Who Knew?
To the Editor:
Laborers being exploited (“A Day’s Work,” August 14th issue)? Here? In the United States? Well, I’ll be damned.
Richard DeLisi
Memphis
Confidence Builder
To the Editor:
Well, we can all rest easier knowing that President Bush has announced his plans to investigate the cause of the huge power outage that affected a large segment of the United States and parts of Canada on August 14th.
Bush will assign the same crack team of investigators that uncovered that uranium purchase in Niger, the links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, and the huge stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
B. Keith English
Memphis
She Likes Al
To the Editor:
In his 40-minute speech on August 7th, Al Gore clearly and succinctly told us what is going wrong in America today:
“Here is the pattern that I see: The president’s mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. … He intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America’s economy by his tax and budget proposals. In each case, the president seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts — policies designed to benefit friends and supporters — and has used tactics that deprived the American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his arguments to informed scrutiny.”
Al Gore is still the most qualified of all possible Democratic candidates to get America out of the mess we are now in.
Becki Barnhardt
Memphis
Trees’ Final Destiny
To the Editor:
MLGW has contracted with two companies to assist city workers in the removal of storm debris in Memphis. These are BFI (up to $5 million contract) and Seale Contracting of Jackson, Tennessee (up to $2 million contract). Both are being paid $5.35 per cubic yard.
Shouldn’t we be asking what the market value is of all those trees? I maintain the trees’ value is probably more than the cost to remove them. Shouldn’t their final destiny be as a piano or a guitar or a fine piece of furniture? Many of the fallen trees are 150 to 300 years old, which is a very rare thing in the U.S. forests of today.
A good story for the Flyer to follow would be the ultimate fate of all those once-lovely trees of Memphis and Shelby County.
Ronald H. Irby
Memphis
Know the law
To the Editor:
Your editorial (“Who’s Army?,” August 14th issue) was critical of the first-degree murder indictment in the death of Amber Cox-Cody in a day-care van. Your editorial implies incorrectly that first-degree murder only “exists for the most willful and premeditated of capital crimes.”
Our state’s first-degree murder law specifically includes “a killing of another in the perpetuation of … aggravated child neglect.” Premeditation is not necessary under this part of our first-degree murder law.
If the Flyer doesn’t like our state law, it should urge the Tennessee General Assembly to change it. Meanwhile, if the Flyer is going to question the indictment, it should first know the law. Obviously, it did not in this case.
William L. Gibbons
District Attorney General
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