Speakout 1/13

Why is Sikeston trying to solve problems that do not exist? While reading the front-page article about the rental ordinance, I was shocked to see that a house on the market becomes a rental unit which must be registered with the city the minute the seller moves out of the house. The next thing you know, the city "officials" will start going to real estate closings for home sales and hand the new owner a $500 fine because he is not occupying the home that minute. Fortunately I have had the opportunity to live in communities that are not trying to solve non-existent problems. The idea that an empty house on the market must be registered as a rental unit is patently absurd. The idea that a house occupied by the mother of the actual owner must also be registered as a rental unit is well beyond belief. The next thing you know we will be fined for not registering our home as a "non-owner occupied dwelling" while we are away on vacation! We have enough real problems that need solving. Spend your energy there and stop trying to solve problems that do not exist.

Thomas Jefferson's reply on Jan. 1, 1802, to a letter from the Danbury (Conn.) Baptist Association, congratulating him upon his election as president, contains the phrase that has so often been misquoted to distort the "religion clause" of the First Amendment. A clause whose meaning has been the subject of passionate dispute for the past 50 years. The complete religion clause reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor the free exercise thereof."Jefferson could not possibly have predicted that the language in his Danbury Baptist letter would have endured so long. Nor would he have condoned it being used to render "laws from the bench" that destroy the exact freedom his original phrase expressly meant to preserve.Jefferson's letter was published in a Massachusetts newspaper a month after Jefferson wrote it and then was more or less forgotten for half a century, until it was published with other writings in 1853, and reprinted in 1868 and 1871. The Supreme Court turned the spotlight on the "wall of separation" phrase in 1878 by declaring in Reynolds v. United States that, "it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the (first) amendment." The high court took the same position in the widely publicized decisions in 1947 and 1948, asserting in the case, McCollum v. Board of Education, that "in the words of Thomas Jefferson the clause against the establishment of religion was intended to erect a wall of "separation between church and state." Since McCollum forbade religious instruction in public schools, it appeared that the "court" had used Jefferson's "wall" metaphor as a sword to sever religion from public life. An act of judicial activism that was and still is intolerable to many Americans.

To the nosy daughter-in-law, I'm setting here reading about the evil mother-in-law. It sounds like to me you're the problem. It's usually the daughter-in-laws who have to have their way about everything. Now Honey, you know we always take Thanksgiving or Christmas with my family. Don't she know her husband has a family also? Hope your husband is not stupid enough to listen to you. If he does, then he has a problem.