Nevada shouldn’t copy Arizona’s racist law
To the editor:
State Assemblyman Chad Christensen, who is currently lost in the Republican pack seeking to unseat Harry Reid, seems to think pushing an Arizona-style immigration bill will vault him to the top. But, like Arizona, Nevada doesn't need this kind of law.
The justification for the bill in Arizona is the increase in drug violence coming over the border. But crime statistics for illegal immigrants have not risen -- and in some cases have gone down.
The drug trade, on the other hand, is skyrocketing crimes between rival cartels along the border. It has nothing to do with immigration. That's just a smoke screen to pursue a racist agenda by certain white supremacy groups who wrote the Arizona law.
The unintended consequences for Arizona will be a great rise in non-drug-related crimes. The police need the assistance of the community to be their eyes and ears for criminal behavior. If members of the community are afraid to call the police out of fear they will be deported, the criminals take over.
The law is not needed in Arizona, and it sure isn't needed here in Nevada.
David Black-Downes
Las Vegas
Holiday debacle
To the editor:
I totally agreed with your Saturday editorial about the debacle that resulted when some Bay Area high school students were told by an administrator, Miguel Rodriguez, that they could not wear shirts with the American flag on May 5 because they might offend Hispanic students celebrating Cinco de Mayo.
Let's reverse the situation and, instead of having an assistant principal of Hispanic descent telling Americans this, let's say the assistant principal had been African-American or Caucasian and told Hispanics to wear their shirts bearing the colors of their ancestors' country inside out so as not to offend Americans. The first word uttered by the Hispanics would have been "racism" -- and that is exactly what this is about.
Hispanics are complaining that Arizona's new law requiring documentation to prove legal status in the United States is racist. I disagree.
If you knowingly and willingly drink enough alcohol to be legally drunk, and then drive and are pulled into a drunken driving checkpoint, you are arrested. You broke the law. Likewise, if you knowingly and willingly break the law and enter our country illegally, you have no rights. You aren't a citizen and should be deported.
Protest in any other country and you are jailed.
If you don't like American laws in America, go home.
Kathleen M. Stone
Pahrump
No experience
To the editor:
President Obama just nominated someone who has no experience as a judge to be the next member of the U.S. Supreme Court.
That should neither surprise nor upset those Americans who, not long ago, elected someone who never had any chief executive experience to be president of the United States.
Recommending someone who has never been a judge to be a Supreme Court justice is akin to awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to someone who hasn't done anything significant for world peace. Unfortunately, having exemplary qualifications and job experience have never been the most important criteria to winning some federal jobs.
It should take more than just staying in a Holiday Inn Express to qualify for some careers.
Steven G. Hayes Sr.
Las Vegas
Lawsuit lottery
To the editor:
I think I will sue a local dairy company. They distribute multi-use containers of milk (quart, half gallon and gallon containers). I drank out of a glass (a transfer system from container to recipient) that my host had used to serve another person milk that came out of the same container, and I got sick. I should make millions.
Why not? Is that any different than the drug company distributing containers of a drug and some unscrupulous doctor (being dumb, cheap or too lazy to use clean ones) using the same syringe and needle (transfer system from bottle to recipient), infecting the second recipient (Saturday Review-Journal)?
It isn't the container that is responsible, it is the user. I will never understand how the jury could find the drug company guilty for irresponsible use of their product by a professional. Isn't anyone responsible for their own actions anymore?
Don't forget to sue the distributor and the bottle maker.
Wen Baldwin
Henderson
Leave me alone
To the editor:
I want less government in my life. I want government to provide a military defense, secure borders, roads that benefit all Americans and laws to protect us from thieves. I want government to serve me, and not me to serve the government.
No more special interest deals. Don't make my taxes pay for abortion, don't make my church and school have to teach my kids that they should be gay. Don't tell me how much I have to pay for gas. Don't tell me what news channel I can listen to.
Let me succeed or fail, and let me bear the consequence. Let me spend my money on what I want, and you spend yours on what you want. I don't want to bail out Greece or $200,000-per-year firefighters.
John Lawrence
Needles, Calif.
