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Don’t waste ink on Phelps family
Regarding “Phelps’ granddaughter playing larger role” (Nov. 22 Eagle): An entire page on the Phelps cult? Please stop wasting space and ink on these “religious” fanatics. No one is interested in what they have to say. They are not worthy of a single paragraph, much less an entire page.
This offensive family is not only an insult to Kansas but the entire nation.
KIM DOCKERY
Wichita
Enough hatred
The Eagle wasted paper and ink in publishing an article about Topeka’s controversial Westboro Baptist Church (Nov. 22 Eagle). Any mob that calls itself religious and protests other churches and the funerals of our soldiers represents a religion that could only be matched by the Bible-waving, cross-burning Ku Klux Klan.
The Eagle should print the news or stories that do not cause hatred. There is enough hatred — people only out for themselves.
SAM BURCHFIELD
Wichita
Phelps hope
When I first saw the Nov. 22 article about the Phelps family, it made me so mad. But when I started to read it, I saw hope when I read the part about Libby Phelps Alvarez getting away from this hate-filled family. Some in this family have seen the light and understand God’s commandment to love others as He has loved us.
So as someone who didn’t want to read another article about the Phelps family, I am glad I did. It is wonderful when someone gets away from these hateful teachings, and I know that God had his hand in it.
TERESA L. SMITH
Wichita
Why monitor?
I found the article “Student chastised after tweet insults governor” (Nov. 24 Eagle) more than a little scary.
Emma Sullivan, a senior at Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, posted a tweet on her personal Twitter page. The tweet was monitored by the governor’s people. The governor’s people brought the monitoring to the attention of school officials. The principal expressed concern about a “huge controversy.” Sullivan was asked to write letters of apology.
Sullivan was due the apology for having her personal views monitored and reported by the governor’s people. What happened to her right to freedom of expression? What happened to her, or our, right to disagree about the governor’s policy decisions?
Brownback’s spokeswoman, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, said: “We monitor social media so we can see what Kansans are thinking and saying about the governor and his policies.”
I would think that this monitoring has proved that more people than just Sullivan disagree with the governor’s policies.
But social media or not, it didn’t help much when the public and the Legislature expressed their opinion about funding the arts in our state. The governor did what he wanted.
So why monitor what Kansans are saying when they aren’t going to be heard unless it’s what the governor and his people want to hear?
ELMA BROADFOOT
Wichita
Unsafe, ineffective
In “Dental coalition urges fluoridation of water” (Nov. 16 Eagle), a local dentist claimed about fluoridation: “Science is overwhelmingly on the side that it is safe.”
But the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology’s policy position is that the preponderance of evidence shows “fluoride added to the public water supply, or prescribed as controlled-dose supplements, delivers no discernible health benefit, and causes a higher incidence of adverse health effects. Ingested fluoride is hereby recognized as unsafe, and ineffective for the purposes of reducing tooth decay.”
In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences warned that severe fluorosis could occur at 2 parts per million. A majority of the report’s authors said a lifetime of drinking water with fluoride at 4 ppm or higher could raise the risk of broken bones.
Another claim in the article was that “adding fluoride to water represents long-range savings in dental and medical treatment costs.” But a study of the 1994 and 1995 California Medi-Cal data showed that, after 45 years of fluoridation, the fluoridated counties cost California significantly more for dental care per eligible recipient than non-fluoridated counties.
Water fluoridation is a health detriment, ineffective, inefficient, expensive and immoral in that it is mass medication inflicted on the population at large.
The fluoridation proponents and their mindless mantra must go.
MATT BICKHARD
Derby
Lots of conspiracies
Some people try to tell us there are no conspiracies, and that anyone who thinks there are is not rational. I am not so sure.
Were the communists a conspiracy? How about the Nazis or the imperial Japanese? Is the Mafia a conspiracy? The Occupy Wall Street group seems to think that most of the financial world is one. Others would say there is only one conspiracy to worry about. It is either the conservatives or the liberals — depending on which side of that fence they are on.
A conspiracy is defined as two or more people planning together to do something bad. By that definition, there must be at least a million active conspiracies in the world at any one time. So the question is not: Is there a conspiracy? It is rather: How many are there, and which ones must we worry about the most?
GORDON BAKKEN
Wichita
