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4A ♦ TUESDAY, JULY 11, 2006 plouston Hjmmral OPINION Daniel F. Evans Editor and Publisher Julie B. Evans Vice President Don Moncrief Managing Editor Voting is now underway Advance voting for the July 18 primary elections began yesterday. It will continue through Friday of this week. Advanced voting will not be available the day before the elections —next Monday. This convenience to Voters in Georgia proved popular in the laslt election and the number of voters taking advantage of it this time probably will increase. Many vot ers still do not know why we have primary elections or why they can not vote for their favorite candidates, regardless of the party affiliation. Primaries are the way the political parties select the candidates they want to represent them in General eYElectidns. If voters in primaries Were able to vote both Democratic and Republican at the same time it would distort the results. Voters who vote ahead of time or at the polls must declare whether they wish to vote as a Democrat or Republican. This does not mean that the voter must vote the same way in the General Election. Democrats oppose Democrats and Republicans oppose Republicans in the pri maries. Voters select the single candidate for each political office to represent their party for each contested office. Then in the General Election, Democrats and Republicans face off against each other to see who will be elected to the contested office. Other parties can put up candidates in the General Election, too, if they qualify. Winners of some Republican and Democratic offices in the primaries may not have opposition in the General Election, in which case winning the primary gives them a free ride to victory in November. Even some voters who understand how the system works still complain that “I am not permitted to vote for the candidates I like.” If this occurs, it is because they want to vote in both the Democratic add Republican pri maries, which cannot be done. The present system has worked for gen erations. It has served out local and federal governments well. Our suggestion: Get out and vote if you are eligible. The turnout never is good, usu ally around 30 percent in primaries. But it reflects the number of people who really have an interest in who represents them in elected offices. HOW TO SUBMIT LETTERS We encourage readers to submit letters to the editor. Letters should not exceed 350 words and must include the writer’s name, address and telephone number. All letters printed in The Home Journal will appear with the writer’s name and hometown - we do not publish anonymous letters. The newspaper reserves the right to edit dr reject letters for reasons of grammar, punctuation, taste and brevity. Letter writers are asked to submit no more than one letter per person per week. We cannot guarantee that a letter will be printed on a specific date. The Home Journal prefers that letters be typed. Letters to the editor are published in the order they are received as space permits. A Journal employee will call to verify the author of each letter. There are three ways to submit a letter to the editor: E-mail it to hhj@dvansnewspapers. com, mail it to The Houston Home Journal at P.O. Box 1910, Perry, GA 31069, or drop it off at 1210 Washington St. in Perry - between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Foy S. Evans Editor Emeritus If voters in primaries were aUle to vote both DeOiocratic and Republican at the same time it would distort the resußs. County living confusing for some Want to be confused? Move to some parts of Houston County. Some folks who live in southeastern Houston County, beyond Haynesville, have Hawkinsville mail ing addresses. Some folks who live in North Houston County have Byron address es. Some of the subdivisions that have been annexed into Warner Robins have Perry telephone numbers. And then there are folks who live in Peach County, get their mail from the Perry post office and have Fort Valley telephone numbers. Not many years ago Centerville and some sub divisions in - Warner Robins east of Houston Lake Road had Byron addresses, but as the area grew it changed. I’m confused when some one says they live in Bonaire or Kathleen. Used to be you knew exact ly where they lived. Today Houston Lake Country Club is in Kathleen and numer ous subdivisions half way to Highway 41 are in Bonaire. When someone tells me where they live and use the name of the town or commu nity I ask them where they really live, because it often isn’t what it sounds like. * * * I’m always fascinated when someone leaves an impor tant job or elective office “to spend more time with my grandchildren.” Most grand parents are eager to take care of their grandchildren, but within a few hours they are happy to return them to their parents. You don’t Jtr^ CPV —. . __ x. Eyeing the newspaper of wreckage When is a “secret” not a secret? When The New York Times decides, in the interest of saving its old gray hide, that it is not. On June 22, the paper trumpeted its expose of “a secret Bush administra tion program” to track ter ror finances. The banking program, reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen made unmistakably clear, was a “closely held secret.” The front-page story referred to the secret nature of the program no less than eight times. A Times-pro duced Web video featur ing Lichtblau promoted a brief interview in which he “reveal(ed) a secret Bush administration program to access financial records.” But by July 2, smarting from the public backlash against its blabbermouth coverage, the Times crew was backpedaling faster than circus monkeys on bar rels hurtling over Niagara Falls. Suddenly, the “secret” was no secret at all. Everybody who’s anybody has known about the secret program all along, silly. New York Times ombuds man Byron Calame’s belated defense of the Times’ expose of the monitoring of the SWIFT banking program contained this revealing pas sage: “There was a significant Foy Evans Columnist foyevansl9@cox.net need to retire to do that. Which makes me believe this excuse is a cover-up for another reason. * * * School starts in less than a month, after a relative ly short summer vacation. This makes it possible to have several brief and not so-brief breaks during the school year. Several teachers have told me that it takes a day or two after each break to get the children back into the routine of learning. If this is so, why not have a long summer vacation and fewer breaks during the school year? Just wonder ing. * * * Complaints about politi cal signs cluttering the side of roads and streets can be quieted if candidates remove their signs after the elec tion. On the other hand, all those little signs stuck in the ground by individuals and businesses all over Warner Robins and Centerville will be there forever, apparently, despite the fact there are ordihances against them. Nobody seems to want to Michelle Malkin Columnist malkin@comcast.net question as to how secret the (monitoring of the SWIFT banking program) was after five years. ‘Hundreds, if not thousands, of people know about this,’ (Executive Editor Bill) Keller claimed he was told by an official who talked to him on condi tion of anonymity.” “Hundreds, if not thou sands, of people” have known about the program before the Times blabbed about it. Well, there’s a scoop. So, why wasn’t this reported in the original story and reflected in the original, front-page headline? There was no printed fol low-up from lapdog Calame about Keller’s assertion, which goes a good bit further than the claim by Times’ apologists Richard Clarke and Roger Cressey. That mind-reading duo wrote in a Times op-ed that terrorists already assumed their financial transac tions were being monitored. enforce these ordinances. * * * Renewal of the civil rights act of 1965 is on the front burner again in the United States Senate. It will be renewed, as is, for another 25 years though it is unfair to citizens of Georgia and other states who should not be handcuffed by its restric tions. The important thing to most politicians is to suck up to minorities for their votes. They fear minorities will punish them at the polls if they don’t and they know whites have a long history of rolling over and meekly doing nothing. * * * Some politicians are call ing on Gov. Sonny Perdue to remove the state tax on gasoline as a way to combat the soaring prices. It is not a good idea. The state needs the tax revenue from gaso line to maintain highways. It would be foolish to let our state highways deteriorate in order to give motorists a few cents per gallon relief. Let the market place dictate the price of gasoline, despite the discomfort and pain it “Better look sharp... here comes the boss!" JB I 9H Calame curiously neglected to note that Keller’s claim contradicted both the tone and .facts presented in the Times’ initial coverage by reporters Lichtblau and Risen. Which is just as well, since Lichtblau himself is now contradicting his own story, too. On CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” facing withering criticism from talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, Lichtblau blustered: “When you have senior Treasury Department offi cials going before Congress, publicly talking about how they are tracing and cut ting off money to terrorists, weeks and weeks before our story ran. USA Today, the biggest circulation in the country, the lead story on their front page four days before our story ran was the terrorists know their money is being traced, and they are moving it into - outside of the banking system into HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL inflicts. * * * Some manufacturers, who believed the American pub lic wanted more economi cal automobiles, are giving up on manufacturing eco nomical hybrid automobiles. They have learned that Ameritans want big cars with less gas mileage and are willing to pay more at the gas pump for it. Besides, many people woke up to the fact they would have to drive a hybrid car many years to save enough to offset the higher cost of a hybrid. * * * The intersection of Houston Lake Road and Highway 96 missed the boat as Houston county’s “next major shopping area”. Now knowledgeable people are predicting that the area around the intersection of Lake Joy Road and Highway 96 will see major commercial development, which already is underway, turn into the next major shopping area. * * * Several years ago it seemed that Houston County was on the cutting edge of technol ogy and the entire county would have wireless inter net service. It never came to pass. The advanced Wi-Fi tech nology that Intel offered to Houston County as a pilot program now is being used to make entire cities, even as large as San Francisco, wireless. Sooner or later all cities, large and small, will have wireless Internet ser vice available to everyone. unconventional means. "It is by no means a secret." (emphasis added). Hmm. What was that headline over Lichtblau’s story again? Oh, yeah: “Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to block terror.” Meanwhile, finance regulators and top government officials in Belgium (who apparently aren’t among the “hun dreds, if not thousands” who knew about the pro gram) have ordered a probe into SWIFT, which is regu lated by the Belgian central bank and answers to Belgian law. Bush-undermining Eurowheedlers are launch ing a debate in parliament over the program next week, and a private human rights lobbying group has filed for mal complaints against the SWIFT banking consortium in 32 countries. Lesson No. 1: Never trust the Times’ headlines. Lesson No. 2: Never trust what’s printed under the Times’ headlines. Lesson No. 3: Never trust what comes out of the mouths of the Times’ editors and reporters. Avoid the newspaper of wreckage, and help keep American safe. Michelle Malkin is author of the new book “Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. ” Her e-mail address is malkin@comcast.net.