What's missing? Leadership

What's missing? Leadership
EDITOR:
The editorial page of the May 12 Vindicator is very interesting for its content, and what is not said, except in one small article. Let me explain. Mr. Cal Thomas, that paragon writer of the far right, has taken the Transportation Security Administration to task for its airport screening. I can sympathize with him in his traveling travails at our airports since 9/11. With his credentials, he was able to go to almost the pinnacle of authority to make the screening process for himself less harassing than it has been since 9/11.
Like Mr. Thomas, in returning from a tax program seminar through the Louisville airport, having flown from Pittsburgh, I was congratulating myself on buying a pair of walking shoes that had plastic insteps, not metal, and would go through the screening without buzzers or bells, which did indeed happen. I was startled by the command, "take off your shoes," Why? Ask I, no bells, no buzzers. The answer. "The soles are too thick." And so goes the screening process. It is whatever the screener wishes to do. There are no written rules.
Molly Selvin, on the same page, takes to task the Homeland Security personnel. It seems a specially invited group of correspondents were visiting the Supreme Court, and the Justice Department on succeeding days. On both days the correspondents were treated as though they were would be terrorists, and not American citizens visiting our governmental offices. Molly's criticism was six inches deep over three columns. Not much was said about the Supreme Court or the Justice Department, just the "security." One correspondent was told not to stop to read the plaque on a painting of a former justice, when returning from a reluctantly given approval to visit the rest room.
Georgie Anne Geyer writes on the court martial of Lynndie England, vis-a-vis the disgrace at Abu Ghraib by American military personnel. This was single column of over 19 inches to give vent to her disgust at the proceedings and the aftermath of that horrific incident. This is a page that all citizens should read. It is about leadership.
Only in the lower right corner on an article about the Treasury Department thinking about issuing new 30-year bonds is Bush called to task for his tax cuts and the mounting national debt. Nowhere else is the leadership in this country named on this page. The cartoon at the top of the page may say it all.
Awake America, awake.
LEONARD J. SAINATO
Warren
Missing what's important
EDITOR:
It is appalling to me that the Catholic bishops would launch a campaign to denounce the death penalty in the face of so many other important issues. The church approved of execution of criminals for centuries (burning at the stake was hardly humane).
And why this late effort after concluding 25 years ago that the death penalty has to go? They seem concerned about 1,000 executions in the U.S. since 1976, Yet they would still hide hundreds of priests who sexually abused over 10,000 boys during this same period, covered up the crimes, moved culprits from parish to parish, diocese to diocese, country to country, while offering no assistance for the pain inflicted on victims and their families.
Why do they not address the shortage of priests and do something about it? Many priests resigned from the clergy in recent memory. Now many lay people are leaving. Why? Unfortunately I think many important matters are forbidden to be discussed -- celibacy, married and women priests, birth control.
Accountability about money is another issue needing to be addressed. Good people sacrificed to build parishes, schools. How much money would parishioners have given had they known the bishops would use the money to pay attorneys' fees or pay victims to keep silent?
Jesus didn't object to the death penalty and he knew he was to be on the receiving end of the cruelest method of execution. He did object to hypocrisy.
JACK WIRTZ
North Jackson