Yearning for what?

Update on the polygamist "Yearning for Zion" ranch in El Dorado: 53 girls ages 14-17 from the ranch are in CPS custody. Out of those 53, 31 are either pregnant now or have already had babies. And yet there are still people out there who think CPS had no right to remove those children.

Sounds to me like the lecherous old men at the ranch are yearning for something all right, but I don't think it's Zion!

Want to protest high gas prices -- take a trip!

Do people just not think anymore? Hundreds of truck drivers, upset over the high gas and diesel prices, decided to protest. How did they protest? They filled up their tanks, drove all the way to Washington, and spent the day driving slowly around the Mall. That'll show those oil companies! And if the oil companies don't like that, the truckers plan to fill up their tanks and drive to New York next week. You better watch out, Exxon, it looks like you're crossing swords with some mighty high IQ's here!

A nut is a nut is a nut!

One year ago this month, Seung-Hui Cho gunned down 27 students and five faculty members at Virginia Tech. A recent news article poses the question, "What caused student Seung-Hui Cho to stage the worst campus shooting in U.S. history?"

That's easily answered -- he was a nut! Police have searched for his computer, his cellphone, and his wallet to try to delve into his mind. They've tried to discover whether April 16, the day of the shooting, held any special significance for him. They want to know why he had "Ax Ishmael" written in red ink on his left arm. The answer remains -- he was a nut!

According to the article, the investigation will continue for several months more as authorities review 30 volumes of reports and transcriptions of 450 phone calls and analyze a federal report on 250 pieces of ballistic evidence.

What a waste of time and money! It would be different were they preparing for a trial, but the nut is dead! No matter how long the investigation continues, no matter how much money is poured into it, the answer will always be the same -- the man was a nut! There is no understanding why he did what he did. And if by some miracle his motivation was discovered, it would be of no use, because the next nut will be motivated by something entirely different. A nut is a nut is a nut, and we will always have them among us.

Fire up old Sparky!

In a letter to the editor in yesterday's Dallas Morning News, David Atwood of Houston decries the death penalty. Let's examine his arguments and see how logical they are.

He says:

"The death penalty does nothing to reduce violent crime. It may exacerbate it. It is clearly an expensive distraction from true crime-reducing methods."

My contention is that the death penalty itself doesn't deter crime, but carrying it out consistently and often would. If we executed everyone who deserved it in a timely manner, I'm quite certain we'd see a dramatic reduction in capital crimes. Iran has very few thieves -- they cut off their hands in the public square every time they're caught. The death penalty deters crime every time it's used -- a dead murderer cannot commit another murder; ergo, the death penalty, when carried out, deters crime. If Mr. Atwood has a real-life example to refute my contention, I'd surely like to hear it!

Looking at Mr. Atwood's argument from another angle, I say he cannot possibly know how many crimes have been prevented because of the death penalty. Anyone who has been deterred from killing another because of fear of his own death is not likely to go about boasting of the fact. As for it being expensive, it need not be -- it's surely cheaper than providing room and board, medical care, legal fees, and heaven only knows what else for 75 years.

Mr. Atwood is going to have to do a little more explaining on his next rhetoric, because I don't "clearly" see that it "distracts" from "true-crime-reducing methods." What "true crime-reducing methods" are we talking about here? Counseling -- "Now, you know it's not nice to kill people." Yeah, I'm sure that will work. Job training -- "If I only had a job these homicidal tendencies would go away." Want to take that chance? Mood-altering drugs -- "I'm all better now. I don't need these drugs anymore," he said just before he went on a rampage.

He says:

"When Texas executes someone, it becomes a killer itself, no better than the murderer who is being executed. If there was ever a premeditated, cold-blooded murder, it is an execution."

Most of us are well able to draw a moral distinction between kidnapping, torturing, raping, and burying alive a 7-year-old child and lawfully executing the animal who perpetrated the crime. If Mr. Atwood cannot, he has a serious moral problem himself. Individual executions are not "premeditated." They are lawful sentences for heinous crimes. They are not cold-blooded -- cold-blooded is allowing a dangerous criminal to be loosed upon innocent victims. They are not murder -- murder is the unlawful taking of life. By his argument, I don't guess we can use any type of punishment without becoming like criminals ourselves. If we incarcerate them, are we not guilty of holding hostages? If we fine them, are we not guilty of robbery? If we sentence them to community service, are we not guilty of enslaving them?

God forbid anything like this should happen, but I wonder if Mr. Atwood would change his mind if his little son were kidnapped, raped, and beheaded as John Walsh's son was? If his daughter were raped and stabbed to death by a Ted Bundy? If his teenage son were held hostage and sodomized repeatedly, then killed and cannibalized by a John Wayne Gacy? If his college age child were gunned down by a nutcase while attending classes? If his mentally disabled sister were lured to a field by two co-workers, raped and murdered? If his daughter were hit over the head with a rock and killed by the jealous girlfriend of a boy she had dated? If his pregnant wife were murdered so her unborn child could be stolen? If his brother were shot and killed because some thug wanted his car?

See, Mr. Atwood, my contention is that there are people among us who deserve to die, and it's the state's responsibility to see that they do!

And this helps how?

I saw in the paper this morning where both Hillary and Barack have proposed increasing taxes on oil companies to alleviate the high gas prices. Maybe I just think too logically, but I can't figure out how that will help. Everybody knows that when a business has to pay higher taxes, they pass the cost on to the consumer. We'll see it from the oil companies in higher prices at the pump. Can some of you explain to me the rationale behind this plan?

You can take the bum out of the slum, but you can't take the slum out of the bum.

How would you feel if you gave someone $500 - $1000 a month to help with his rent, and he came back and complained to you because he couldn't find the kind of place he wanted for that amount? Wouldn't you tell the ungrateful bum he could pay his own rent?

That's exactly what's happening to those of us who work and pay taxes. Inclusive Communities Project Inc., a Dallas-based civil rights group, is suing the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs because the apartment complexes it has financed are not in the areas they want to live in. In a separate suit filed in 1995, a federal judge ordered rental assistance vouchers to allow residents to move to predominantly white areas without concentrations of poverty so they could live away from the slums and blight. The vouchers "provide extra financial assistance so residents can pay the higher rents in those neighborhoods." In other words, the beggars are living in better houses than a lot of us who are supporting them can afford. Their complaint is that they can't find enough section 8 houses in "good areas."

As for the slums and blight -- why do they think most affluent, predominantly white areas are averse to housing projects being built in their neighborhoods? It's because they don't want their nice neighborhoods turned into -- blighted slums! It's the bums living in the slums who make them slums, and when they move to another neighborhood, it becomes a slum, too. Being poor is no excuse for filth, drug dealing, and sitting around on the porch drinking all day. Mr. Essie May and I both grew up in very poor families, yet we never dealt or did drugs, we always had untorn screens on our windows, and our parents always had employment -- low-paying employment, but the point is they worked!

So to those who filed this ridiculous lawsuit -- you can live anywhere you want by getting a job and paying for it yourself! Otherwise, take what you're given and quit complaining.

Don't call me!

OK -- this one takes the cake. Mr. Essie May and I were snoozing away last night, and shortly after midnight the telephone rang. My adrenaline always kicks in when the phone rings late at night, because it usually means someone is very ill, someone has died, or someone has been in an accident. No one calls just to chat in the middle of the night.

Mr. Essie May jumped up and grabbed the phone and said, "Hello." Then he just stood there listening. I could not imagine what was going on. Turns out it was a recorded phone message promoting an upcoming Bill Gothard seminar.

Now I don't like recorded phone calls in the middle of the day, but I'll be darned if I'm going to start putting up with them in the middle of the night! If you don't like them, either, let's flood the legislature with complaints until they outlaw these gross invasions of privacy!

Well, that's all I'm writing for now -- I couldn't go back to sleep last night, so I'm unplugging my phone and going to bed early!

Go, Hillary, Go!

The first thing I saw on the news this morning was little bunches of Hillary supporters lined up at the polls in Pennsylvania. They all carried Hillary signs and were doing their little rah-rah chants. The only problem was, no one could understand a word they were saying. The news anchor asked the reporter in the field what they were saying, and he didn't know, either, so he called the "head chanter" over and asked him. "Go, Hillary, Go!" he cried.

You know, I think I like that! Go, Hillary, Go! Go, Hillary, Go -- and keep on going, and keep on going until you're far, far away and we never see your face again. And take Bill with you.

Can you be a journalist if you can't write?

There was an article in our newspaper yesterday about the journalism program at one of our local high schools. I applaud the students who want to make journalism their profession and who put in extra hours at school planning and composing newspaper and yearbook. However, I have a real concern.

I have seen a couple of editions of the school newspaper touted in yesterday's feature. I have also seen this school's yearbook as well as yearbooks from some of the other schools in the area. These students do not write on a high school level! The grammar is atrocious, the spelling is haphazard, and much of the communication is ambiguous.

Am I blaming the students? No. I just can't believe an instructor would allow a student to print such poorly written material. I thought perhaps the instructors no longer proofread their students' work, but included in the article was a photo of the instructor "proofing" the next issue of the school publication.

Reading between the lines, I got the impression that "creative content" is the main goal for these budding journalists. But they must understand that even if they produce the most creative work since the Sistine Chapel ceiling, poor language skills will kill it. This instructor was quoted: " . . .the one distinct advantage I have had is my ability to ask intelligent questions, write an interesting story and promote my ambitions with visual and persuasive appeal." Maybe she should work a little less on promoting her ambitions and a little more on teaching her students.

Pretty please, may I?

One of the poor, deceived women from the El Dorado polygamist compound testified in court yesterday as to the utopian type existence the community enjoys. However, her testimony did more to shore up the view that these people are enslaved than that they are right-thinking, willing participants.

She said she was permitted to drive to Lubbock regularly to visit her adult daughter who was on dialysis. She was permitted to go? I can assure you, if I had a sick child, I would require no one's permission to "visit her regularly."

This same lady says that she was allowed to divorce an abusive husband. She was allowed to divorce him? I can assure you, if I had an abusive husband, no one would have to allow me to kick the bum out.

This woman is so brainwashed that she doesn't even realize how incongruous her statements are. And there are hundreds more just like her. The "husbands" and "elders" perpetrating this enslavement should be hanged!

Why would anybody want to steal a dead man?

Headline in yesterday's Dallas Morning News: Transients jailed in theft of dead man

After reading the article, I discovered that the suspects had not really stolen a dead man. They had stolen from the dead man. Guess the headline composer figured, "From -- of -- what's the difference?"

I believe it!

I heard it with my own ears. Last night, Hillary said she would not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. George Stephanopolous had her clarify if that was a commitment on any and all taxes, and she said it was. Of course, she was under sniper fire at the time.

How do I get my probation revoked?

In The Dallas Morning News yesterday was an article about Jeremy Watkins. Jeremy is 29 years old. In 1998, police caught Jeremy selling 10,000 hits of LSD. He was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. He served 8 years before being released in January 2006 and placed on 5 years probation. Conditions of probation included employment, a drug treatment program, and no "excessive" use of alcohol. He got a job at Park Cities Jewelers in Dallas and a second job as a DJ at Mick's bar.

Probation should have been revoked #1 -- Last November 20, Jeremy caused $500 in damage when he hit a parked car at an apartment complex in Dallas. He was arrested on a charge of public intoxication. Does this not constitute excessive use of alcohol? Was this not a violation of his probation?

Probation should have been revoked #2 -- Two months after incident #1, he was pulled over for speeding on Greenville Avenue. He was unsteady on his feet and smelled like alcohol. He ran from the officer and tried to ditch two sandwich bags of marijuana and cocaine. More excessive use of alcohol, and it looks like the drug treatment program wasn't helping much, either. Was this not a violation of his probation? Well, even federal officials agree to that, so they decided to add "new terms" to his probation. They won't say what the new terms were, or why they expected Jeremy to live up to them when he hadn't lived up to anything else.

Probation is finally revoked -- March 16, Jeremy staggered out of Mick's, climbed in his SUV, and took off. Several 911 calls from people who saw him were made to Dallas police. An officer was flagged down and quickly fell in behind the vehicle and turned on his blue lights. Jeremy did not stop -- on the contrary, he revved the engine and fled at speeds exceeding 80 mph. The officer had to back off in compliance with police department policies on car chases. At Skillman and Mockingbird, Jeremy zoomed through a red light. He collided with a Jeep Cherokee driven by Helmut Haefke, 60 years old, who died on impact. He was buried deep within the mangled wreckage. Jeremy and his passenger received minor injuries. Federal authorities have ordered him detained for probation violations.

So, how do I get my probation revoked? The only way I know of is to kill somebody.

Is you a sinner?

I kid you not, this quote from Barak Obama appeared in yesterday's newspaper: "I, as somebody who is sitting in the pews as a sinner, is imperfect."

And they say George Bush mangles the English language!

Have you heard the old wise tale about knats?

Today's lesson in word usage:

1) I heard Justin Farmer on Dallas WFAA say, "Dallas is growing at a more slower rate . . ." Either Dallas is growing at a slower rate or Dallas is growing more slowly -- it's not growing more slower. KDFW's Dan Henry has a similar grasp of the English language -- "We had a more thicker cloud cover." Too bad Justin and Dan aren't more smarter.

2) I finally couldn't stand it any longer. I wrote the Enablex company about their ads promising "less leaks and accidents." Less leakage maybe, but fewer leaks and accidents. They say they will refer my "suggestion" to the proper department. When did correct word usage become a suggestion?


4) Mary Madewell, in an editorial on the Essent/blogger case, said the case "is certain to set a precedence and is likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme court." The case may, indeed, set a precedent; but it should not take "precedence" over a journalist's imperative to use the language properly.

5) If the TV news folks will persist in seeing how many graphics they can put on a screen, would they at least get someone who can spell? Channel 8 ran a crawl about the American flight "cancelations." And it wasn't a typo, because the same misspelling showed up on a background graphic.


6) From The Paris News of 3/3/2008 -- "fire consumed a hay bailer along with the barn and several bails of hay." That's "bales," folks. Proper usage: When the boat carrying hay bales began taking on water, all the hands grabbed their buckets to bail.

7) I keep reading about people running a muck. A muck is a muddy mess. Proper usage: When the thunder rolled, the scared pigs ran amok in a muck.

8) I saw recently someone reference "old wise tales" about how to predict the first frost. I have to admit, some of those old wives' tales are pretty wise.

9) And my final one today -- I read a quote from a person complaining about his antagonist: "You're just like a pesky old knat!" Kind of loses it's impact in that form, doesn't it?

I could be wrong, now -- but I don't think so!

Did you know that the raid on the polygamist compound in El Dorado, Texas, was a racist thing? Well, according to Larry Riel who had a letter to the editor printed in today's Dallas Morning News, it is.

You see, all the women and children removed from the compound are white. Larry says that the "Dallas inner-city neighborhoods are overwhelmed with black and Hispanic mothers who, in many cases, have two or more children before they are 18."

I guess Larry is saying that authorities don't care if teenagers have babies if they are black. But Larry seems to be missing some important differences here.

1) The white children in the compound are being forced into pseudo-marriages against their will -- most of the inner-city teenagers (however immature, wrong, and foolish their choice) choose to have sex and babies.

2) The white children in the compound are prisoners -- most of the inner-city teenagers have no supervision at all.

3) The white children in the compound are home-schooled -- most of the inner-city teenagers have other educational opportunities.

4) The white children in the compound are being raped by men much older than they -- most of the inner-city teenagers are having sex with other teenagers.

5) The white children in the compound are being told they will go to hell if they don't stay sweet and do whatever their "husbands" and "elders" tell them to; in short, they are enslaved -- most of the inner-city teenagers, despite all their rhetoric, have no concept of what slavery is.

If the situation were reversed, and authorities went into the inner-cities and removed 400 children, I'm quite certain Larry would again be playing the old race card. "Why hasn't something been done about those polygamist enclaves out there? Why are the authorities picking on the inner-city kids? It's because those polygamist enclaves are white!" To quote one of my favorite TV series theme songs, "I could be wrong, now -- but I don't think so!"

It sounded like a . . .

Please don't take this post wrong -- those who have suffered a tornado have my deepest sympathies. I'm always the first one in our household to head to the tornado room when the weather gets bad.

But yesterday afternoon as I watched the news reporters interviewing those who were in the path of a tornado in the early morning hours, I heard the requisite tornado quote: "It sounded just like a freight train!" How disappointed the news media would be without that quote!

I have often told Mr. Essie May that if we are ever so unfortunate as to suffer the effects of a tornado, when I am interviewed, I plan to say, "It sounded just like a passenger train!" I've always been kind of ornery that way.

No need to worry . . . he's under mandatory supervision!

Erick Daniel Davila, 21, is being held on a capital murder charge in Fort Worth for opening fire on a 9-year-old's birthday party. Besides killing a 5-year-old and her grandmother, this piece of scum wounded four other people, including 3 children.

Now for the surprising part -- Davila is a parolee. Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, says Davila was sentenced in 2006 to 3 years in prison for burglary of a habitation. Sentenced in 2006 to 3 years -- by my calculation he should have been locked up until sometime in 2009. However, he was released in August of 2007 under "mandatory supervision."

Wow -- 2 dead, 4 others wounded, all for no apparent reason, and all this done while he was "under supervision." I shudder to think how high his death toll would have been if they hadn't been supervising him!

TDCJ -- if you're going to continue releasing criminals before their time is served, at least quit feeding us that line about supervision. We all know it's a crock!

Shhhh --- There he is!

Have you heard that Bigfoot is roaming the shores of Pat Mayse Lake in Lamar County? I kid you not, people are actually paying money to this guy named Tom Biscardi to go out and tramp around in the mud looking for this imaginary creature. Do I think Tom Biscardi is crazy? Heck, no! He's making big money off the real nuts!

Biscardi had one member of "his team" spend the night up a tree watching for Mr. Foot. If you're that gullible, you deserve to spend a chilly spring night up a tree!

Is there proof Bigfoot exists? Of course! Biscardi displayed three plaster casts of Bigfoot footprints they "found during the preliminary look at the area this time." Does anybody besides me find it odd that the news media weren't called to view the actual prints at the time they were found? And does anybody besides me find it odd that these "proofs" always seem to be found when nobody else is around?

Lest you think this is just a bunch of hicks, you should know that this is no low-tech operation. They're using "infrared technology, a heightened sound system, and a means to get the creature's DNA." But if all that fails, they'll go back to the old-fashioned way -- "We are going to use a woman as bait to lure out the Alpha male."

Mrs. Lance Bailey, who says she's had an encounter with a "creature," has volunteered her services. Mrs. Bailey says as she jogged recently on the roads near her home in the area, she realized something was paralleling her run just in the edge of the trees. I think it was probably a rabbit or her shadow, but then, I'm not an expert on Bigfoot. The experts, however, are convinced that by repeating Mrs. Bailey's run, this time lining the path with "Bigfoot scent," they'll see the huge, camera-shy fellow. Thinking I might call Mrs. Bailey and inquire about her experiences, I looked her up in the phone book. Now, there may very well be a Lance Bailey living in the area, but he's not listed in the phone book. So I tried a public record service we subscribe to. On a driver's license search, I found several Lance Baileys in Texas, but none in Lamar County. So I got to thinking . . . The Paris News runs this front page article including three photographs (two of them in color), but no picture of the all-important bait; the Baileys are not listed in the phone book; and the Baileys don't have drivers licenses on record. Kind of makes me wonder if Mrs. Bailey is as imaginary as Bigfoot.

But we didn't know there would be golf balls . . .

Some people may be rich enough to live in the elite areas of town, but I question whether or not they are smart enough. Golf nets are the big controversy in Plano right now. It seems that some people who have "paid top dollar for fairway views" are surprised that their houses, patios, etc. are bombarded with golf balls. What did they think they were hitting on that course -- nerf balls?It's kind of like saying, "I want to live next to the ocean, but something should be done about that noisy surf!"Some of them have installed golf nets to prevent the balls from reaching their properties. Others claim the nets are an eyesore. Plano doesn't know how to settle the issue.



It's real easy -- if a house and its present owner preceded the golf course, a net is allowed. If the golf course was there first, no net. Quick, easy, and fair to everybody!

We don't know if we're here or there!

The front page article in The Dallas Morning News today details more waste of our tax dollars. And what's worse than the waste is the corruption. And what's worse than the corruption is the apparent attitude that "everybody's doing it" and "we can't stop it."

The waste and corruption arise from shady accounting practices in 93 of Texas' 211 charter shools -- waste and corruption to the tune of at least $26 million. Some of that money will never be recovered because the schools went out of business. The charter schools collected the extra money mainly by inflating attendance records.

One of the reasons cited for the fraudulent activity is that charter schools don't have strong oversight. It seems to me that if they're getting our money, they should also be getting our scrutiny! TEA official Lisa Dawn-Fisher says that "If they can't get the warm bodies in the building, they may feel an incentive to falsify records." I'm not sure if she's excusing these crooks or not, but in my book, theft is theft is theft, no matter what the "incentive." The newspaper report says that TEA puts monitors at schools only after serious problems have been identified. Maybe we wouldn't have serious problems if they put them there beforehand.

Katie Howell, executive director of the Resource Center for Charter Schools, says "Unfortunately, the public just hears about a very small percentage that's done something poorly, just like with public schools." I don't know where Katie went to school, but I don't call 44% of the schools stealing my money a "very small percentage." I call that a significant number!

John Dodd who took over as president of Dallas-based Honors Academy in 2001 said he found rampant attendance fraud there. Teachers wrote absences in pencil so they could be erased and changed by administrators. Students were told they would be marked present for the entire week if they showed up as much as one day.

TEA officials excuse this corruption by saying that this is mostly accidental (we accidentally changed those absenses to presents and accidentally told those kids they didn't have to come) due to inexperienced workers, complicated attendance rules, bad accounting software. What's so hard about counting how many kids are at school? Either a kid's there, or he's not! When I was in school, we didn't have computers and accounting software or complicated attendance rules. When the bell rang, the teacher called the roll. If she heard, "Here," she put a check mark in the box by the student's name. If she didn't hear anything, she put an "A" there. Then she turned in the roll sheet to the office where the attendance secretary added up the classes (using nothing more complicated than a 10-key adding machine) and filled out her reports. The big difference here is that school personnel used to be of the highest moral fiber. They didn't believe in cheating! And if a worker is so "inexperienced" that he can't count people, he probably should be flipping burgers instead of working with children.

Jack Ammons, a former school superintendent who works with troubled charter schools said, "If taxpayers knew how much of their tax money was going to charter schools and what the actual return on their tax money was . . . they would see that the Legislature address the whole charter school concept."

Sounds good to me -- close 'em down and we won't have to worry about whether or not they're smart enough to keep attendance records.

I just love this house . . .

Why are we having a foreclosure "crisis"? From the news reports I've heard, it's largely because people bought more or mortgaged more than they could reasonably afford, and the money-hungry financial institutions let them. So why should we bail out anybody for making stupid decisions?

I offer as examples:

1) A man in the Dallas area is losing his home. The home was almost paid for when his mother, who lived in Venezuela, died. The man said the only way he could take his sizable family to the funeral was to take out a home equity loan at an adjustable rate. Soon after he did this, he had a heart attack and was forced to retire on disability. His reduced income is not enough to make his escalating house payment.

The heart attack was completely out of this man's control, but if he didn't have the money to take his whole family to Venezuela, he shouldn't have done it! Especially if the only way he could do it was to mortgage his home!

2) A single mother who works for the transit system in New York makes $50,000 a year. She saw this house and fell in love with it -- a $400,000 house. The financial institution gave her the loan for the house. She quickly discovered that she could not make the payment.

What moron doesn't know that a $50,000 income won't cover the payments for a $400,000 home?!!! Mr. Essie May and I make more than twice this lady's income, and we bought a $110,000 home. And guess what -- we've had no problems making the payments, we are in no danger of losing it, and we haven't shown up on the news in a "poor, pitiful me" segment!

Come on, people, let's all try to practice that dying art called THINKING!

Pregnant man? NOT!

It's all over the news -- a man is pregnant. She is not a man! She is a woman who had her breasts removed and is taking testosterone, but that does not a man make. Freak, for sure! Man, not! Possibly even freakier than the pregnant one is her "wife." And how messed up do you think the poor child will be? God must surely be weeping!

Haul out that dictionary for an overall!

Paris News sportswriter Van Hilburn, in an article titled "Rivercrest ISD dismisses seven coaches," wrote "It was almost a year ago that Rivercrest's coaching staff underwent a major overall, with the hiring of several new coaches, including head coaches in most of the sports."

Overall, Mr. Hilburn, I'd say you need a dictionary for a major vocabulary overhaul!

We mourn the death of common sense . . .

Common sense has fled the premises in the wake of political correctness. Under the guise of allowing children to "discover their own identities," parents and so-called educators have allowed a quite disturbing scenario.

According to The Dallas Morning News, Larry King was a gay eighth-grader in Oxnard, California. He was allowed to attend school in makeup, high heels, and earrings. How do you think eighth-grade boys (or boys of any age for that matter) responded to a kid like that? Surprise! They ridiculed him. The way Larry handled their ridicule was to flirt with them, and he flirted with the wrong one. February 12, Brandon McInerney, 14, shot him twice in the head at the back of the computer lab at their junior high school.

Gay rights activists are demanding that schools do more to educate youngsters about discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Larry's friend says, "Larry was brave enough to bring high heels and makeup to school, and he wasn't afraid of anything." The superintendent of Larry's school district says Larry was free to wear women's accessories because the dress code prohibits only items that could be a safety threat.

In the first place, I question whether any hormone-ridden 15-year-old really knows whether he's gay or not. Second, where were mom and dad? What parent would allow their male child to go to school dressed like a girl, gay or not? Even if we concede the point that the kid was "discovering himself," there are gender neutral clothes out there -- pants and polo type shirts are worn by both genders, and no one is conspicuous wearing them.

As far as the gay rights demands, perhaps they should be educating their own kind -- 1) don't draw attention to yourself, and nobody will care whether or not you're gay. But if you dress to draw attention, you're probably going to get it. 2) Don't try to get amorous with heterosexuals!

Larry's friend says he was not afraid of anything. He should have been. Fear can be a good thing -- I'm afraid of tornadoes, I'm afraid of wackos, I'm afraid of running a red light, I'm afraid of sticking my hand in the fire or my finger in a light socket, I'm afraid of sharpening my mower blade while the mower's running -- you get my drift?

And finally, I address the school district policy which prohibits only attire that could be a safety threat. Larry's dead -- looks to me like women's clothes on an eighth-grade boy is about as unsafe as you can get!