Letters To The Editor
August 27, 2008 - MidWeek
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Del.icio.usHonor your rights
Sometimes I believe Rick Hamada forgets the major issue respecting the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
As a social studies teacher and a former military police supervisor, I would like to add my comments on the issue of “search and seizure” in terms of random drug testing of 13,500 educators in Hawaii.
I had the honor of voting “no” on the contract for drug testing of teachers, resulting in a vote “no” against a pay raise and a “no” to give up my Fourth Amendment rights under the Bill of Rights. It is the basic American freedom that my father earned, serving at the closing of World War II, as he liberated a concentration camp called Dachau where Germans forgot about liberties.
I had the honor of voting “no” for my mother, an American citizen who lost her rights of “habeas corpus” and was placed, along with 120,000 other Japanese-Americans, in concentration camps in the Western U.S. She spent her high school years behind barbed wire at Heart Mountain camp, Wyo., when the American government took her rights away.
In keeping with legal precedent governing “search and seizure,” we have used the concept of “probable cause.” The courts have allowed random testing search for police with arms, nuclear power plant operators, air traffic controllers and areas of public safety to warrant such action. Although teachers are important in the lives of our children, teachers do not meet the test of a job “dealing with life or death issues.”
You cannot allow, you cannot tolerate, you cannot give away the very freedom men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan protect daily for you. No contract should give away our liberties, which have already been paid in full.
Cliff Fukuda
Kaneohe
It’s dishonest
Why must right-wingers be so dishonest in promoting the war in Iraq. As letter writer Bill Baker put it last week, thanks to the “surge ... we now have more deaths in a weekend in L.A. or Detroit than we do in Iraq.”
What a bunch of horse kaplooey!
It’s like the Fox News host who said that we have more roadside bombs going off in America than happen in Iraq.
This self-delusion would be humorous except that it is so dangerous, especially because John McCain seems to think like these people and is just as dishonest.
John Loo
Honolulu
Media darlings
Would the Republicans please stop it already with the “celebrity” accusations about Barack Obama. John McCain is a celebrity. So is George Bush, and Laura, for that matter. People who are not very well-known by millions of people - celebrities - do not get elected president.
As for the letter from Jill Rethman regarding “media darlings,” as she referred to Obama, McCain has been a media darling for years, and I contend that’s why he is getting away with sounding increasingly confused and incompetent.
Nancy Ray
Kaimuki
Chinese cheaters
I am not a Michelle Malkin fan, but I have to agree with her on the Chinese Comm-unists exploiting young girls on their gymnastics team. There is no way some of those girls were 16, which means their coaches and Olympic officials were cheating.
China wants us to believe that it is a great nation to be greatly respected. Nobody admires a cheater who takes advantage of young children.
Dan Schifler
Honolulu
Tribute to Mits
Thank you for the Old Friends feature on Mits Aoki. I’m one of those 49,000 people he taught over the years. He changed my life, and the way I consider the certainty of my own death one day.
God bless Mits.
Alice Matsumoto
Honolulu
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