LETTERS 05/01/08

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Times were simpler then, but even then the men were not totally forgotten. My husband tells me that even after almost 58 years of marriage, some of those tools are still in use on his workbench.

Mary Louise Beltz

Lenexa

Regarding Lisa Archie’s frustration about the 10-hour meters downtown (4/27, Letters) and how she was “about five minutes past the eight hours” she paid for: I, too, have helped balance city budgets when I was too cheap to put a couple of extra coins in a parking meter.

The fact is, since U.S. Patent No. 2,118,318 was issued May 24, 1938, annoying slips of paper under windshield wipers have raised millions of dollars for cities, colleges and private parking facilities the world over for being “about five minutes late.”

So caveat emptor (let the buyer — of that coveted parking spot on the street — beware).

Clyde Waltermate

Raytown

E. Thomas McClanahan reports that a major concern of the Kansas Board of Regents is finding the best places on campuses to post signs prohibiting concealed weapons, presumably so that those bent on mass murder cannot fail to see them and be deterred (4/27, Opinion, “Gun bans can’t stop wackos bent on murder”).

I suggest every student be issued a small card with “Gun Free Zone” printed on it, which they can carry on their persons. If attacked by a gun-wielding psychopath, the students can merely show their cards which, I’m sure the Board of Regents must agree, will cause any potential mass murderer to spare them and leave the area.

In fact, if everybody carried such cards at shopping malls and other gun-free zones, unprovoked, random shooting attacks would be completely eliminated. It’s simply a matter of informing killers of the rules, isn’t it?

Bill Harkins

Blue Springs

Your editorial “New intrusions on a right for women” (4/23, Opinion) concerned my House Bill 1831. This legislation, passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 113 to 33, strengthens Missouri’s abortion informed consent law and makes it a crime to coerce a woman into having an abortion. The editorial alleges that the bill “defines coercion too broadly and could leave doctors reluctant to perform abortions …”

To the contrary, the bill is very specific as to what conduct is prohibited. It would be illegal to coerce a woman into having an abortion by:

•Illegal acts such as assault, battery, kidnapping or threatening with a deadly weapon,

•Stalking or perpetrating violence against a woman,

•Threatening to fire a woman, or

•Threatening to take away a woman’s scholarship unless she has an abortion.

Ideally such a law would be unnecessary. Unfortunately there are all too many examples of women being coerced into having abortions by the behavior above.

This bill is designed to protect women and ensure that they are acting freely and are fully informed should they choose to have an abortion. I look forward to the prompt action of the Missouri Senate and the governor to protect Missouri women.

Missouri Rep. Robert F. Onder

Lake St. Louis, Mo.

As I read the article “Lawsuit involves religious and military” (4/26, A-2), I realized that people who attempt to say that our Constitution is a Christian document have never read it. There is no hint of any kind of religion contained in it and, by reading it, one would have no idea what religion is practiced in the United States, if any.

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