Get oil out of the ground and into the market

Re: “Time to tap the Great Plains oil bonanza,” Editorial, April 17

The Examiner correctly identifies the importance of the Bakken Formation to America’s energy future.

No doubt, the usual naysayers will pooh-pooh this discovery just as they have done with every other recent oil discovery.

Alaskan oil, they told us, would yield “only” 10 billion barrels and take 10 years to develop.

Yet, if we had started 10 years ago, we would not be paying $3.50 for a gallon of regular now.

Add that to the possibly hundreds of billions of barrels of oil in the Bakken, plus hundreds of billions offshore (which foreign entities are preparing to exploit whether or not we do), and some 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil the Department of Energy estimates are in domestic oil shale deposits.

What would be so bad about oil at $70 per barrel, a price high enough to encourage conservation and alternatives without jeopardizing the economy or bankrupting your family budget?

It’s not a lack of oil that’s causing our current problems.

Rather, it is some members of Congress and certain environmental hysterics.

Roger Johnson

Kensington

Abortion supporters resort to ‘mental gymnastics’

Re: “U.S.’ only unregulated killing industry,” April 21.

It is worth underlining Melanie Scarborough’s statement that “People who don’t want to face the fact that they would be outraged if kittens were treated with the same brutality afforded unborn humans rely on several methods to protect themselves from logical consistency.”

This is a very important aspect of the American public’s tolerant attitude toward abortion: Some mental gymnastics are needed in order to conceal the logical inconsistency.

Ever since the Supreme Court’s appalling blunder of 1973 that legalized abortion, the scientific evidence has been steadily growing (think of ultrasound images), showing that the unborn baby is just like the rest of us, only smaller.

And as the recent cartoon movie “Horton Hears a Who” reminds us, “A person’s a person no matter how small.”

How much longer must the logical inconsistency of abortion be the law of the land?

Tom Sheahen

Deer Park, Md.

Let’s have as many memorials as it takes for us to heal

Re: “Time to let Va. Tech victims heal in peace,” April

The Bearing Drift blogger asks: “How many remembrances must there be? ...”

As many as there should be, as anyone attending Virginia Tech or any other college student in the Va./Md./D.C. area will say.

Should we not also have remembrances of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Holocaust?

Jonathan G. Begay

Burke

Save energy by recycling your old cell phones

There are more than 257 million cell phone users in the United States, and more than half are expected to upgrade this year.

What happens to the 130 million perfectly usable cell phones given early retirement?

Unfortunately, when they’re not thrown in the trash, they find new homes in junk drawers or glove compartments.

There is, however, another option.

Many retailers have programs that make it easy for consumers to recycle their wireless phones and other electronics.

And community groups aren’t the only ones that benefit when consumers recycle cell phones.

According to the EPA, recycling 100 million cell phones would save enough energy to power more than 194,000 American households for one year.

Tami A. Erwin

President

Washington/Baltimore/Virginia Verizon Wireless