Editorial

What they're saying…

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:

April 28

The Ironton (Ohio) Tribune, on handcuffed child:

What does it say about our society when a 5-year-old girl must be handcuffed by police to be controlled? And, what does it say that a Florida attorney has already announced plans to sue the St. Petersburg Police for its role in the March 14 altercation at a Florida kindergarten?

This situation is disturbing on so many levels and is a sad testimony to the levels our culture has stooped. ...

Educators have the obligation to every student in that class to get the situation in hand immediately for the safety of the young girl and the other students.

The police should have saved their rough tactics for the next taping of "COPS." Even the most violent of 5-year-olds is still only a child.

So that brings us to the parents and family. Most behavior problems start at home. It is highly unlikely that the child behaved perfectly at home but then acted like a demon while at school. ...

May 3

Aiken (S.C.) Standard, on a runaway bride:

The runaway bride is back home, and the talk of the nation is about the woman who got Duluth, Ga., into an uproar.

Jennifer Wilbanks will live in infamy as the lady who couldn't face her impending wedding, and instead fled west. ...

While it is not illegal to call off a wedding, it is illegal to claim that one was abducted. Wilbanks claimed just that, but dropped the sham shortly after telling fiance John Mason that she had been kidnapped.

It is understandable that a person can panic at the thought of a wedding with 600 guests and 14 bridesmaids. ...

We don't believe that Wilbanks is a criminal, and prosecuting her would be of little value to society. But she should be billed for the hours that Georgia authorities spent looking for her as well as the time and effort of the officials in Albuquerque, N.M., where she finally stopped her running.

But the biggest debt she owes is to those who cared for her most. Friends and relatives have a right to be upset with someone who is so consumed by her own feelings that she is completely oblivious to the pain and angst she would bring to others.

May 3

The Buffalo (N.Y.) News, on the House Ethics Committee:

The solution may be more political than principled, but House Republicans did the right thing last week in agreeing to scrap controversial rules changes that had blocked any work by the House Ethics Committee. Whatever the reasons for their reversal, we applaud the change.

The first fruit of that decision is likely to be hearings on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's travels and who paid for them. DeLay, who has said publicly he wants that chance to clear his name and prove that there were no violations of bans on travel paid by lobbyists or representatives of foreign interests, now gets it.

The Republican Party also gets a breather from the beating it has been taking over its heavy-handed imposition of new procedural rules -- widely seen as intended to protect DeLay, who had been admonished by the committee three times last year. Until Republicans recently changed the rules, the Ethics Committee, made up of five Democrats and five Republicans, needed only five votes to begin an investigation. Republicans changed that to require a majority to approve a probe, virtually precluding any investigation since most votes were likely to end in a partisan tie. ...

April 27

Loveland (Colorado) Daily Reporter-Herald, on biosecurity:

The world dodged a pandemic bullet when samples of a long-dormant flu strain were fully accounted for and destroyed. But don't thank the network of pseudo-governmental agencies and businesses that were involved. They are organized in such a fashion as to invite disaster.

Meridian Bioscience mistakenly sent samples of the 50-year-old H2N2/Japan flu strain as part of virus testing kits meant for 3,747 labs in the United States and another 61 in 18 other countries. ...

Once the error was discovered, the World Health Organization, to its credit, scrambled global resources to make sure the flu samples were secured and destroyed. ...

It's one thing to worry about lab accidents; it's quite another to worry about a flu pandemic that starts from a strain that's available on the Internet, as H2N2 was before this scare. ...

Guarding against bioterrorism is a job of the Department of Homeland Security. The department's Web site trumpets the $7 billion being spent on monitoring major cities for biological releases and on stockpiling smallpox vaccine and anthrax antibiotics. These are good steps to take to combat overt renegades, but what about those who would use the system against us? That's a proven M.O. ...

Mankind must not be allowed to destroy itself by creating a pandemic, either by accident or deliberate action.