In a nonjury trial, Logan Municipal Justice Court Judge Cheryl Russell rejected Laura Stevens’ argument that she was exercising her First Amendment rights when she told a mother of six to use a birth-control patch.

“The bottom line is you were told not to go to the (Cache Valley) Transit Center, and you did,” Russell told Stevens, who represented herself at the trial. “It’s that simple.”

The prosecutor, senior city attorney Lee W. Edwards, often objected to Stevens’ questions and statements, and the judge repeatedly instructed her on court procedures and explained to her what types of questions she could ask.

She was arrested and cited for trespassing June 20, a few days after she confronted the woman, who was Hispanic. Stevens said the woman’s children were running amok and misbehaving, and she was just offering advice.

But Cache Valley Transit District officials banned Stevens from the district’s buses and property because the woman with six children complained she had felt threatened.

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During the trial, an official for the company contracted to run the bus service in Cache Valley testified Stevens had made similar comments to the same woman Feb. 2.

Andrew Foster, who works for Laidlaw Transit Services Inc., said Stevens had signed an agreement not to do it again.

When she did it again, Foster said, she claimed she was exercising her right to free speech. “She felt her First Amendment, free-speech rights had been violated,” said Foster.

Stevens asked Transit District and city officials whether they had actually seen or heard her talking to the woman. When they answered they hadn’t, she claimed their testimony was hearsay.

When she took the stand in her own defense, however, she invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate herself and declined to testify.

Stevens also tried to ask witnesses how they felt about overpopulation, but Russell ruled those questions had no bearing on the case. Russell also rejected Stevens’ motion to dismiss the charge on First Amendment grounds.

Stevens has until Sept. 21 to either pay an $82 fine or complete the 14 hours of community service.

The BBC was dubbed “hideously White City” for its west-London bias, while ITV was attacked for steadily reducing its commitment to regional television. Channel 4’s own dismal Scottish record did not go unmentioned either.

Drawing on a theory recently put forward by Richard Curtis, screenwriter of Four Weddings And A Funeral, the first minister said the success of theatre, radio, TV and film was interconnected.

If one was weak, it weakened the others, he said, and this was why he was setting up a Scottish Broadcasting Commission, led by Jenkins, to find answers to the problem. Although we are still waiting to hear its exact remit and membership, Salmond made it clear that all options would be on the table when it reported back next year, from the legendary Scottish Six, to public subsidies, to devolving media policy to Scotland.

Naturally, the audience loved it. Almost everyone who got up to ask a question welcomed the initiative, and the wine-and-sandwiches room was buzzing afterwards.

After so many years of putting up with Scottish Labour politicians who may or may not have really supported Scottish broadcasting, but certainly would not diverge from the London message, here at last was somebody in power who could talk the talk.

But now that the backslapping is over, there are questions about how well planned the announcements were. There are certainly those who are saying that launching a commission is a tacit admission that the SNP’s media policy is not well-thought-out.

Salmond did say afterwards that he had always intended to launch a broadcasting commission, but it was not specifically mentioned in the manifesto, and Jenkins was approached to run it only in recent weeks.

The fact that the remit and membership are still being sorted out, and that Salmond went ahead even though culture minister Linda Fabiani was on holiday add to a sense of opportunism.

But while there is probably some truth in this, it overlooks the deep importance that the SNP attaches to getting control of broadcasting as a key landmark on the road to independence.

As Elaine C Smith said in remarks to introduce Salmond’s speech, broadcasting is vital to how a country views itself. As long as it is under London control, it is a potent glue to keep the union together.

As for the depth of the SNP’s thinking, observers counter that Salmond should be given credit for playing the necessarily subtler game of a minority government.

Setting up a commission with cross-political figures, whose 10 or so names are tipped to include Smith and former first minister Henry McLeish, will lead to demands that should be harder for Westminster to ignore than pure nationalist tub-thumping.

Jenkins’s appointment has meanwhile been greeted enthusiastically. Having been out of work for nearly a year since resigning from BBC Scotland in apparent dismay at being forced to cut news and current affairs, many see him as an ideal person to lead the commission.

As well as being seen as highly intelligent and non-partisan, his first job at the BBC was as a consultant in the late 1990s looking into the viability of a Scottish Six news. It was eventually killed off by then director-general John Birt under heavy pressure from the Labour government.

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Having also previously been head of broadcasting at Scottish Television, Jenkins’s experience is restricted to neither news and current affairs nor the public sector.

There are suggestions that he was positioning himself for this kind of role by being prominent in the recent debate about Scottish broadcasting, but if this is the case he is not admitting to it.

People also wonder how his past will affect the commission. As well as leaving BBC Scotland under a cloud, he was pushed out of Scottish in a boardroom clear-out in 1997, which has inevitably led to questions about whether he would have scores to settle.

This is probably going too far, but it is certainly likely that his thinking will have been shaped by his experience of Scottish cutbacks at both organisations.

This will doubtless add to the mixed feelings towards the commission that are sure to be setting in at the BBC and Scottish. It is hardly likely to make either broadcaster weaker, but political interference could strain BBC Scotland’s relationship with White City. And while Scottish would jump at extra commissions from the networks, it will probably not welcome any attempt to make it deliver more regional public service broadcasting without recompense.

One thing that Jenkins has been saying is that he wants the commission to have economic, cultural and democratic lines of enquiry. This means asking whether it is building an economically stronger television production sector; how well Scottish culture is reflected on television; and whether broadcast journalism is making a strong enough contribution to democracy.

He also intends to start by finding out what the sector and the public would ideally like and then coming up with proposals for how to achieve them.

One obvious possibility is quotas. The thinking goes that if you add specific Scottish quotas to the current requirements on out-of-London production, you force the networks to take the nations seriously.

In the case of the BBC, which has an additional internal target requiring 17% of network commissions to come from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by 2012, you could insist on separate targets for each nation. If Scotland had a 9% or 10% target, it would take the country to what Salmond believes should be a minimum level of network commissioning income.

The trouble is that quotas are loathed by much of the television industry, although less so in Scotland. Bobby Hain, managing director of Scottish, for instance, says: “Quotas are a blunt instrument but actually they do work. If things don’t improve, I can’t see other alternatives.”

One alternative is to devolve broadcasting policy to Scotland, possibly even including an independent regulator, which would surely be a major step towards independence.

But it is hard to see how it would solve the immediate broadcasting problems. It would give the Scottish Executive a say over things like programme content and media ownership, but it would not increase the number of network commissions. No Scottish regulator could force the London networks to do that.

Philip Schlesinger, professor of cultural policy at Glasgow University, says: “It’s not clear to me that devolving control necessarily shifts market power north of the Border. What’s the connection between those?”

The independent producers are also keen to be part of the solution. None was invited to the Bute Room to represent their companies last week, and there are some who are nervous that the SNP’s apparent first priority of changing the BBC will see them overlooked.

As Colin Cameron, head of Lion Television Scotland, says: “I hope that somebody is chosen for the commission who represents the interests of the indies and not just those of the broadcasters.”

There is therefore much food for thought as the Jenkins commission gets under way. But before it is allowed to slip into the background to get down to business, we can expect all these issues to be rehearsed again at the Great Nations and Regions Swindle debate at the Edinburgh Television Festival on August 24. Jenkins, no doubt, will want a front-row seat.

Finnish seagull expert Risto Jovaste does not believe that the pills would be a solution.
“Gulls live to be more than 30 years old. Even if they were given birth control now, it would not help the present problem. It would only affect the population of the next generation of birds.”
Contrary to the prevailing view among people who frequent the square, the gull expert does not believe that there really is a seagull problem in the Finnish capital.
“The number of seagulls in Helsinki is small, compared with Europe’s real seagull cities, such as Porto in Portugal.”

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However, at the Helsinki Environment Centre, inspector Raimo Pakarinen feels that the gull problem at the Market Square is real enough.
“If you can’t eat an ice cream at the market without being persecuted by a bird, it is a problem.”
Nevertheless, Pakarinen does not believe that the American model will work in Finland. Pigeon pills won’t work with seagulls.
“Pigeons live together in a single urban area, while seagulls move from one area to another. If it were possible to feed birth control pills to the gulls at the Market Square, we would soon be plagued by fertile gulls from another area”, Pakarinen explains.

Juvaste has no complete remedies for the situation. “We might still try something. For instance, the individual birds that are a nuisance down at the market could be dyed red so that people would be able to avoid them.

The relationship, which has been troubled since the dawn of the Bush presidency, hit a new low last month when Richard Carmona, surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, lashed out at his former colleagues in testimony before a House committee.

Joined by former surgeons general C. Everett Koop and David Satcher, Carmona said public health reports are withheld unless they’re filled with praise for the administration. “It was Surgeon General Koop who pointed out and still says today … ‘Richard, we all have fought these battles, as have our predecessors going back over a century, but we have never seen it as partisan, … as vindictive, as mean-spirited as it is today, and you clearly have it worse than any of us had.’ ”

Though Koop, who served under President Reagan, and Satcher, who was appointed by President Clinton, also spoke of political interference, it was Carmona’s testimony that took lawmakers and scientists by surprise. He was, after all, the man who gave the president a hug before TV cameras when he was named surgeon general.

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Carmona’s statements crystallized the schism between the president and many of the nation’s scientists, touching off conversations within and outside the administration on how bad things have gotten, who is to blame and what this means for the future.

From President Bush’s televised address on Aug. 9, 2001, when he announced his intention to restrict federal spending on research on embryonic stem cells, conflicts with scientists have been a hallmark of his administration. The debates have included sex education, space exploration, contraception and global warming.

“The science community now recognizes that this administration completely puts its political cart before the scientific horse,” says Science magazine editor in chief Donald Kennedy, a former Food and Drug Administration chief. “We’ve seen it with one issue after another.”

But White House science adviser John Marburger says one reason science has emerged as such a hot issue is that the research-is-right banner is an easy one to wave.

“Science has become very powerful as a symbol and everyone who has a case to make, or argument to win, tries to recruit science on their side,” Marburger says. “Issues that might not have been labeled as ’science-related’ controversies in the past are now called science-related.”

For years, college students have been able to buy birth control very inexpensively.

The drug companies offered the deeply discounted contraceptives to college health services.

Colleges and universities tended to tack on a few bucks and sell them to students.

But now, due to federal cutbacks, cheap birth control is a thing of the past.

The drug makers have stopped the discounts as a result of the Deficit Reduction Act signed by the president.

To continue getting birth control, students must either claim the medication on their parents’ insurance or be willing to pay a lot more money.

Many college health centers offer cheaper generic brands.

Some students and university officials fear a rise in unwanted pregnancies could be the result.

Spilt Decision On Knowing Unborn Baby’s Sex

A study said the importance of learning the sex of your unborn child ahead of time is a split decision among Americans.

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Fifty-one percent said they don’t want to know if it’s pink or blue until the baby is born.

However, 47 percent want to know in advance, especially those who are younger or already have children.

Parents-to-be who regularly attend religious services are more likely to wait, the study said.

Senior Receive Free Condoms

In New York, officials are giving away condoms to senior citizens.

Doctors said senior citizens don’t think they can contract HIV or AIDS.

But of course, if they are sexually, active they can.

Doctors said they recently diagnosed HIV in an 82-year-old.

Free testing is also being offered.

Although continuous contraception is nothing new, the prescription pill, if taken 365 days a year, abolishes the monthly period. In doing so, it has created a quiet moral and medical debate on the issue of menstruation suppression.

There are advantages of Lybrel, especially for the 8 percent of women who suffer from debilitating periods and roller-coaster Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. It’s also potentially attractive to women who simply don’t want to deal with the monthly hassle.

But there are also disadvantages. Scientists have yet to fully understand why women menstruate and the long-term effects of a cycleless life. Women on Lybrel may experience undesirable side effects such as spotting and breakthrough bleeding. And those who take it must be vigilant about pregnancy tests.

The whole concept “sounds amazing” to Taylor Perry, 19, of Oakland. It’s just that last part, about pregnancy, that makes her hesitant.

“That’s the best day of the month, when I get my period,” Perry said, explaining the relief she feels.

Michaela Baltasar has the same concerns.

“I would love to never have a period again,” said Baltasar, 29, of Petaluma. “I always feel like I can’t do certain activities, like swimming or camping.”

Still, the expense and embarrassment of monthly pregnancy tests means Baltasar is
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sticking with Seasonale, a pill that limits her periods to every three months.

Megan Long, 29, is also drawn to the practical aspects of menstruation suppression.

“When I was traveling through remote parts of Asia and I ran out of my tampon supply, I was forced to get creative,” said Long, of Alameda.

As for the elimination of bloating, cramps and Premenstrual Syndrome, Long is clear: “Well, that’s great,” she said. “If you can do away with that, why not?”

She’s the type of consumer Wyeth, which developed Lybrel, is marketing to: the active woman who wants to “put her period on hold.” Lybrel contains the same synthetic hormones as regular birth control pills but without the placebo phase. It is just as effective — 98 percent — at preventing pregnancy as regular birth control pills.

Medical sociologist Adina Nack said the rhetoric behind the brand concerns her.

“Even the name sounds like ‘liberate,’” said Nack, an associate professor at California Lutheran University. “Like it’s freeing women from the chains of oppression that come from a monthly cycle.”

Instead of eradicating periods, Nack said, we should be teaching young women that their natural body processes are positive. Hip widening, body odor, body hair and most other changes girls undergo have already been constructed as negative, she said.

Many women, including Nack, question whether extended contraceptive technologies such as Lybrel are medicalizing a biological life event.

“It’s making a nuisance out of something natural,” Nack said.

Furthermore, after discoveries about the harmful effects of hormone replacement therapies, some women question how much pharmaceutical companies like Wyeth, which no doubt wants a piece of the $1.7 billion birth control industry, really know about female reproduction.

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That’s enough to keep Lynn Adesko of Oakland away from Lybrel.

“There was a time when the medical establishment thought that PMS was all in our heads,” she said.

Others feel a psychological and spiritual connection to their cycles. And that’s what they’re more concerned about losing.

“I can understand women with special cases might need this pill,” said Patsy Keremian of Walnut Creek. Keremian no longer “worries” about her period, but her two grown daughters, 22 and 32, do. “But otherwise, I think it (your period) is just part of being a woman.”

Many women have little understanding of their cycles — or bodies, for that matter, said Joan Morais, a fertility awareness teacher and spokeswoman for the San Francisco-based Red Web Foundation, which educates women and promotes a positive view of menstruation.

“Our natural cycle correlates with the seasons,” Morais said. “Taking a pill is no different than farmers saying we’re going to artificially stop winter. It’s a time of resting and restoring.”

Although Morais is not opposed to birth control pills, she said it is imperative that women educate themselves about the different options to determine what the right method is for them. Most women she counsels are in their early 30s, have been on the pill for about a decade and complain of depression, low sex drive or melasma, all potential side effects of regular birth control pills, she said.

“They don’t feel good and they want to get off of it, yet they have no idea what their bodies will be like,” Morais said.

What women have come to see as normal — menstruating for 30 or more years — is not necessarily natural or healthy, said Charis Thompson, UC Berkeley associate professor of women’s studies and rhetoric and the director of the Science Technology and Society Center.

“What’s really unnatural is this post-industrial woman who menstruates all the time,” Thompson said, adding that pre-industrial women menstruated far less because they were usually pregnant or breast-feeding. They were often malnourished, too. “Not only is it a big pain, but there’s also a rise in health risks associated with continuous menstruation, including breast cancer and infertility.”

The purpose of menstruation is to support eventual pregnancy, said Tracy Flanagan, an obstetrician-gynecologist and director of women’s health for Kaiser Permanente Northern California.

“The reason we bleed is because there’s a symphony of hormones interacting with each other,” Flanagan said. “After ovulation, if there’s no fertilization of an egg, that triggers the release of the uterine lining. When you smooth out the ups and downs of those hormones with a continuous stream, you eliminate the shedding of that lining.”

Still, demanding careers, child-rearing and care-taking would be that much easier without bloating, mood swings and monthly pain, some women say.

“As a woman, the more choices you have, the better,” said Nagisa Hayashi of Walnut Creek. “Plus, on this pill, you wouldn’t have to carry around all those feminine products.”

Critical aspects of state intervention affect the integrity of families and family relationships. The establishment of mandatory public school education, in place in New England by 1840, requires that parents surrender their children to other adults, licensed by the state. In turn, these adults dominate large portions of children’s formative ideas with contemporary theories about what and how to learn. From the 1830s to our day, these theories increasingly emphasize human malleability and methods of conditioning. From Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and John Dewey, psychology and educational theory have been intertwined to mold useful servants.

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The corruption of education proceeded and with it the ability and eventually the right of parents to direct their children’s development or even to know how they were being shaped or corrupted by other people.

A: Most probably not. A European study on oral contraceptives called the EURAS-OC study (European Active Surveillance Study on Oral Contraceptives) prospectively followed more than 2,000 women on the Pill who stopped taking it to try to conceive. The women were followed for at least two years after stopping oral contraceptives to examine how long it took them to get pregnant.

The study found that within just one cycle of stopping the Pill over 21 percent of the women had become pregnant. This was virtually identical to the natural pregnancy rates of 20 to 25 percent per cycle in women who are not using any form of birth control. One year after they discontinued oral contraceptives 79.4 percent of the women were pregnant. The median time to conception was three months. These numbers are pretty much the same as for non-birth-control-pill users. In other words, prior use of the Pill seemed to make no difference to future conception.
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Life comes at you fast. Nationwide.

The study also looked at women who used the Pill for more than 24 months (long-term use) and found that it also had no effect on conception rates. Of the women who took the Pill for 24 months or less, 79.3 percent become pregnant after a year of stopping its use, versus 81 percent of women who had been on birth control for more than two years.

Long-term use of the Pill, however, does lower the future risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer and perhaps decreases the chances of developing endometriosis, cysts and even pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). Not to mention the fact that oral contraception can decrease cramps and heavy bleeding, and provides very effective contraception when you need it (if you take it according to the instructions).

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Your Health with Dr. Judith Reichman
Can birth control now impact pregnancy later?
Is it safe to get pregnant after breast cancer?
Will my pregnancy cause stretch marks?
Hysterectomies: Dr. Reichman shares her story
At what age should I get a bone mineral density test?

“When you go off the Pill it takes longer to get pregnant” is an old wives’ tale (or maybe we should call it old man’s tale, since I’m not sure where that saying comes from)! It applies ONLY to women with underlying ovulation problems. Without the Pill these women might have irregular cycles; the Pill corrects the problem of bleeding too often or too rarely, but does not stimulate the ovaries or make then behave. (Au contraire, the Pill does a corporate takeover of ovarian action and suppresses ovulation; hence it provides birth control). So if you had underlying ovulation problems (and irregular cycles) that were treated with the Pill, stopping this therapy could unmask that original problem; it may then take longer to conceive and fertility medications might be necessary to get the ovary to produce viable eggs in a timely fashion.

Finally, multiple studies have shown that getting pregnant immediately after going off the Pill does not increase the risk of a miscarriage. Remember, the Pill is out of your system within a few days of stopping it (that’s why you get your period at the end of a cycle when you finish the active pills or can have breakthrough ovulation, and an undesired pregnancy, if you miss pills).

Dr. Reichman’s Bottom Line: If you want to take the Pill, go for it. When you’re ready to get pregnant, just stop and try to conceive — don’t expect your fertility to be delayed or “damaged.”

The State Population and Family Planning Commission (SPFPC) on Tuesday reiterated the government’s determination to maintain the birth control policy although population growth has been stabilizing.

The campaign, started in the late 1970s, brought this choice of family life into the public domain. Couples, the government, the community and even employers are all involved and those who violate the law risk incurring large fines.

The policy was upgraded to the Population and Family Planning Law, which came into effect in September 2002.

The government says the law has been effective, citing that China would have had 400 million more people than the present 1.3 billion without the policy. This would be a huge social and financial burden for the country and the world.

But surely these benefits risk being undermined when the great law-abiding majority see the law being flouted by the rich and powerful.

There have been reports of officials, tycoons and celebrities having more than one child over the years. This can undermine the public’s trust in its enforcement unless changes are made to show it is applied across the board.

The birth control law must be more strictly enforced in some circumstances. The argument was reinforced in central China’s Hunan Province this week.

An investigation there found 1,900 celebrities, business people and government officials had used their privilege or wealth to flout the one-child regulations.

According to the practice in Hunan, the fines be set according to a couple’s annual earnings. But the real incomes of private entrepreneurs are often murky and even when reliable information is obtained, fines can be difficult to collect.

The birth control department of Lianyuan city, in Hunan Province, fined a coal mine owner 1.36 million yuan (179,000-U.S. dollars), the province’s highest ever fine. But the businessman just refused to turn up to pay the fine and it seemed little could be done to make him.

Any law should be applied across the board, regardless of wealth, privilege or authority.

Family planning authorities who are responsible for enforcing the birth control policy must be encouraged to work with other government agencies that have experience and authority in law enforcement.

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When the income of a couple is unknown or hidden, government auditors should be allowed in to thoroughly examine their assets and earnings. Fines cannot be dished out on guesswork or the basis of self-declarations by the lawbreakers.

Revenue departments might also appreciate this scrutiny as tax avoidance and breaking the one-child law are too often bundled into the same category of “victimless crimes” when, in fact, their repercussions are felt by the whole of society.

When a couple’s assets and earnings are clarified, officials can then take targeted action in collecting unpaid fines.

Second homes, vehicles, bank accounts, securities and all the other concrete trappings of wealth and privilege belonging to the couple and to any companies or businesses they hold should be seized or frozen until the fines are paid.

Deadlines for payment must be set, and if they are not met, those assets should be publicly auctioned off till the value of the fine is met. This would not only allow justice to be done, but allow justice to be seen to be done.

Can a populous developing country like China risk the idea that a couple can have as many children as they can afford?

The birth rate in China stands at 1.7 to 1.8 percent, or eight million to ten million births a year.

The country faces a population rebound in next five years when most couples will be comprised of only children who will be allowed to have two children themselves.

Fortunately, public awareness of family planning is improving.

More people, especially the urban middle class, are reluctant to marry early and have a child because they want to enjoy life with such responsibilities and in the countryside more realize that an only child can have a better upbringing.

Published: July 09, 2007
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In the July 3 article “Abortions up in ‘06, especially among teens,” Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood’s Minnesota chapter, states, “The allegation that promoting birth control promotes abortion is ludicrous.” I disagree.

When promoting birth control, especially to teens, you are essentially giving them license to have sex without the responsibilities inherent from the sexual union. This is the safe sex mentality.

When a couple uses birth control, they are doing so to avoid a pregnancy. However, birth control is not 100 percent effective. So when their sexual union does result in a child, the couple does not see the child as a gift from God but rather as an intrusion into their life. Because this child is seen as an intrusion into their life, they are more likely to abort the child.

So while promotion of birth control does not literally promote abortion, it does increase the abortion rate.

To all, I recommend studying John Paul II’s theology of the body and how our sexuality is a gift from God and should be treated as such. God bless.

NICK NELSON, ST. PAUL

Too much attention to ‘rights’ of Guantanamo fanatics

In his July 3 column (”Restore habeas rights at Guantanamo”), Peter H. Hendrixson argues that unlawful combatants captured on foreign battlefields are entitled to the due process rights accorded to American citizens. In doing so, Hendrixson ignores the admonition that “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”

We are at war with an enemy whose tactics include beheading, torture, suicide bombing and wholesale slaughter of civilians. That these vicious fanatics are treated with less deference to their “rights” than a criminal defendant in an American courtroom apparently offends Hendrixson’s delicate sensitivities.

A number of released Guantanamo detainees have returned to the battlefield and been recaptured. Following Hendrixson’s logic, the Fifth Amendment prohibition against double jeopardy would mandate their immediate release.

PETER D. ABARBANEL, APPLE VALLEY

For his pal, he’ll replace a jury’s verdict

President Bush stated that Scooter Libby’s sentence was excessive. Apparently none of the 152 people who were executed while Bush was governor of Texas had an excessive sentence, including Terry Washington whose mental status was kept from a jury (functionally a 7 year old), yet Bush wrote in his autobiography that it was not his job to “replace the verdict of a jury unless there were new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair.” It seems these rules do not apply to political cronies.

DAVID DAHL, MAPLE GROVE

Fuel inefficiency is no longer acceptable

Charles Krauthammer’s July 3 column on fuel efficiency trade-offs is a joke. Efficient cars may perform worse in crash tests, but inattentive, unsafe drivers ultimately cause accidents, not efficient vehicles. He also cites that efficient cars cost more. Our country has millions of cars on its roads, so I’m not convinced that we cannot afford cars. His criticism of ethanol may have merit, but the United States has 50 years of foreign policy based around oil interests, and if anything ethanol mandates and subsidies are at least an alternative in several areas.

Krauthammer’s ultimate criticism is in the mandates. I argue the current fuel economy mandates have not impacted U.S. automakers. Their shortcoming is in their inability to adapt to the automobile market. He argues the true cost of efficiency is hidden. I feel we already know the cost of inefficiency, and it is time for an alternative.

TIMOTHY WINN, ROSEVILLE

No amnesty for lawbreakers

Call me out of step with my own party (or them with me), but I disagree with changing policies purely for political gain. And congressional Democrats are pushing for immigration reform merely to pick up the Hispanic vote.

Illegal aliens — no matter where they’re from — are here illegally. These people should be deported, then allowed to wait in line like everyone else, not given amnesty (or whatever we choose to call it). To say that deportation will break up families is not true. Those who are American by marriage or birth could stay, or they could leave with their families, then come back as families in a legal fashion. It’s their choice.

If we’re worried about who will fill the jobs they leave, offer them to those who enter this country legally. But let’s not stoop to letting law-breakers push ahead of law-abiders.