FINAL FOUR
I just wanted to commend everyone with the city of Atlanta, the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau, CNN Center, MARTA, and local police, fire and EMT personnel for a great job during the Final Four weekend.
We had visitors with us, and I was very proud of our city. The main venues were clean; people were friendly; there was police presence everywhere; the transit system was humming along with knowledgeable staff to help, and all the events were well organized.
Thank you for a great job. Everyone was right on point.
D.L. SMITH, STONE MOUNTAIN
EDUCATION
Don’t confuse schools
with systems, boards
Thanks for Charles Gay’s opinion piece highlighting the Druid Hills High School student newspaper (“High schoolers’ work gives us hope,” Opinion, April 7).
His interest in young journalists is understandable. I certainly hope many civic-minded students will further the field. Given Gay’s reflection on the DeKalb school system’s travails, I hope that the AJC’s “spotlight” might shift a bit to the work product from, and successes within, the classrooms across the unique and historically significant “first suburb” of Atlanta.
To be fair and accurate, the Atlanta region’s only widely circulated daily must carefully distinguish the school “system” from its schools and even available programs within individual schools. Isn’t the quality of a high school diploma more reflective of student achievement than the ethics and competency of its school board members?
TOM DOOLITTLE, ATLANTA
SECOND AMENDMENT
Founders had reason
to enshrine gun rights
A letter writer recently observed that he was finding it more difficult to accept the arguments of many on the right concerning the whys of the right to keep and bear arms (“Be consistent when invoking God’s name,” Readers write, Opinion, April 3). I wish to help him to clear the water, so to speak.
There is only one reason for this right, and he would do himself a favor to disregard all the rhetoric going around these days on the issue. He need only listen to the founders of our country with regard to the whys in question. Thomas Jefferson, for example, said, “Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not.”
The Second Amendment is not about hunting or sport shooting or any of those things. It is there because the founders knew that an armed population can’t be run over by its government. We are supposed to have the ability to do the same thing they did.
DAVID SKINNER, GAINESVILLE
ETHICS
However you define it,
bribery is corruption
Kudos to the author of “Call gifts what they are: legislative bribes” (Readers write, Opinion, April 2). Legislators are not fooling anybody when they bicker and clamor over how much, how often, or what should or should not be accepted or reported, etc. Bribery is corruption.
The time and money wasted by our elected officials could have been avoided by adopting a four-word ethics code: “No gifts, no exceptions.” If any special-interest representative wants to discuss a special interest with any legislator, he or she can call for an appointment and meet in one of the many conference rooms or offices in our beautiful state Capitol building. The state can furnish a bottle of water.
BARBARA PENNINGTON, ATLANTA
