Dear Sir,
Once more we learn what hatred spawned by religious zealots can do. Perhaps there is not much we can do to prevent such perversion beyond our shores; however, let us oppose vigorously those in our midst who:

1. Brand anyone who disagrees with them not only as wrong, but evil;

2. Feel that, since their particular faith is the one which offers infallible truth, anything they do is justified in promoting that faith, i.e. the end justifies the means;

3. Would subvert those whom they cannot convert;

4. Would use the Bible, Koran or any other sacred text as the pretext to support slavery, suppression of women, homophobia, censorship, injustice or a society where less than two percent of the population owns almost half the wealth;

5. Would permit clergy, directly or indirectly through lay organizations such as Knights of Columbus, to support or oppose specific candidates for public school boards or any other public office;

6. Would use our tax dollars to fund sectarian schools;

7. Would use our tax dollars to fund welfare activities run by sectarian organizations;

8. Would place clerics on the public payroll;

9. Would allow clerics or their agents to control what we read or what we hear on radio and television;

10. Would allow clergy to spread the idea that since our tax dollars are not permitted to fund parochial schools, their followers are "victims," propaganda which conveniently omits the fact that, if we taxed churches and church schools, most of them would cease to exist;

11. Would allow non-profit organizations to compete with private enterprises which must pay taxes;

12. Would use issues such as abortion, gun control or homophobia as vote-getters (hence sources of political power);

13. Allow religious organizations to promote ignorance and credulity in order to gain money and power for themselves or for secular supporters who cooperate with them;

14. Would allow concealed weapons in churches, public schools, theaters or sports stadiums;

15. Would curb the teaching of evolutionary theory in our public schools;

16. Would overturn the strong language in Missouri’s constitution upholding separation of church and state, without which there can be no freedom of conscience.

Dear Sir,
In reply to the proposed lamb check-off:

I do not speak for the sheep industry as I am possibly the smallest producer. Yes, I felt the full brunt of the lamb imports years ago and cut my herd drastically. These sale check-offs and product deductions remind me of taxes and little benefit is derived by the producers.

I thank the people and the organizations that tried to slow or stop lamb imports and failed, or had little impact.

I see another light at the end of the tunnel on these lambs, though, and it is:

By reading between the lines in the Livestock Weekly, September 27 issue, last paragraph, page 34 we see that Australia and New Zealand are flying chilled lamb to us cheaper than we can produce it, proving that they either fly or produce sheep cheaper than us, and possibly both.

Rather than bailing out the airline industry (which was losing money before this Lack of Defense 9-11 tragedy), let’s have imported airlines. Since they are imported, little or no inspection is needed, and they would surely rather haul bone-in Americans and our open-border fiends (I mean friends) as opposed to bone-less lamb.

And that ends the imported chilled lamb until they get enough planes to resume.

James Stotts
Llano, Texas