The Item from Sumter, South Carolina • 8

Opinion To submit a toner to the editor a-mail Letters OTheltem com to submit soundofl enal SoundoilTbettem com FRIDAY APRIL 5 PACE av Founded October 15 1S94 OSTEEN ftlUJSlUNC ca INC HtU HHPWPryhfV Mugmdtn Vtrvf MMfm 21 il iMi liC Okton HGe 0m Omw MMatr Omw HHUMi MTlkfVM I'AtS V'Aft Hn4M4NMf Wlwto Hubert Osteen Jr Eiior nit I'ubhskri Pmiiitnl am Tmuuirr LETTER TO THE EDUCR Event could have been celebrated differently John Ashcroft: The scariest man in government This comment is in reference to The Item's April 3 edition Having read the article on the celebration of new arrivals I read with curiosity and took note that from the information in the article and from the caption I was left to speculate as to whether any of the young women were married I also read where The Item searched a three-county area for newborns on the first day of the morning edition While not having a problem with Tkt Item's decision to celebrate the births and The Item's new format I'm curious if there was no other way to celebrate Having no knowledge of the women in question or their families I could be completely mistaken in my presumptions If so then I apologize I just find it strange in a time of seemingly lack of moral virtue that a more appropriate celebration could not have been offered While on the subject I also had to think about the childcare facility at Sumter High School It seems that in a time of budget crisis or a crisis that we are led to believe exists one would think that valuable resources could be better spent towards instruction rather than providing an environment that promotes the very conduct that we as a moral society should be doing all we can to curb This is no attempt on my part to elevate myself just some simple thoughts from a hard-working taxpayer WAYNE ROGERS Sumter (via t-mail) OTHER OPINIONS Tkt Daily Ntws Longview Wash on Internet protection tor children April 2: The trial now under way in US District Court in Philadelphia has important First Amendment implications for library users here and in communities nationwide The issue: Whether adults using library computers have a constitutional right to unfiltered access to the Internet The American Library Association and the Multnomah County Library in Portland are lead plaintiffs in a challenge to the federal Internet Protection Act of 2000 Plaintiffs believe Congress went too far in effectively mandating filtered Internet access on library computers for both children and adults Ml Under the law any library that receives certain types of federal technology funding must use Internet filtering software to block access to objectionable Web sites This one-size-fits-all requirement presents any number of First Amendment concerns All of what could be viewed as objectionable for a child isn't necessarily objectionable for adults And too what one set of parents find objectionable for their child might be considered educational by other parents Plaintiffs in this case are asking that the court allow them to offer library patrons a choice between filtered and unfiltered Internet access They argue that parents and children should be the ones who make that call not librarians right Librarians shouldn't be put in a position of denying information That is antithetical to their profession Congress overreached when it wrote this legislation It produced a law that threatens to trample the First Amendment rights of adults without ensuring the protection of children If the court doesn't overturn the law Congress should revisit it ourthouses depress me Especially I if they have mottos engraved around their sides uplifting sentiments like Equal Justice Under Law Someday somebody's going to engrave a legend around a courthouse that says: 0 Justice What Crimes Are Committed In Thy Namel Law is to justice as attorney generals are to real ones This bright Wednesday afternoon in Little Rock the Spanish-tiled neoclassical federal courthouse looks bubble-wrapped There are cops on every corner They smile and nod as they check out the occasional pedestrian No parking is allowed around the building today The attorney general of the United States is passing through and the now usual precautions are being taken Welcome to the new post-Timothy McVeigh post-SepL 11 America Six months into the War on Terror a strange mix of heightened vigilance and lowered awareness has set in How describe it? Call it a sense of routine emergency To read his press clips think John Ashcroft was the danger that needed watching This administration has its critics and all administrations need them but the criticism directed at this one member of the Cabinet has a special quality about it: visceral instinctive at times surreal Before and after Sept 11 from his confirmation hearing right through this strange period of abnormal nor malcy the one who really sets 'em off Think I exaggerate? According to Tht New York Times' William Safire the president was attempting to seize "what amounts to dictatorial at the behest of his "frustrated and panic-stricken attorney And Bill Safire is a conservative The spirit of liberty said Learned Hand is the spirit that is not too sure it is right But his more fervid critics sound as cocksure as they accuse John Ashcroft of being This attorney general has been the subject of more urban myths than the crocodiles in New sewers He was supposed to have allowed government gumshoes to eavesdrop on conversations with their attorneys Actually 16 out of maybe a thousand suspected terrorists being held in federal custody were told their conversations would be monitored Be- cause they were suspected of planning more crimes while jailed perfectly legal and in these cases advisable Hie attorney general is said to have ordered a drape for Minnie Lou the statue also known as The Spirit of Liberty in the hall of the Justice Department He was supposed to have been offended by her only partially clad form Actually it was an aide who decided on her own to buy the television-blue backdrop for press conferences in the hall The wildest story might have been the one spread by Andrew Tobias of the Democratic National Committee about calico cats and the attorney general's supposed aversion thereto because of his belief that signs of the devil all of which from first to last is as phony as it sounds Which stop The New York Times from retelling it Besides the remarkable powers of imagination these stories demonstrate there is something else at work here an eager willingness to believe anything nasty about the man Anything The kind of invective employed against John Ashcroft be explained by ordinary partisanship My first question to the attorney general was why he seemed to inspire such vitriol He played innocent noting how well got along with his colleagues in the US Senate and before that with his fellow governors He have to say that he still has to work with his political critics and interested in speculating about their motives Even so he go so far as to claim got a fair shake from all at his confirmation hearing Instead he said how the process turns out not what is said along the way that counts I have my own theory about why John Ashcroft inspires such enmity I think a good part of it is religious prejudice The man is likely to break out in a hymn in the middle of a speech he hide his convictions he presides over morning prayers in his office strictly voluntary) and one of those people likely to make a biblical reference right in the middle of a conversa- tion His critics can never know when he's going to have the bad taste to mention God and the suspense puts them on edge His religiosity upsets John Ashcroft's critics You can tell by the way they use the term Religious Right They pronounce it like an anathema the way an anti-Semite would say Jew There's something else his critics can't stand about John Ashcroft He's smart And he's a good lawyer Nothing angers those accustomed to thinking of their politics as the only intelligent kind like finding an antagonist who thinks They'd rather dismiss John Ashcroft as some kind of country bumpkin from Missouri (like Harry Truman?) rather than actually wrestle with his ideas so much easier to condescend to him to make up stories about his Puritanism his felinophobia his general scariness Much like Harry Truman John Ashcroft has found the job he signed on for in Washington completely changed by a single event and all his expectations confounded Yet he continues to grow in the job without changing his character or moderating his beliefs If you can catch him when he sound like a press release (he was actually in town to say the usual things about staying on guard against terrorism) you can have a stimulating conversation including a disagreement or two For example I brought up something the attorney general had said in the aftermath of Sept 11 that still rankles: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost he warned message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists Which comes dangerously close to accusing anyone who crib Seizes his policies of aiding the enemy That sounds less like Harry Truman than Joe McCarthy Sometimes this attorney general hands his critics ammunition Doubtless he would have a cogent response to my criticism John Ashcroft is nothing if not a skilled and even thoughtful advocate He actually seemed to enjoy wandering off-message for a few minutes and thinking aloud But then he had to hurry off having some other things to attend to like guarding against the next terrorist attack Whatever our differences this was one time I left a courthouse with more confidence in the law than when arrived Apologizing for slavery small price for peace St Petersburg (Fla) Times on airport security April 2 The airports are safer since Sept 11 but the government still has work to do Passengers and bags aren't being adequately screened There are jurisdictional problems to resolve between local police and the newly created federal security force Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta also announced the government will not meet its December deadline to outfit the airports with explosive detection machines Congress and the public have expectations and Mineta needs to meet them Enacting these measures will improve security across the board and give a needed boost to the travel industry The new vigilance has bolstered the confidence of the flying public but security still adequate Despite a federal takeover of airport security operations screeners still make inexcusable mistakes passengers still get weapons on board and the process for searching passengers and bags lacks order and consistency Improving the system requires more than money and federal control it requires a new intolerance for underachievement something for which the government is not always known Slogging through the slavery reparations debate is an exercise in whiplash One side of the brain says "This is summoning all the usual arguments and obstacles to a legal resolution including: the statute of limitations on a committed hundreds of years ago the implausi-bility of descendants proving their slave heritage the massive confusion surrounding disbursement of funds how much to whom by whom and how? And the fact that though abhorrent slavery was a legal institution during the times targeted in recent lawsuits Corporations named in lawsuits filed last week for profiting from slavery Aetna CSX and FleetBoston breaking any laws at the time By what standard can stockholders be held accountable for the centuries-old transgressions of dead people? the logical side of the brain talking Then the other side that says "Well they have a Slavery is so unconscionable that hard even to think about Where do you begin to compensate people who were kidnapped beaten tortured separated from family members and who are now in fact dead? But how do you in good conscience do nothing to heal the wounds of such an immoral past? not soothed by the usual "Hey what about the arguments against reparations Or others insisting that affirmative action has been sufficient compensation Enough already Myron Magnet of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research recently wrote what many whites as well as blacks believe: "Instead of looking back and wallowing in victimization let's just look forward and say that America has turned itself inside out to be come a colorblind society of equal It is true that America has worked hard to be colorblind but dishonest to say that we are Yet also dishonest to say that only whites are to blame Certain black "leaders" whose baiting voices dominate any discussion of race make it hard for whites to feel sympathetic toward per-haps-just causes that are purposely divisive vehicles for their self-aggrandizement Basically the problem for many whites comes down to three things: Jesse Jackson A1 Sharpton and Johnnie Cochran As soon as the dastardly dudes of doggerel ride into town the flavor of fairness turns sour Their entry is usually the signal for otherwise decent folks to begin talking unattractively about slow boats back to Africa Which in turn is our signal to slam on brakes and acknowledge that reparations is not a black-and-white issue And not talking about skin pigmentation" To the extent that we in becoming Americans at some point along the historical continuum inherit and embrace our nation's heritage we need to resolve the "peculiar institution of slavery as it was once called But forcing today's corporations to pay for yesterday's legal while forcing blacks into the perennial posture of vktims-for-eter-nity becomes just another form of slavery forced servitude to the past This is not a simple issue and people who insist otherwise are not contributing to a solution For instance it is ludicrous to deny that slavery has had a detrimental trickle-down effect on subsequent generations that be solved in one two or three generations Some extra help is necessary and fair Observers of the reparations movement theorize that the corporate lawsuits are part of a strategy to force the federal government to create a legislative remedy Others say that African-Americans mostly want the US government to apologize Skeptics rightly intuit that once the first penny is paid more will be demanded Enough is never enough when victimhood is the plaintiff What then is the solution? This part really is simple: President George Bush' Whatever his flaws it seems clear that the man comes equipped with a good and fair heart the perfect actor for final curtain call Bush should take command of the slavery reparations issue immediately apd bring an end to the debate Apologize for slavery in a dear and unequivocal voice create a commission to study slavery and its effects on African-Americans as well as on whites weary of being blamed for whatever ails others and continue the discussion for as long as it takes for Americans of all stripes to say "Well and In so doing he might help put the corporate compensatory issue in its proper pep spective which is too much too late As a rich bonus the president's taking charge would force into repose or at least appropriate comic relief those predatory hitchhikers si-ways on the lookout for new vehicles to self-glorification Without victims the racebaiting crusaders would be forced into silence -a priceless finale to the tragedy of slavery ECfTCniL FACS FCLIC'ZS EDITORIALS are the opinion of foe owners They are written by either foe publisher or foe managing editor They do not carry a byline because they represent foe position of foe newspaper as an institution COLUMN'S are foe personal opinion of foe writer whose byline appears Columns from readers should be typed double-spaced and no more than 850 words Send them to: The Item Opinion Pages PO Box 1677 Sumter SC 29150 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR are written by readers of foe newspaper They should be no more than 250 words and Include foe writer's name address and daytime telephone number to allow for verification Letters can be sent via e-mail at LettersOTheltemcom SOUNDOFF allows readers to call and leave a recorded message It can be reached at 774-1205Calls should Involve suggestions tor making Sumter Lee and Clarendon counties a better place to live Soundoff can sent via e-mail at Soundoff 9 Theltemcom.