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4A SATURDAY, JULY 15, 2006 piousttm piatlg OPINION 1_ Daniel F. Evans Editor and Publisher Julie B. Evans Vice President Don Moncrief Foy S. Evans Managing Editor Editor Emeritus Absentee voting reform needed While a fight goes on over whether Georgia should require a photo ID to vote, focus should be on absentee balloting, too, where there is the great est possibility of fraud. It is possible for a person to claim to be another person and vote. It has happened. A photo identification card could have prevented it. However, this kind of voter fraud probably doesn’t occur often. On the other hand, there are limitless opportu nities for fraud in absentee voting, where it is possible to receive a bal lot without much effort. Attention should be focused on this leak in security of the voting process. From what we have read, absen tee voting is on the minds of legisla tors on the national and state levels. Regardless of the outcome of the challenge to the photo ID card for voting in Georgia, it is a good idea and, surprisingly, it has been endorsed for national voting by a committee on which former President Jimmy Garter served. So, looking ahead, it is only a matter of time before everyone in the country will be required to show a photo ID to vote and all the phony objections will have been overcome. For the present, the battle is going on in several states, which are ahead of the federal government on the issue. Next Tuesday is election day Voters will go to the polls in Georgia next Tuesday for Democrats and Republicans to select their candidates to run in the General Electibn in November. There are local races, as well as statewide races, to be decided. We hope that readers of this newspaper have taken time to get at least an idea what the various candidates propose if elected or reelected. It is better if voters are informed when they vote, though many voters do not have any idea what candidates’ platforms or backgrbunds are. Too often many voters just see candidates on tele vision or their pictures in newspapers and they vote on looks alone. It is a poor way to select elected officials, but that is the way it is. Personality and looks should not be the factors that determine how anyone votes. Today they are important beyond belief. Turnout for the primary elections Tuesday probably will be about 30 percent, according to election officials’ predictions. They come close to being right most of the time. LETTER TO THE EDITOR Hodges deserves memorial Right on with General Hodges! He is a fellow alumnus of North Georgia College, which at last count has pro duced a total of 23 general officers. I believe he was the first. To my knowledge the state has produced only four four star generals. Hodges, Lucius Clay, Livsey (my class mate at North Georgia, and some fellow from Georgia Tech whose name escapes me. Hodges was by far the greatest in my opinion because of the large combat army he commanded and becatise of the success of that army. Clay, of course, is famous for the Berlin Airlift but that wasn’t like matching up to von Rundstedt et all. Livsey, who lives in Fayetteville, was overall commander of U.S. and UN forces in Korea around 1980. General Hodges truly deserves a merborial in his home town. Jim Minter former editor Atlanta-Journal Constitution Send your Letters to the Editor to: The Houston Home Journal P.O. Box 1910 • Perry, Ga 31069 or Email: hhj@evansnewspapers.com Regardless of the out come of the challenge to the photo ID card for voting hi Georgia, It Is a good Idea and, sur prisingly; it has been endorsed for national voting by a commit tee on which former President Jimmy Carter served. Soldiers fighting terrorists and the left It is hard to compre hend the reasoning of American judges who insist that Islamic terror ists, including those at Guantanamo Bay, be treated the same as soldiers in uni form and given the benefit of our country’s liberal rules of law. Rather than try these pris oners in American courts, with lawyers provided by taxpayers, it seems to me that all of them should be returned to their native countries to be dealt with. Of course, they don’t want to go. Life back home would make Guantanamo seem like a Ritz-Carlton hotel. The message to American servicemen fighting the ruthless Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan should be to kill their enemies on the battlefield, instead of capturing them. It is difficult to fight the enemy in foreign countries as well as liberal judges and left-wing journalists at home at the same time. * * * I have difficulty depending on reviews of restaurants in newspapers and magazines. The food critics are way out Wtm l I Iblowbou ' <^O6 CR£MORSSYNWCATE, INC. _ -CwL 'Race' schools: Your tax dollars at work Top White House advis er Karl Rove trav eled to Los Angeles this week to pay. homage to the anti-immigration enforcement lobbying group for Latinos: the National Council of La Raza. “La Raza” is Spanish for “The Race.” It’s bad enough the White House lent its prestige to The Race’s annual confer ence. But did you know the Bush administration has forked over millions of fed eral tax dollars directly to The Race? According to GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood of Georgia, The Race snapped up $15.2 million in federal grants last year alone and more than S3O million since 1996. Undisclosed amounts went to get-out-the-vote efforts supporting La Raza politi cal positions. The U.S. Department of Education tunneled nearly $8 million in taxpayer grants to the group for a nationwide char ter schools initiative. Among The Race’s most infamous government funded charter schools is La Academia Semillas del Pueblo, the Los Angeles public school that teaches “Aztec math” (ancient dot math is the new math) and the Mexican indigenous lan guage of “Nahuatl.” The ethnic separatist principal of the school, Marcos Aguilar, told a sympathetic UCLA interviewer: “We don’t want to drink from a White water foun tain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting Foy Evans Columnist foyevansl9@cox.net and their idea of good food is different than mine. My tastes are simple. I don’t want someone messing with my food to the point I cannot recognize what it is. That is why I am reluctant to eat at a restaurant that has a chef. I prefer that my food be prepared by a cook. Then I can look at my meal and know what I am eating. N * * * I have trouble being impressed by the scare tac tics being used by politicians and scientists who predict worldwide devastation because of global warming. Wasn’t it only a few decades ago that scientists were pre dicting that we were enter ing a new ice age? Michelle Malkin Columnist malkin@comcast.net rain in our aqueducts. We don’t need a White water fountain. . . . We are not interested in what they have because we have so much more and because the world is so much larger. And ulti mately the White way, the American way, the neo lib eral, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction.” That’s the tip of the ice berg. I found dozens of other publicly subsidized charter schools sponsored by The Race and funded with our money, including: • Aztlan Academy in Tucson, Ariz. According to The Race, the school's suc cess rests on “Aztlan’s abil ity to integrate a meaning ful Chicano Studies program into their lives, language, and academics, as a means of developing their intellects as well as their pride and self-esteem.” The school’s name - a reference to a mythical swath of the vast Southwestern U.S. expanse, which Latino activists claim is their rightful homeland and which they seek to reconquer for Mexico - says it all. • Mexicayotl Academy in mu * * * One theme in almost all political candidates as they approach next Tuesday’s election is that government should be run as a business. Usually, candidates who never have held public office do not realize there is a dif ference between running government as a business or like a business. You' cannot run a govern ment the same way you do a business. There should be sound business practices, but people who run businesses can make decisions without having thousands of people looking over their shoulders all the time and making demands that, often, defy good business practices. Politics is a practice in the Bt Jm Nogales, Ariz. Who needs the three R’s? At Mexicayotl, it’s all about the three M’s: me, me, me! The school’s program is “structured and developed around the con cepts of identity, culture, and language.” Second mission: supporting local ethnic lob bying efforts “to right social injustices by educating the community and helping cre ate social change.” Under “greatest achievements,” the school’s Web site lists its participation in a “Peace & Dignity Run”; its visit from Rigoberta Menchu (the Marxist academic fraud from Guatemala who lied her way to a Nobel Peace Prize); and its sponsorship of the local annual Dia de los Muertos (the Mexican holiday). • The Dolores Huerta Preparatory High School in Pueblo, Colo. It’s named after the far-Left Latina labor union activ ist who recently railed that “Republicans hate Latinos,” praised illegal alien march ers and screeched that “We didn’t cross the borders, the borders crossed us” in a hate-filled tirade before Arizona students. • Academia Cesar Chavez HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL art of compromise. Not a compromise of principles, but compromises that can bring about consensus. When you hear candidates say what they are going to do when elected the odds are that they cannot do what they promise. They become part of a legislative or administrative governing body and have to work with others who may or may not agree with them. It is impressive when you see governments run on a business-like basis. By law, city and county govern ments cannot run up debt from year to year. They must pay their bills when they come due each year. Sometimes the way money is spent and how bills are created can fall short of good business practices, but the bills must be paid. So it really boils down to this: We have a right to expect that our elected offi cials, on all levels, conduct our governments on a busi ness-like basis within the constraints and demands placed upon them. No one individual is likely to bring about change by himself. Charter School in St. Paul, Minn. Board of Directors member Louis Mendoza, an activist Chicano Studies professor, pushed the school to lobby for the federal DREAM Act (providing in state tuition discounts to illegal alien students not available to legal non-resi dents). The school’s Web site features one flag on its front page: the Mexican flag. The White House will tell you that the National Council of The Race is a “moderate,” mainstream civil rights group. But there’s nothing “moderate” about The Race’s advocacy of driver’s licenses and in state tuition discounts for illegal aliens. Or its opposi tion to strengthening secu rity for identity documents and improving cooperation on immigration enforcement between state, local and fed eral enforcement immigra tion officials. Or its all-out war on the House GOP’s border security and enforce ment-first bill passed last December. President Bush pays lip service to immigration enforcement and assimila tion, while the White House sends Karl Rove to make nice with the separatist leaders of The Race and the Bush Education Department showers our tax dollars on radical Reconquista schools. It doesn’t add up. Unless, of course, you’re using Aztec math. Michelle Malkin is author of the new book “Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild. ” Her e-mail address is malkin@comcast.net.