Garcia is all wrong about JROTC

Additionally, JROTC is not a physical education class and should not have been credited as such in the first place. I offer Garcia a challenge: To find me an S.F. student who got “academic credit for engaging in anti-war protests” and I will find him a job writing for a newspaper that prints articles based on fact.

Moreover, the JROTC program is not “essentially free,” as one letter writer would have us believe. The San Francisco Unified School District now splits the $1.7 million annual cost of JROTC program with the feds, but would have soon been burdened with the entire cost. Perhaps Garcia wouldn’t mind picking up the tab?

Shamar Theus

San Francisco

Bonds debacle

The Barry Bonds steroid debacle will put Major League Baseball through the corruption wringer for the foreseeable future — as well it should. The Lords of Baseball indirectly made tons of money from steroids. The fans got wrapped up in the new home run records and explosive offensive production, so there was no incentive for the team owners to stop this fraud.

However, in a game where statistics mean everything and heroes are defined by magical numbers, the Lords of Baseball allowed cheating to continue for years after the first evidence came in. If the fans suddenly lose respect for the numbers and the integrity of the game, it will be a disaster for baseball. Personally, I’ve become less interested in Major League Baseball and more interested in college and high school baseball. I can’t live without baseball, but I can live quite well without the major leagues.

Michael J. Gorman

Whitestone, N.Y.

Style police

The San Mateo County Planning Department held a community forum on Nov. 14 to ask the residents of Emerald Hills and Oak Knoll Manor what we want to do about design review and zoning in our community.

Although many opinions were aired, one message was clear: Most voters in the Hills want government to stop telling them what style of home they can have and what color to paint it.

Mike Mangini

Emerald Hills

Park smoking a red herring

Yippee! We’re going after smokers whom we should not tolerate to dare (gasp) smoke outdoors in public parks.

Truly, this is so much more of an imminent health crisis than the lower-than-Third World public health conditions seen all over San Francisco. Infected hypodermic needles, human feces and urine are strewn all over our parks and streets, courtesy of our “tyranny of tolerance” for the entire nation’s homeless population and junkies.

I’m beginning to think our city is proof that evolution can go in reverse.

Joanne Gomez

San Francisco

200 lashes

It is disgraceful that a Saudi Arabian court sentenced a woman who had been gang raped to six months in jail and 200 lashes for being in the car of a man who was not a relative, doubling her sentence because she went to the media to discuss the unjust sentence that was handed down against her.

This shows the disdain and contempt Saudi society has toward women. What is worse is that the U.S. has relations with such barbarians for the mere sake of oil.

Kenneth L. Zimmerman

Huntington Beach

Fatah equals Hamas There is very little difference between the demands of Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas. Both are dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Hamas makes it a near-term goal, while Fatah advocates the long-term approach.

Negotiations — whether with Abbas or with Hamas — can only lead to nonreciprocated concessions from Israel.

Nelson Marans

Silver Spring, Md.

Constitution endangered While the average citizen is just lazy, government officials certainly are not. They employ attorneys to counsel them on how to bend the law without actually breaking it outright and read ideas into the Constitution that are not explicitly in the document’s text — i.e., “separation of church and state.”

Building on precedent is also a device to wield powers far beyond the intentions of the nation’s

founders.

Lawrence K. Marsh

Gaithersburg, Va.