe hunting practices. It was essentially non Joe Harrop is a retired political. In 1977 a coupe by a reactionary group changed its educator with more than 30 leadership and its focus; since years of service to the North that time it has promoted and State. He can be reached at influenced a wide variety of DrJoeHarrop@sbcglobal.net. Harrop