It's a quiet Sunday morning
It's a quiet Sunday morning here. I've caught some crude going around. It starts with a sore throat, congestion, and then coughing. If you are lucky to catch it soon enough, you can usually keep it from going into a chest cold. That's what I'm trying to do right now. Once it turns into a full blown chest cold, you are usually stuck with it for several weeks. Right now I'm drinking water like there's no tomorrow trying to flush it out of my system.
I was surfing the internet for news (don't know what people did before the internet!), and I came across an issue that in increasingly more popular with some states: discontinuing the practice of the death penalty. Governor George Ryan of Illinois announced Saturday that he had commuted the sentences of all of the state's death row inmates and said he would "sleep well knowing I made the right decision." The governor said the state's capital punishment system is "haunted by the demon of error....in determining who among the guilty deserves to die." Well, I've thought that for a long time actually. When I was much younger, I used to think that people who kill others should be put to death. I suppose I could still support that if the criminal justice system is perfect. Now that we have DNA testing, some prisoners on death row have been completely cleared of their crime. Which means, not only were they about to be put to death unjustly, but they also put in a great deal of time served.
It looks like the Southern Baptists are in the news again. In Nashville, Tennessee there is a plan to add sexual orientation to the city's list of classes protected from job and housing discrimination. This has angered the Southern Baptist Convention, which may reconsider staging its 2005 annual meeting in its hometown. Councilman Chris Ferrell is lead sponsor of a measure to add sexual orientation to Nashville's list of classes protected from job and housing discrimination. I was so touched by what Councilman Chris Ferrell is doing that I wrote him the following letter:
Dear Councilman Ferrell:
I'm am very thankful that you are stepping up and taking a stand against bigotry in your state in adding "sexual orientation and disabilities" to the list of categories that Nashville will not discriminate against. We did the same thing years ago in Connecticut and I remember that much of the battle was very nasty and hateful. It has always amazed me how people who's gospel is suppose to preach love can espouse so much hate and intolerance.
I wanted you to know that there are many many people in the United States that still fear for their very lives day in and day out. Bigotry is alive and well around the country and it takes courageous individuals like yourself to stand up to the darkness of bigotry and hatred.
I live in another state but you can rest assured that if I lived in Nashville, I would be right there in the fight with you. Please don't forget that you are fighting a just battle and that there are many of us who are grateful for what you are doing. YOU GIVE US HOPE. Without hope, what can we look forward to? God Bless you.
Bill Cannon
Coventry, Connecticut
It's just a matter of time now before we are at war once again with Iraq. We just sent 62,000 more troops to the Persian Gulf. It puzzles me. I understand that Saddam Hussein is no boy scout, but the inspectors have found nothing at all in their search for weopons of mass destruction. None! My worry is for all the men and women who will die if we take this on. It won't be like that last time we went. This will have to involve ground troups and hand-to-hand combat to get to Hussein. With the lack of physical evidence, why would we risk that? Could the administration be covering something else up? Personally, I'm much more concerned about North Korea.
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