Other lawbreakers should step down, too
A crime is a crime, whether misdemeanor or felony. If an elected official is convicted or pleads guilty, then he or she must resign. This should not be a choice. Especially when the crime involves harm to others.
State Sen. J. Kalani English, who pleaded guilty to cocaine possession, and Rep. Dwight Takamine of Hilo, who pleaded guilty to harassing his wife, should both follow the lead of Rep. Galen Fox and resign their positions immediately.
Sexual assault, domestic violence and drug use are three of the most common and pervasive crimes in Hawaii and the subject of almost every news report. Every citizen should be outraged that there are individuals currently serving in office who are guilty of these crimes and have not been forced to step down. We need role models for our communities, not convicted criminals. Drug possession one day, a seat in the state Senate the next? Outrageous.
Kristin Paulo
Kapolei
Radicals don't do their cause any good
Anti-Bush people were out in force on the University of Hawaii campus on Wednesday morning (
Star-Bulletin, Nov. 3). As a Bush supporter I respect the responsible opponents of his policies. What upsets and galls me is the minority of his opponents (I hope it is a minority) who I call the "Hate America" radicals. They see America as the one and only "evil empire." They have no hope in change and reform in America.
Rosa Parks was one answer to these critics. One person still had hope in this country and decided to stand up for her rights as a American in 1955. She helped start the Rev. Martin Luther King's Montgomery bus boycott, which ended segregation of that city's buses and would lead to King's civil rights movement.
The radical minority see Marxism and communism as viable alternatives to America. However, they are silent or ignore the ugly side of communist nations. In China, the labor camps and prisons hold Tibetan Buddhist lamas and nuns, aged Catholic bishops, Protestant ministers, ordinary Chinese peacefully calling for democratization and the right to form unions. In North Korea we have a regime that ignored the pending famine in its country out of paranoia and arrogance and let thousands of Koreans die before they agreed to accept foreign food aid.
Some of this minority even agree with the argument of terrorists that all Americans are combatants in their holy war, so the men, women and children who died in the World Trade Center deserved to die. For such reasons I believe Middle Americans seethe with anger when some of the anti-war people speak in such inflammatory language.
Theodore Taba
Honolulu
Who needs the Supreme Court?
Harriet Miers or Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court? Who will listen to them, anyway?
Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen has been under arrest for more than three years. No charges, no trial. According to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the president needs no congressional approval to attack Syria. Your phone can be wiretapped without probable cause. The United States has a detention camp on Guantanamo.
Sure, we must appear as law-abiding citizens. Torture detainees 90 miles offshore and put others in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia; let our foreign subcontractors torture them. We're the nice guys. We declared ourselves exempt from the International Court's decisions. Who the heck cares if the world thinks otherwise or the law says we are wrong?
Do we need judges to explain what's in our Constitution? We had leaders who understood it and abided by it, but nowadays vision and hearing problems seem to prevail. What's the use of the most eloquent judge if the audience is deaf? Abolish the Supreme Court and send those judges strawberry picking.
János Samu
Kalaheo, Kauai
Don't give machetes to mental patients
As a Kaneohe resident, I don't understand why more people aren't hopping mad that a Hawaii State Hospital patient who went on a tire-slashing rampage last year was off his meds, given a machete and allowed to do yard work with little supervision ("Fugitive in police custody,"
Star-Bulletin, Oct. 30).
Where is the accountability here? Does an escaped patient have to harm someone in the community before something is done about security up there? I care deeply that unmedicated, unhinged folks can just walk out of the state hospital and into my community. Does anyone else care?
Laurie Okawa Moore
Kaneohe
Hawaiians, too, came from someplace else
While it is certainly wonderful to live in paradise, it's also very difficult. And while native Hawaiians are a unique culture, they are not unique in that -- like the rest of us who live here -- they, too, came from somewhere else. They just got here first.
The Associated Press changing its nomenclature ("News media change 'Hawaiian' distinction," Star-Bulletin, Nov. 3) shouldn't make me any less Hawaiian or someone else any more Hawaiian.
Dave Black
Lahaina
Boy, does that GOP know how to spin
The Republican spin machine -- via its mouthpiece pundits and Fox News -- bleats on about the "criminalization of politics" in the Valerie Plame debacle. Meanwhile, Tom DeLay and his lawyers launch their attempt to politicize the Texas criminal justice system by removing Judge Bob Perkins.
Is that a great political party or what?
Patrick DeBusca Jr.
Waipahu