Judge gave drunken driver a wrist slap

To the editor:

On May 5, 2007, Ronald Jayne Jr. chose to drive drunk with a blood-alcohol concentration of more than twice the legal limit. Jayne was responsible for creating the worst DUI crash in the history of Nevada in terms of the totality of death and injury to one family. Five dead, three seriously injured, 300 years of potential life obliterated with a two-ton weapon. Two of his young victims were so badly burned and disfigured they had to have closed coffins.

On May 2, Jayne was sentenced to 15 to 45 years in prison by District Judge David Wall, a sentence so lenient the walls of the Regional Justice Center blushed with shame. It was another glaring example of justice not only being blind, but deaf and dumb as well.

The violence and severity of the crime ignored, the anguished pleas of the victims' families requesting consecutive sentences for all eight counts ignored, five of the eight victims ignored via concurrent sentences.

The Dominguez family will never forget their re-victimization and abortion of justice by Judge Wall.

SANDY HEVERLY

LAS VEGAS

THE WRITER IS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF STOP DUI.

A hatchet job

To the editor:

Doug Elfman's column in the May 5 Review-Journal concerning the Sean Hannity Freedom Concert was extremely enlightening. However, it was not enlightening in the way Mr. Elfman intended. It was an editorial expression, his own opinion, and had no place in the news section.

I had the pleasure of attending the Sean Hannity Freedom Concert, and I simply did not see what he saw. The crowd was not mostly "older people." It was a reasonable sampling of the Southern Nevada population. I was especially pleased to see a number of military men and women with their kids.

Mr. Hannity was not a "jester," unless Mr. Elfman was complimenting him on his excellent sense of humor (and he wasn't). What Mr. Elfman derisively called "griping," "carping" and "baiting," I call "redress of grievances" and "freedom of assembly." They're in the First Amendment. He should look them up.

Mr. Elfman claims that "positivity was short on the supply side." He must have been at a different event. I saw plenty of positive people who were delighted to hand over good money for the experience and were, with apologies to Lee Greenwood, proud to be Americans.

Mr. Elfman's article was indeed enlightening, but it was an editorial. The editors will do well to put editorials on the editorial page, not on Page One of the news section.

As a professor of political science, I thank him for writing this piece, which I fully intend to use in class as a blatant example of journalistic bias. If my students want to know the meaning of "hatchet job," I'll direct them to Mr. Elfman's article.

JOHN HOWELL

CEDAR CITY, UTAH

Spend more, get more

To the editor:

Wednesday's editorial about withholding the pensions of public employees who commit certain felonies was on the mark ("In the clink -- yet collecting thousands").

All too often, the very people we expect to uphold the law break it. They should be forewarned that committing a felony means losing your pension.

However, there is something important about New York's Roslyn school district, which saw some of its administrators embezzle millions of dollars yet still enjoy a taxpayer-funded retirement, that was omitted. While the editorial mentioned that Roslyn is one of the highest-achieving districts in the country, it failed to give context to the large pension its imprisoned former superintendent receives.

Roslyn takes the education of its students seriously. The superintendent earns upward of $300,000 a year while the average salary for teachers is about $88,000.

They spend the money and get results. In Las Vegas, on the hand, we bicker about miniscule raises for educators. This would be funny if it weren't so sad.

Irwin Kaufman

LAS VEGAS

Gasoline prices

To the editor:

It seems rather strange to me that one gallon of gasoline from the same barrel can cost from 40 cents in Iran to $8.73 in Norway ("Driving's ups and downs," Thursday Review-Journal).

Next, let's compare the "most expensive" to the "cheapest" countries for a range of gasoline prices. It shouldn't take a Mensa membership to realize that something is out of control. For example, Egypt, at 89 cents per gallon, isn't too far from the "source."

We seem to have a "bi-modal" robbery occurring. Just think, gasoline, taken from the same 50-gallon drum, can run you from 12 cents per gallon in Venezuela to the high of $8.73 in Norway. Yes, folks, we're well on our way.

The question becomes, how long can thinking Americans sit back, be robbed and be convinced that Mother Earth is running out of Earth Mud? After sifting through the propaganda, maybe someone will wake up to find that off-shore oil and Alaskan oil is just sitting there, waiting to bail us all out.

Charles F. Carpenter

HENDERSON