State Board of Education changes

I thank God for the hard-working members of the Texas State Board of Education. People throughout the United States have been following the SBOE process because their decisions influence not only Texas school children, but children throughout the country.

Because liberals spread lies about the board, saying it removed Thomas Jefferson from the standards, the board voted to add his name back into the Enlightenment Period, even though Jefferson is covered numerous times in the social studies TEKS. His influence was never removed from the TEKS. That was a lie spread by the media and Texas Freedom Network.

Also, the term “separation of church and state” is not found in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights. It was a phrase written by Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut. President Jefferson was simply writing to calm their fears and to counteract a rumor that Congress was in the process of choosing a single Christian denomination as the national church. He wrote to assure them that America would not create that which our Pilgrim forefathers fled from — the Church of England.

Carolyn Knowles

Waco

Saving some taxpayer money

I’m always amazed at our criminal justice system. We go to great lengths to establish laws, then even greater lengths to establish ways to circumvent said law. This is evident in the May 26 Trib story about Debra Janelle Jeter, 33, who pled guilty to capital murder and attempted capital murder. Jeter killed her 12-year-old daughter, Kelsey, on June 5, 2009, and left her other daughter, Kiersten Leigh, 14, severely injured. She slashed both of daughters’ throats, then called 9-1-1.

She circumvented the law by receiving “life without parole” for the capital murder charge involving Kelsy. Now she might live 40 years or more in a maximum security facility at taxpayers’ expense.

Why can’t we use the death penalty, put her out of her misery and spend the money on something that might be of real benefit to society?

Sherrod Fielden

Clifton

Humans aren’t animals

Penny Chase’s May 25 letter paralleling Animal Birth Control clinic actitivies and those of Planned Parenthood of Central Texas would be amusing if it weren’t so tragically telling of the post-modern opinion of the human condition and solutions to human problems. Are human fetuses to be valued the same as the fetuses of our pets?

Should we mindlessly kill unborn human babies the way we spay and neuter our pets? Sure, there’s a huge problem with population control and poverty, and birth control is not a bad thing. But can’t we find solutions more appropriate to our species than free sex and free killing of the unborn, a philosophy that is implied by the actions of Planned Parenthood?

Nan Rentz

Waco

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Concerning Penny Chase’s unbelievable analogy of Planned Parenthood to the Waco Animal Birth Control clinic, one must ask what goes on in the mind of a person like her to make such a comparison? How is that “prevention?” I must point out the frightening parallels between her reasoning and that of the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger.

Sanger used the same justification that Chase applies but only for the end purpose of eliminating certain “unwanted” human races. Chase did get one thing correct: This sort of foolishness reduces humanity to the level of animals and their behavior.

Mike Hoover

McGregor