Opinions Of The Month: May, 1999

Todd For President: Take a minute to check out the issues I stand for, then VOTE FOR ME!

Missionaries in Captivity: Perhaps you've read my pleas in previous OOTMs regarding the plight of 3 missionaries that were kidnapped and continue to be held hostage in Colombia. Well, I found a really good page with the whole story. Please check it out and contact your Congressman. http://www.altinet.net/~drhuber/hostag2.htm

So Slo has now been officially indicted for war crimes; 340 counts of murder stemming from seven separate massacres and for mass, forced deportation of over 740,000 people.

Great. Fantastic. So my question is:

And one other thing: Where is the indictment of Saddam Hussein? Remember when he gassed several Kurdish villages? Do remember the images of men, women, and children strewn about the streets where they fell, putrefying in the sun? Are those people's lives worth any less?

In July of 1998, Police in Houston broke down the door of Pedro Oregon Navarro's home, barged into his bathroom, and fired 33 bullets at Pedro. 12 of them connected. 9 of them entered his body from behind. 12 of the 33 bullets were shown to have had downward trajectories. According to the police, the shooting started when one of the six officers accidentally shot another officer in his bullet-proof vest, knocking him to the floor. The other officers, assuming the shot came from Pedro, opened fire. Pedro was hit three times before he turned and dropped face down on the floor. The officers continued firing as he did, shooting him nine more times in the back as he lay on the floor until he was thoroughly, obviously dead. As it turns out, one wild-west-gunslinger-wannabe in particular, David R. Barrera, shot 24 of the 33 shots.

A recently arrested drug suspect told them they would find drugs there. There were no drugs and no evidence of any drugs or paraphernalia found in the house. The officers took the suspect to the house, made him knock on the door, and when the door opened they rushed in. The search was illegal. The officers should not have been there. And as a result of this, the officers' poor training, and David R. Barrera's overzealous drive to see how much lead he could put into a human body, an innocent man is dead.

All of the officers were fired, but a grand jury no-billed all the officers except for indicting one on a charge of misdemeanor criminal trespass. In other words,

There are already laws and Constitutional amendments that prohibit what these officers did. There is no excuse. If elected President, I will push to have the case reopened and to have murder indictments handed down. If none of the other officers is indicted, I will at least guarantee that David R. Barrera makes it into a courtroom to face his peers for what he did. I will also push to have District Attorney John B. Holmes Jr. step down and I will see to it that he does not enjoy another day in any office that allows him to perpetuate a "good ole boy" network that shields those whose commit such heinous offenses. In doing so, I will send a clear message to all police agencies: Do it by the book or you are breaking the law, and if you break the law, you will be treated as any other criminal would be treated. Period.

Why am I writing about Al Gore's spine? Because he HAS ONE. He cast the tie-breaking vote that passed the recent gun control bill in the House of Representatives. Kudos to Al. You'll make a respectable adversary in my bid for the office of President.

Just two short weeks after the Columbine High School massacre, the NRA has the audacity to show up and hold a convention there in Denver. Charlton Heston, the NRA President, wore a little blue and silver ribbon in memory of the Littleton victims and reprimanded the media for casting the nation's largest gun advocacy organization "as the villain." He said, "That is not our role in American society and we will not be forced to play it."

Mr. Heston is living a lie if he thinks the NRA is not the villian. The 8,000 people that showed up to protest the NRA meeting would seem to agree with me.

The meeting was held in spite of the fact that local leaders told them to stay away. "I don't know how many times you have to call and tell them they're not welcome," said Denver Mayor Wellington Webb.

In other words, the NRA doesn't care about you. They don't care that your children died at the business end of a semi-automatic weapon. They don't care that their fanaticism for burying any and all controls on access to guns resulted in the wrong people having free access to whatever weapons they chose and using those weapons to destroy your children like so many moths before a flame thrower. The NRA doesn't care, because if they did, they would admit that the guns that are widely available now represent a massive overload in personal firepower.

The NRA doesn't care about your children.

The Chinese are upset because NATO missiles hit the Chinese embassy. There have been massive, semi-violent, state-organized and sanctioned demonstrations outside the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

You are in a WAR ZONE. If I got hit in the side of the head by a baseball while sitting in my living room, I'd be justifiably upset. If, on the other hand, I was hit by a baseball while sitting in the middle of a batting cage, well, I'd have to be some kind of moron to say anything about it at all.

So. To the morons running China, putting their citizens in harm's way so they can use this sort of situation as some kind of political chip in the game of human rights and arms control, to the morons who are demanding that those responsible for making this mistake be harshly punished in public view, kiss my butt. And to anyone else in Belgrade that doesn't have to be there, get off your butts and get out of the way or make your peace with God.

Did you hear that the NATO countries are being charged with heinous war crimes by the leadership of Yugoslavia? Do I really need to comment on how hypocritical and asinine this is?

Just so it doesn't get completely forgotten by the U.S. public, the gas companies are raping California. Gas prices doubled a couple of months ago and there's no sign they're coming back down. The reasons? There are no *real* reasons. The excuses? Check last month's OOTD for the answers.

If you don't think that the witch-hunts of Salem or the Spanish Inquisition could happen today, check out this URL that reports on movements to go back to simpler time, a time filled with stonings for things as simple as cursing your parents or, "in the case of women, unchastity before marriage"

http://www.publiceye.org/pra/magazine/chrisre1.html

It'll make you wonder if we've come that far after all... And it'll certainly make you wonder what happens to men involved in the sin of "unchastity before marriage"... These guys are probably closely related to that other group I've come to know and love, The Westboro Baptist Church.

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