Take the challenge: Abolish spanking in schools

Your Voice

By: Letters to the Editor | Hickory Daily Record
Published: August 11, 2008

An open letter to the Catawba County Board of Education:

When proposed legislation aimed at banning school corporal punishment in North Carolina schools was being debated in 2007, Rep. Ronnie Sutton stood before the General Assembly and recounted his days of being "beaten like a rented mule once or twice a week at school."

Actually, in North Carolina, mules can't be beaten. They are protected by animal cruelty laws.

Benson celebrates Mule Days on the fourth Saturday of September each year. I am writing to extend a Mule Days Challenge to your school district and every other district in our state that allows schoolchildren to be beaten on their buttocks with a wooden board.

I challenge you to abolish the systemic beating of school children by Mule Days 2008. Your students deserve the same, if not more protection from abuse than a North Carolina mule. Welcome to the 21st century.

Peggy Dean, RN
Member, board of directors, PTAVE
Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education
www.nospank.net
Waxhaw

U.S. should defend itself from 'premeditated invasion'

When asking Congress to declare war against Japan on Dec. 8, 1941, following the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor the day before, Franklin Roosevelt declared that the naval and air assault on our armed forces had been a "premeditated invasion." He was right. He was also correct in seeking a prompt, decisive, and (for Japan), a devastating response to their action.

We are now facing a situation along our border with Mexico that, in my opinion, constitutes a "clear and present danger" to the United States and should be dealt with immediately. We should use whatever means deemed necessary to do so. And we should act now.

We are all familiar with the 12 million to 15 million illegal immigrants who have flooded our public school systems, clogged up our hospital emergency rooms, congested our highways and burdened our social services agencies to the point of collapse. This in itself is an invasion of our country.

But what many of us may not know is the extent to which the corrupt Mexican government is involved in this and other activities along our border.

The Mexican army has routinely crossed over into the United States. They do this on a daily basis to assist the illegal importation of drugs into our country. In bed with the Mexican drug cartels, the Mexican army has pointed guns at American citizens, kidnapped individuals as far north as Phoenix, Ariz., deliberately impeded the U.S. Border Patrol agents who are assigned to stem the flood of illegals and drugs, and much more.

Whenever armed soldiers of a foreign power regularly perform such incursions, this is an act of war. It should be met with a retaliatory act of war from the United States.

Any nation has the right (and the obligation to its citizens) to defend itself when invaded. The sovereignty of our nation is at stake.

We must respond to this second "premeditated invasion" as did FDR and Congress in 1941 ... promptly and with assurance of purpose. If National Guard troops are not sufficient to do what must be done, then we should call on our full-time armed forces to repel this attack on our soil. And we should do so now.

Larry Houston
Maiden

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