Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 19, 1994 TAG: 9403220004
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Watergate, for example, began with some burglars, caught red-handed, planting bugs at the Democratic campaign headquarters. We knew there was a crime; the investigation was to find out who ordered it.
Now, after conducting four presidential campaigns with no substance, Republicans are conducting a scandal with no substance. They have no evidence of wrongdoing, only determination to find some dirt somewhere. I'm waiting for some journalist to ask, ``Where's the beef?''
Clinton, strangely, is cooperating with this project. Can you imagine a President Bob Dole appointing a special prosecutor to investigate himself, or a President Oliver North? The greatest part is that the prosecutor doesn't have to find anything. If Clinton is the least bit slow about stripping naked, he can be nailed for obstructing justice.
Now's the time to demand that Congress pass a strong special-prosecutor law. If Republicans oppose it, or even try to weaken it, their total hypocrisy will be exposed.
JOHN B. HODGES
BLACKSBURG
If 1-73 is built, use existing corridor
I'VE FOLLOWED the proposed Interstate 73 story in this newspaper for the past five months and have read with interest about all the jockeying for position among the various governments.
How can we possibly talk about spending hundreds of millions of dollars for a new corridor through Virginia when this nation is more than $4 trillion in debt? Where are our priorities? It's this kind of mentality in Congress that got us where we are today.
It's not unusual for North Carolina to state that this highway must pass through Winston-Salem. After all, North Carolina already has more miles of highway than any state in the nation and it won't be satisfied until it paves over the entire state. As for West Virginia's reasoning, one only has to utter two words - Robert Byrd.
Since the road would be a duplication of an already existing highway (I-77 and I-26), and West Virginia and North Carolina are determined to build on a new right of way, let's hope that cooler heads will prevail and it will pass through Virginia on the I-77 corridor. Enough is enough!
ERNIE MILLER
PEARISBURG
State can't condone sex-based violence
WE COMMEND Edward L. Strickler Jr. for his fine article on the March 9 Commentary Page (``All target groups need hate-crime law''). It concerned the hate-crimes bill that was before the Virginia General Assembly, and argued that sexual orientation should be reinserted as one of several forms of prohibited discrimination. We're painfully aware of continuing discrimination and violence against gay men, lesbians and bisexual persons.
As parents of a child who manifested her ``differentness'' early in life, we know homosexuals don't choose their orientation any more than straight folks do. Yet they live in fear of loss of jobs, homes, children and their lives.
Surely the good people of Virginia, whether or not they understand or condone homosexuality, do not wish to send out the message that continued discrimination and violence are to be permitted toward sexual minorities any more than toward any other minority.
JOHN and MARY BOENKE
HARDY
Discipline needed to avoid slavery
CONGRATULATIONS to James P. Beatty for his excellent Feb. 22 commentary, ``The new enslavement: teen pregnancy.'' While it deals with personal choices prematurely made, he makes a clear case for penalties and problems to come, affecting not one but two or more future generations, without solving the basic problems: a lack of values - personally, socially and morally.
If the Honorable Winston Churchill was right in evaluating England's civil war of the late 17th century, saying it took 200 years or more for his countrymen to find peace among themselves, we can look forward to 2065. I hope some Roanokers will be alive to celebrate the event.
The light shining out from our homes, churches and educational institutions, from kindergarten to our colleges and universities, tells us there are Americans and other nationals of all shades of color and tongues who love liberty and freedom, education and culture, even life itself enough to discipline themselves to obtain their objectives.
To rob oneself deliberately of young manhood and womanhood, to light a flame that's almost impossible to extinguish, is the worst possible kind of life - one of physical and moral slavery for all concerned.
RUSSELL C. WILSON
ROANOKE
State can't claim 'equal opportunity'
WHILE THUMBING through the classified ads, a bold-print sentence written on a state job listing caught my eye. It read, ``Minorities, females and the disabled are strongly encouraged to apply.''
I was under the impression that the state was an equal-opportunity employer. How can this be? If ``equal'' means that everyone has the same chance for the position, why are certain individuals encouraged over others to apply?
Why doesn't the state write what it really means? White males are strongly encouraged not to apply.
Someone suggested to me that maybe there were already too many men employed there. It's interesting that those who might have suffered from unequal opportunity are willing to overlook its consequences when it runs in their favor.
The basis of equal-opportunity employment supports hiring individuals based on their qualifications, without regard to race, creed, religion, physical handicap, etc. Why then does the state post a job in the newspaper using the same discriminatory factors it protects people against as the basis for those it wishes to apply?
Equal opportunity should mean equal opportunity for everyone.
MICHAEL SINNOTT
BOONES MILL
by CNB