Tebow for KC Chiefs

The Kansas City Chiefs management needs to make one more significant move toward improving the future for the local NFL team.

We need a powerful offense that can move the ball down the field and bring excitement back to the game in Kansas City.

How about bringing Tim Tebow to Kansas City?

Because the New York Jets gave him little chance to show what he can do, let’s see whether he can do for Kansas City what he did for the Broncos.

I’m betting Tim can do it if only given a chance.

John Bennett

Shawnee

Enough of violence

Sadly, the loss of 20 children and six saintly school adults could have been prevented as well as all the other killings over the last five years. It is sad that our country has trillions of dollars to spend on new state-of-the-art nuclear defense plants like the one built in the south Kansas City area with the blessing and support of Rep. Emanuel Cleaver and former Sen. Kit Bond.

That’s money that could have purchased state-of-the-art mental health centers for youths and adults.

Instead, it’s being used to enrich the elite of the elite of the Honeywell Corp.

In the history of this great nation, nuclear weapons have been used only twice at the end of World War II and at a cost of many lives.

Our leaders tell us that they are only looking out for those needing jobs by funding the defense plant.

They say these are good jobs. Could be. But at what point do the people of America say enough?

God bless America.

Bob Calvert

Raytown

Bishop Finn’s fight

Bishop Robert Finn has a moral obligation and duty to Catholics in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph to ensure that organizations using the name “Catholic” are indeed Catholic (1-28, A4, “Bishop criticizes Catholic Reporter”). The National Catholic Reporter has repeatedly taken editorial stances that undermine and condemn teachings of the Catholic faith.

Despite warnings from Bishop Finn, the newspaper persists in its editorial positions and refuses to remove “Catholic” from its name. If the newspaper continues to mislead Catholics, Bishop Finn not only has the authority to intervene and remove “Catholic” from its name, he has an obligation to do so in order to protect Catholics in his diocese from error and scandal.

Eugene J. Diamond

Kansas City

Seeking real science

Telling the public that “timid” leadership in Washington is responsible for the supposedly hottest year in American history in 2012 is laughable.

President Barack Obama himself, during his first campaign, warned utilities against building coal-fired power plants. They would go bankrupt trying.

The Environmental Protection Agency is a leviathan, an overregulating monstrosity that is out of control, and so far Congress has done little to stop it. Besides, the government through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has altered all the data at its reporting stations, going back decades.

We are not getting an apples-to-apples story here; data is being manipulated, and we’re not getting the truth. And, of course, there is no explanation how the world actually got cooler from 2000 to 2010.

We get one spike in one year, and the word is we’re not doing enough. That is an absolute joke.

The kicker, of course, is there is no real science out there showing that our own CO2 production is a direct cause to whatever warming is reported. Much of the data show it’s just the opposite (warming causes more CO2).

Please, let’s have real science rule here.

Dyrk Dugan

Overland Park

Troost art earthquake

There is a quiet little art earthquake going on at 3227 Troost Ave., the former location of the Jewel Box Lounge. Unheralded and unpublished one-act plays by Pulitzer Prize-winning Kansas playwright William Inge are being staged with profound vision and raw, funny, fearless energy.

“An Otherwise Hopeless Evening” is one of the most engaging and thought-provoking performances I can remember. It is intimate and experimental and offers a grand, kimono-clad glimpse into history, secrets, struggle and surrender from the mind and guarded heart of one of America’s leading playwrights.

It is a unique theatrical event that truly illuminates the human condition.

Ross Freese

Kansas City

Get tough on gun shows

The dirty little secret of gun shows is they permit anyone with cash in his or her pocket to anonymously purchase firearms for cash without a background check. What a great place for the mentally ill, criminals and terrorists to stock up.

And they don’t even have to pay sales taxes.

The website of the promoters of the Overland Park Gun Show this month shows how lucrative this business is.

They are offering 400 booths to these merchants for $66 plus a $35 electricity fee (which I suspect is the cost of renting the trade center). This promoter has an average of four to six shows virtually every weekend across the southeastern U.S.

Doing the math, you can see the money is huge.

I suggest that these promoters and gun sellers be subject to the same laws as licensed gun dealers.

The result would probably be a lot fewer gun shows.

Keith Stanley

Overland Park

Don’t text, drive

I live in Johnson County, and in the last three months I have witnessed the following:

•  Drivers going much slower than the posted speed limit, slowing traffic.

•  A driver running a red light.

•  A driver swerving into my lane.

What did they all have in common? They were either talking or texting on their cellphones.

These drivers were not teenagers. They were middle-aged drivers who should know better.

Come on, parents. Wake up and be role models for your children. Do not text or talk on your phone while you are driving.

Melanie Caro

Leawood

Diversity disadvantages

Proponents of cultural and language diversity tout the alleged advantages of such diversity without supporting their claims with the specific details of actual examples.

In sharp contrast, however, real-world experience shows that cultural and language diversity has significant disadvantages and no advantages.

Described below are a few examples of diversity’s disadvantages that I’ve observed recently:

•  Homeowners unable to request services, give feedback, praise or question the members of a lawn service crew.

•  Customers unable to understand order takers in fast-food restaurants or in telephone call centers.

•  Homeowners unable to request services, give feedback, praise or question painters.

Because of the disadvantages of cultural and language diversity, I select suppliers of goods and services whose staff are fluent in English and share the American cultural heritage.

Robert A. Cicerone

Overland Park

Common sense missing

Let me see if I have this right. The sewers in Kansas City are shot, and voters last month approved spending $50 million a mile for a two-mile streetcar route?

Unbelievable. Common sense has clearly gone missing in Kansas City.

Sterling Hammett

Overland Park

Eroding U.S. freedoms

One hundred twenty years ago, a small, peaceful, highly literate and politically neutral nation was invaded and saddled with a puppet government bent on a policy of foreign domination, occupation and colonization.

Some of its loyal citizens still seek to undo the legacy of repression and oft-repeated lies that came of this act of war.

Although a false star gleams on a certain field of blue, it, along with the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act and a number of other freedom-taking acts rank as just another mockery of the words “liberty and justice for all.”

Neither occupied nor occupiers can enjoy real liberty.

It is time we freed Hawaii and asked how free we ourselves are.

Jayson Flint

Butler, Mo.

Taxes no fix for guns

Some have suggested taxing law-abiding gun owners to help solve gun-violence problems.

Of course, this method has worked for smokers. We make them pariahs, taxing them and then raising taxes on them to stop the smoking problem.

But why stop there? Let’s tax all fattening and sugary foods to stop obesity.

So you see we can’t just tax away our problems.

Taxing citizens will not stop gun-violence problems or end smoking or obesity. But it does suck more money from the cash-strapped middle class.

I’m sure the government would love to have us believe giving it more money would fix everything so it has more money to blow.

Chris Block

Oak Grove