Lettes to the Editor: True traffic problems need addressed

After reading Dan Duran’s Sunday letter regarding programming the lights on Thornton, I would like to add the following:

—Why not add a light on Ross and 21st streets?

—Install a no-crossover barrier like the one across from Sonic on 21st to stop the idiots from cutting into Walgreen’s from the eastbound lanes.

—Close the entrance to Prince from Commerce Way and the mall and remove that light altogether.

—Time the lights from First and Prince to the North Plains Mall to the speed limit.

Now that we have wasted all the money we can on civic centers, studies, overruns, paving streets that don’t need it and creating round-de-rounds with no drainage, maybe someone will have the courage to make some changes that we need.

Keith Forbes

Clovis

Congress shows no shame in passing bill

The Democrat leadership of the U.S. Congress never ceases to amaze me. In their rush to surrender in Iraq, they are unable to find any authority to surrender to. Even Sen. John Kerry is at a loss to find someone to whom he can hand his sword.

Faced with this conundrum, Democrats decided the only honorable option left was to deny funding for combat troops in the field.

However, even the U.S. Congress, with Vietnam vet John Murtha, D-Pa., serving as point man, lacked the unmitigated gall to deny troops in combat their needed funding.

So Congress demanded the required funding be tied to a series of “benchmarks” and “timelines” that must be accomplished by the Iraqi government.

Would that Congress itself had to meet benchmarks and timelines in dealing with issues such as immigration and Social Security.

Congress also wanted a firm departure date for U.S. troops. This funding bill had no chance of getting presidential approval; indeed the president vetoed it.

Comes now the Memorial Day weekend and the bill was stripped of it benchmarks and timelines and passed the House and Senate.

What changed? It certainly couldn’t be that failure to pass this funding would cause any hardship on the troops in the field. That has not changed. It has become crystal clear that the only benchmark our stalwart defenders of freedom in Washington D.C. truly were concerned with is they would have had to work over the holiday.

Memorial Day with all this holiday stands for, and Congress, with no sense of shame or irony, is reluctantly, grudgingly bludgeoned into assisting American troops in the field.

Not even O Henry could have written this one.

R. L. Render

Clovis