PUBLIC FORUM.

Document your wishes

The ``humane euthanasia'' of Terri Schiavo utilizes starvation and dehydration, which are leaving this woman without fluid enough to speak around her cracking tongue or even for fluid enough for tears to show her frustration. Wife No. 2 of Michael Schiavo would be wise to document her wishes in writing or via videotape. Whatever happened to ``for better or for worse, in sickness and in health?'' Shame on the courts that approved of this homicide.

I wish to make a public declaration. Should this ever be my plight, I respectfully request that someone simply whomp me upside the head with a hammer. At least the swiftness of my demise would be more humane than that which is Terri Schiavo's eventual destiny.

- Barbara Kussman

Encino

Photo op

The whole ordeal with Terri Schiavo is undeniably tragic; however, what is more tragic is the fact that politicians are using this as an opportunity to win over their critics. I truly hope this is not just another photo opportunity for the president.

- Charles Aguirre

Sylmar

Have mercy

I hope President Bush and all the congressmen who voted in the Schiavo bill come down with this problem. I had five seizures and I lost my chance to walk and drive. At times I wish I was dead. You people who are lucky enough to be able to get around, I think you should have mercy on this woman and let her go.

- Solomon Kaplon

North Hollywood

Lawless lawmakers

For almost 40 years, the women of this country have been forced to endure the persistent criminal meddling of nuisance groups seeking to block our free exercise of legal reproductive rights. Now the nuisance function has been taken over by the very lawmakers themselves. It is they who violate state laws they don't agree with and refuse to recognize the authority of the state courts if the court's judgment goes against their compassionless insanities concerning human life.

All this is coming from states' rightists. Federal lawmakers who are lawless are tyrants and not mentally or morally fit to function as legislators in a constitutional republic. They must be impeached along with their delusional president who thinks God, not Carl Rove, put him in office.

- Geri A. Mellgren-Kerwin

Burbank

System is at fault

Terri Schiavo is dying a slow and horrible death with no water or nourishment to keep her alive. Her tongue is swollen and her mouth is dry. I wish everyone who agrees to this torture the same death someday, especially Michael Schiavo.

Jeb Bush could do something. He is a wimp. The whole judicial system is at fault. I'm ashamed of the American way and will never praise my country again.

- Anthony Gigerian

Los Angeles

Terminating programs

Isn't it interesting that those religious leaders who view life on Earth our ``duty'' or even ``punishment'' and heaven as ``salvation'' and ``eternal peace'' are the ones most vocal about keeping Terry Schiavo alive? You'd think they'd be encouraging lethal injections for all of us.

Anyway, Schiavo is by now almost certainly on SSI and Medicaid, two programs that Bush is working hard to terminate. I wonder how clean a feeding tube stays when one is living in a cardboard box in the gutter?

- David Fritz

Reseda

God has a reason

My sister has been in a vegetative state for 16 1/2 years. I can understand if there had been more witnesses that heard Terri Schiavo say that she would not want to be kept alive if anything should happen to her and I can't blame her husband for carrying out her wishes but to see her reminds me of my sister.

Let God do his job. He gave her life and he should be the one to take it. I know that is no way of living, just lying there for years, but we believe God has a reason for keeping hem alive.

- Teresa Sandoval

Palmdale

Public well served

Re: ``Colleges waste millions,'' (March 25):

I give the Los Angeles Community College District an ``A'' for its management of the bond program. Here's why: the LACCD has been one of the most responsible public agencies in the management of its bond funds in the state of California. It went above and beyond legal requirements by bringing in an expert to recommend how it could further reduce costs and speed up the building process. The fact is the board and the district are clearly committed to proceeding with all of the cost-saving recommendations and to continuous improvement of the bond program.

The public is well served by public agencies that manage bond money the way the LACCD does. Let's get behind these efforts and encourage other agencies to follow the district's example - including its award-winning ``green building'' standards and its continuous efforts at cost control.

- Mark Anthony Iles

Chairman

Los Angeles Community College District Citizens' Oversight Committee

Music not to blame

``Student kills 9 in spree''(March 22):

Reading the first two paragraphs of this story, one can only surmise that Marilyn Manson was the culprit. Why else mention a teen's listening habits that high in a story? Surely, Manson and his music made the kid do it.

I don't recall reading it, but Scott Peterson must have been a fan of an artist or genre, which led him to murder his wife and soon-to-be son. What was it? Celine Dion? Barry Manilow? Or is it possible that our society, in a further effort to take the responsibility away from those truly responsible (in this case a screwed-up kid with a screwed-up home life), has pointed the finger at an artist to make him a scapegoat.

Music is certainly the villain. Not the shooter. That, my friends, is yet another reason this country is losing the war, not only overseas, but here on our soil, too.

- J.P. Walz

Santa Clarita

Tormented gays

Re ``Student kills 9 in shooting spree'' (March 22):

We will continue to read about school shootings until students learn the truth about sexual orientation. Male students who show feminine characteristics are mindlessly abused. As one gay student in Columbine said, ``I can't describe how hard it is to get up in the morning and face that. Hell ... pure hell.''

Some sorely tormented gays choose to end it all, and decide to avenge their tormentors before they go. A more godly society would show compassion to those handicapped by abnormal genes.

- Fred Coble 

North Hills

Ethnic politics

The illegal-immigrant invasion has displaced American workers, battered our emergency medical services and congested classrooms. Any wonder that our trauma centers are in trouble? Mexican President Vicente Fox's solution to his failed economic policies is to export his poor and unemployed to the U.S. American President George W. Bush caved in to Fox's demand by calling for an amnesty disguised as a guest-worker program.

While our president is playing ethnic politics, the American taxpayers are stuck with the bill.

- Mort Arditti

Los Angeles

Go nuclear

Re ``GOP wants to wipe out Dems' right to block extremist judges'' (Viewpoint, March 20):

I say to the Republicans: Go ahead, use the so-called ``nuclear'' (read: constitutional) option, and by all means appoint judges who will actually respect the Constitution. The left fears this more than anything. It means that they will not be able to stack the courts with liberal ideologues who will behave as a super-legislative body, passing laws from the bench that they could not get from the ballot box. I must say that watching the likes of Sens. Clinton, Kennedy, Boxer and the rest of their smug, spoiled, socialist brethren bluster on about extremism, then threaten to shut down the Senate, shows them to be the irascible hypocrites they are.

- Daniel F. Taylor

Tujunga