www.roanoke.com

Restaurant patrons place order for clean air

Gov. Tim Kaine offered an amendment to House Bill 2422, which would make all restaurants in Virginia smoke-free if it is passed by the General Assembly. I urge the members of the General Assembly to vote "yes" to this amendment.

I have watched my grandmother die of lung cancer due to secondhand smoke. I am also the mother of a child with asthma, which can be triggered by smoke.

On April 4, the General Assembly will have an opportunity to prohibit smoking in restaurants by supporting the governor's amendment. For my family and me, this will mean we can enjoy going out to any restaurant we choose, at any time, and enjoy a meal without inhaling secondhand smoke, which includes at least 69 chemicals known to cause cancer.

I would like to see our delegates and senators do the right thing on this.

Breeders and pet stores don't care about pets

The Bland County kennel fire that killed many dogs is a tragedy (March 22 news article, "167 dogs perish in fire at Bland County kennel").

An even greater tragedy, though, is that we can't eliminate the people who breed and sell dogs for a living.

Every SPCA in the country is filled with homeless dogs. There are dozens of other organizations and millions of dollars dedicated each year to the rescue and care of abused and abandoned dogs.

Breeders and pet store owners claim that they care about animals, but if that were really the case, they'd be helping to resolve this problem rather than aggravating it.

This is an incredibly cruel and wasteful cycle that could be brought to an end.

A letter well put

Many thanks to Ray Richardson for his March 23 letter to the editor, "Strength as a weakness." He summed up in a few paragraphs the life of the "village idiot" brilliantly.

News buried on White House editor in chief

Sometimes it's hard to figure out just where to begin. Let's start with the name Philip Cooney.

He used to be a lobbyist for the oil industry before President Bush hired him to be the chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He now works for the environmental firm Exxon Mobile.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality is tasked with advising the president on matters of, oddly enough, the quality of the environment.

In the March 21 news article "Ex-White House official defends editing changes," it was reported that Cooney changed several environmental reports in order "to align these communications with the administration's stated policy."

Cooney is now apparently not trying to hide his creative editing, but rather seems pretty pleased with how well he did his job of providing the president with what the president wanted to hear.

Now frankly, I don't know whether to be more outraged at Cooney's callous attitude or at The Roanoke Times for burying this little news story several pages after a longer piece about the late Anna Nicole Smith's -- whatever.

The majority can be right

Recently, I've read some letters to the editor from the rapidly thinning ranks of George W. Bush's fan club. They're saying how happy they are that our current commander in chief (such as he is) continues to blithely disregard the opinions of the overwhelming majority of Americans (not to mention almost the entire world as well) by continuing our idiotic misadventure in Iraq.

One of these letter writers claimed Nazi Germany as an example in which the majority of a country's citizens can be wrong.

True, the majority of Germans may have supported Hitler back then, but practically the entire rest of the globe most certainly did not.

Similarly, just about everyone else in the world (save the increasingly dwindling community of neoconservatives) thinks Bush is full of it. That, folks, is what makes the Iraq war the overwhelming fiasco that World War II was not.

Apparently, in the minds of the far right, the only time the majority rules in a democracy such as ours is in the case of gratuitous tax cuts and same-sex marriage.

Blessings come cheap

We ask for God's blessings for our troops. It is the very least we can do. After all, we sent them understaffed and undertrained into a culture we do not understand.

We saved a lot of money by not equipping them with the best armor available.

We require that they go back for repeated tours of duty, even the National Guard troops who are committed to a very different type of service.

Injured troops can wait months for their claims to be processed before treatment.

We save more tax money by not maintaining our Veterans Affairs hospitals in fit condition. We are even closing VA hospitals, keeping many injured troops farther from home.

We have forgotten the lessons of other wars and still do not adequately treat their emotional and mental wounds.

We are not even willing to curb our lifestyle and save a little petroleum to take some pressure off the region.

Since we are not doing our part, the least we can do for our troops -- the very least -- is to ask for God to bless them.

A new landmark could destroy our favorites

Landmarks one (Mill Mountain), three (Hotel Roanoke) and four (The Star) listed in your March 22 Extra section article "The best landmarks" will become only "remembered landmarks" if the plan goes through to build a "lodge/destination restaurant" atop Mill Mountain.

The glaring street lights illuminating the parking lots will obliterate the illumination from the Mill Mountain star, Hotel Roanoke may lose business, and Mill Mountain will no longer be a haven for nature when it becomes deforested as a result of construction.

Most people in the Roanoke Valley care passionately about Mill Mountain, not for its potential as a source of revenue, but as a place to which they can escape the business and frenetic pace of everyday life just for a little while.

I think the Fishburn family knew such a place was sorely needed, and I doubt they would have bequeathed their beloved mountain to the city had they known that a group of young professionals would be so anxious as to deprive future generations of its gifts.

Greyhounds' love for the chase is problematic

It was with delight and dismay that I read your news article about the new off-leash dog park (March 26, "Pet owners sniff out off-leash park").

I am delighted and excited about Roanoke's new off-leash dog park. Hopefully, it's the first of many to come.

I was dismayed and disappointed to read about Ginger the greyhound who "began to drift off to other areas of the park despite the calling of Laney Mei to come back."

I adopted my third greyhound last June. They are wonderful, loving dogs.

Each time I adopted my greyhounds, I signed adoption papers (a contract, if you will) that stated the dog would be on a leash at all times, unless in a fenced area. Greyhounds are sight hounds and will chase whatever catches their eye.

Please let your readers know that if you adopt one of the magnificent animals, do not allow them off-leash unless in a securely fenced area. I know of too many tragic tales of a greyhound off-leash -- from broken bones to death.