Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
I want my Monitor safe from the morning dew.
Or rain.
Or snow.
Thank you Lord.
Bill Williams
Palmview
Response
to letter
I, as an independent voter, most all the liberal voters and many real Republicans I am sure would like to thank Mrs. Imelda Coronado for her expose of what in truth is wrong with the radical far right, ultra-conservative part of her party (Jan. 6).
Her belief that Twitter is a factual representation of anything is astounding. Her request for more proof that the 2020 election was valid after hundreds of confirmations from Democrat and Republican officials alike is at the very least redundant.
By the way, Beto O’Rourke already has returned what he accepted from FTX. Yes, Mrs. Coronado, I and many others would like to see an investigation into these donations. I am very sure you would be embarrassed by its result.
So my suggestions to solve your concerns would be to rely on more trustworthy sources than Twitter. Campaign to outlaw business PACs. And, above all, quit trying to further divide the nation. Work instead on cooperation and resolution of differences.
Ned Sheats
Mission
Reasonable
punishment
America can learn from ancient Rome how to better deal with crime today. Because democracy generally values all human beings, democratic Rome’s criminal statutes were not designed to repress, but quickly judge and inexpensively rehabilitate. For that reason, Rome did not use prisons, except as places of detention before trial.
One historian of early and middle Roman law summarizes: “Penalties were either pecuniary or they were capital. There was nothing else.”
But capital punishment was seldom utilized, because the law provided for an alternative way out of society — exile.
After the emperors overthrew democracy, penalties multiplied in variety and savagery. The convict could be sentenced to hard labor, usually in the mines, or to life as a gladiator, which eventually brought death. Courts had discretion to inflict arbitrary, even savage, punishments like flogging, crucifixion, burning, walling up alive and feeding the felon to the circus lions.
In all this, a person possessing common sense can see two great lessons. First, the country might want to return to our early practice of dealing with crime expeditiously and humanely before penitentiaries became all the rage. Second, America must by any legal means necessary prevent its governors and presidents from becoming kings and emperors and inflicting whatever damage they want on others.
Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross, Utah
Biden
bashed
A little more than two years ago, Joe Biden began his campaign to completely throw open our southern border. He quickly halted the construction of the very effective border wall. He promised, and delivered, to pause deportations. He suspended the “remain in Mexico” policy that had reduced illegal immigration to a trickle. He is still proposing amnesty for millions. He ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to severely limit the arrest and deportations of people illegally in this country.
We can all agree that this scenario and game plan aren’t playing out too well, and it never will. Everybody sees it.
Joel Ramirez
Edinburg
