Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/652314
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: 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 no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS By Michael Reagan If you've seen the excellent movie "Spotlight," you know what it takes for a newspaper to expose the sexual abuse of children by priests in the Cath- olic Church. "Spotlight," which won the Academy Award for best pic- ture of 2015, is the true story of how the Boston Globe's in- vestigative Spotlight team un- covered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover- up within the Boston Archdi- ocese. Challenging one of the most powerful institutions in Bos- ton, digging up the ugly truth and detailing it on Page 1 took a strong mix of principle and guts by the Globe's editor, Marty Baron. Many journalists and edi- tors around the country before him had heard similar charges about priests repeatedly mo- lesting children in their cities and towns, but they had done nothing. The Globe's in-depth in- vestigation, which began in 2001, made headlines around the world, shamed the Bos- ton Archdiocese and shook the entire Catholic Church to its core. It set off a series of exposes in other cities that proved that the problem the Catho- lic Church — my church — was having with serial pedophiles was nothing new or restricted to Boston. Soon after, the L.A. Times, my hometown paper, showed that for decades the hierar- chy of the Los Angeles diocese "plotted to keep law enforce- ment from learning that chil- dren had been molested at the hands of priests." In 2005 and 2011 grand jury probes found rampant child abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese, which included moving known pedophiles around from one unsuspecting parish to another. What went on in L.A. and Philly fit the pattern described in the 2012 HBO documentary, "Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God." As I wrote in 2013, that powerful documentary proved that from Ireland to Wiscon- sin "the church's bishops and cardinals have a long and dis- gusting history of protect- ing pedophile priests, ignor- ing children's allegations of sexual abuse, paying the par- ents of victims to keep quiet and keeping the sex crimes of priests secret from law en- forcement." We can now add the dio- cese of Altoona, Pennsylva- nia., to the Church's list of sins against children. The headlines last week in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette told a familiar story: "Grand jury: Altoona diocese con- cealed sex abuse of hundreds of children by priests." According to a graphic 147-page report by a state grand jury, at least 50 Cath- olic priests and other church members in the western Penn- sylvania town had molested and raped hundreds of kids between the 1940s and the 1980s. What the pedophiles did to kids at summer camp, in their own homes and in Altoona's cathedral was not only cov- ered up by their bishops and their immediate superiors, it also was abetted by judges, sheriffs and other law enforce- ment officials in two counties who knew about the abuse. The grand jury report said the sleazy church-state con- spiracy to avoid public scandal and protect known and dan- gerous pedophiles in Altoona amounted to the "soul mur- der" of the victims. As someone who was mo- lested by a day camp coun- selor in third grade, I under- stand what that term means all too well. The most frustrating part of the Altoona investigation, which is ongoing, is that the abusers and their enablers — though known — are never go- ing to be indicted or punished. Some of the guilty are dead. Some of their victims were too traumatized to testify. But in most cases it's too late to prosecute because the statute of limitations for criminal and civil cases that was in effect at the time of the crimes was only two or three years. The law has been changed. Victims now have until age 30 to sue for child abuse in civil court and in some cases are able to file criminal charges until they turn 50. But Pennsylvania should join other states and do what its grand jury report proposes — completely remove all stat- utes of limitations for child abuse. If the Catholic Church is sincerely sorry for its sins, and truly interested in preventing future victims of pedophila, it will publicly support that idea. MichaelReaganisthesonof President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant and the founder of the email service reagan.com. Send comments to reagan@caglecartoons.com. Commentary Let's remove time cap on sex abuse charges Cartoonist's take Continuing our custom of reg- istering alarm over the possibil- ity of Trump being approved by the GOP as being on their ticket for President, consider this: He is still get- ting delegates be- cause he appar- ently cannot be ig- nored. He is in the news. All the news. His every sound bite is presented to the public hourly. He has dis- covered the way to manipulate the media. He has dismissed his rivals with nicknames. He prob- ably caused Jeb Bush, the most level-headed candidate, to retire from the race after being dubbed, by Trump, as a "low energy in- dividual." You would think this 3 times married buffoon with "a raft of Democratic pals" would seem to be doomed to fail as a right wing Republican, yet he is drawing votes to the GOP in re- cord numbers. A writer in TIME has charac- terized Trump by stating, "Fame is like tinted glass on a passing limo. It shields more than it re- veals. Fame reflects our own im- age at us…what we desire, what we fear, what we thrill to. You can study celebrities every day, watch every YouTube, read ev- ery Facebook post (think the fas- cination with the Kardashian/ Jenner family), and still wonder: What are they really like? And your answer will always say as much about you as it does about them." The next time you hear some- one say, "Well, you have to give Trump credit for…" cut the speaker off and finish his sen- tence, "Yes, he knows how to get attention, but that does not make the him worthy of becoming President." ••• Speaking of getting atten- tion, the proponents of splitting our state into a northern por- tion collectively known as Jeffer- son, announced "delivery in Sac- ramento on June 6th of thou- sands" of signatures." The actual count turned out to be 63 names scattered across 15 counties. ••• When the Black Bear restau- rant failed on Antelope Boulevard several years ago, the property was on the market for a long time until resurrected a visitor center for our area. This may not have been the highest and best use of the property, but at least it took the building off the market. Then when Kentucky Fried Chicken went down across the street, we were apprehensive that it too would stand vacant and be a com- mercial blight on our fair city. However, it has taken on new life as a coffee house. What house? The sign high atop the premises does not say. It merely contains as logo of the firm. It consists of an outline of a woman with a star as a crown, and that is it. This turns out to be a tastefully decorated Starbucks all in dark and inviting lighting in the interior with a se- ries of foods never envisioned by the firm when they began merely hawking coffee. Amazing market- ing strategy. If the opponents of Trump could manage such a campaign destined to consign the obnox- ious fellow to the graveyard of failed candidates, we might yet save this coming election. ••• I cannot remember a time when so many real estate proj- ects have not closed in a timely fashion. It has been no fault of the sellers, the buyers or the es- crow offices, but often exter- nal factors which have not come to fruition and allowed closure. Maybe it is a sign of the times. Perhaps there is uncertainty in the air such as the upcom- ing elections, that gives every- one pause. I would feel better if we had more experienced candi- dates at the ready. ••• Sources say there are approx- imately 7 billion human inhabit- ants of this earth, and they con- duct their lives in one or several of about 7,000 languages — mul- tilingualism is a global norm. And although precise data is not available, by the end of this cen- tury perhaps as many as 50 per- cent of the world's language will, at best, exist only in archives and on recordings. If historical rate of loss is averaged, a language dies about every four months. If so, how does this impact upon us in our fair city? It may mean we are slowly becoming One World, and that the troubles of the world become our troubles as well. Per- haps they are already and we can no longer afford an isolationist stance. That's what our leaders are for. To alert us to today's One World and how to respond to it without conflict but with com- passion. That said, which of our cur- rent candidates for President will be able to handle that monumen- tal decision? I do not know. I only know who is not so equipped. ••• Consider this: Those of you who worry about Democrats ver- sus Republicans — relax, here is our real problem. In a Purdue University classroom, they were discussing the qualifications to be President of the United States. It was pretty sim- ple. The candidate must be a nat- ural born citizen at least 35 years of age. However, one girl in the class immediately started in on how unfair it was of the requirement to be a natural born citizen. In short, her opinion was that this requirement prevented many ca- pable individuals from becoming president. The class was taking it in and letting her rant, and not many jaws hit the floor when she wrapped up her argument by stating, "What makes a natural born citizen any more qualified to lead this country than one born by C-section?" ••• A guy's driving down an old country road and he sees a farmer in his orchard feeding his pigs, but what he's doing is he's taking one pig at a time, holding him up, letting him eat an ap- ple out of the tree, and then set- ting him down before picking up another pig and letting him eat an apple. So the guy pulls over and walks up to the farmer and he says, "Wouldn't it save time to just knock all the apples on the ground and let the pigs eat them all at once?" And the farmer, con- fused, looks at him and says, "What's time to a pig?" Robert Minch is a lifelong resident of Red Bluff, former columnist for the Corning Daily Observer and Meat Industry magazine and author of the "The Knocking Pen." He can be reached at rminchandmurray@ hotmail.com. I say Registering alarm over the possibility of a President Trump What the pedophiles did to kids at summer camp, in their own homes and in Altoona's cathedral was not only covered up by their bishops and their immediate superiors, it also was abetted by judges, sheriffs and other law enforcement officials in two counties who knew about the abuse. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. It would be nice if the Sheriff's Dept. had a reverse 911like the city. We heard and saw the helicopters for 45minutes. We needed to leave but were afraid to as we didn't know what was going on. Kelly Halvorsen Heise: On police searching for burglary suspect near Noble Oaks subdivision. Back in the late '70s every pickup had a gun rack and at least a rifle and a shotgun in the cab, some kids even brought guns on the school bus from Manton to spend the weekend in town jumping ponds for ducks. What happened to my country? Knee jerk warm and fuzzy liberals from San Jose and their bay area politics? E.B. George: On schools being locked down because of a man with a gun in the area. Robert Minch StateandNational Assemblyman James Galla- gher, 2060 Talbert Drive, Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 895-4217, http://ad03.asmrc.org/ Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, senator. nielsen@senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sacramento 95814, 916 445-2841, fax 916 558- 3160, governor@governor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug La- Malfa, 507 Cannon House Of- fice Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202 225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Fein- stein, One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415 393- 0707, fax 415 393-0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, 1700 Montgomery St., San Fran- cisco 94111, 510 286-8537, fax 202 224-0454 Local Tehama County Supervisors, 527-4655 District 1, Steve Chamblin, Ext. 3015 District 2, Candy Carlson, Ext. 3014 District 3, Dennis Garton, Ext. 3017 YOUR OFFICIALS OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Friday, March 11, 2016 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6