PUBLIC FORUM.

Importing trouble

Re "Mexican trucks coming" (Feb. 24):

What!? We need more trucks exacerbating our already incredible traffic problems like we need three-cornered holes in our heads. Who are the ding-dongs who thought this one up?

If our U.S. corporations are having their products made down in Mexico, at least let them use U.S. trucks to bring them across the border. We obey regulations that keep our trucks maintained properly, as well as pay license fees for using our highways. Mexican trucks mean more congestion, more pollution and accidents.

-- Gordon Green 

Encino

Help Ruby

Re "Ruby the elephant deserves retirement" (Their Opinions, Feb. 19):

Please continue to monitor the deplorable situation at the Los Angeles Zoo. This foot-dragging is cruel. This elderly elephant needs help. Now.

-- Beckie Hall

Rancho Mirage

Hurtful laws

Re "A vote for Jessica's Law is a vote for kids" (Viewpoint, Feb. 25):

The man who killed Jessica Lunsford would not have been stopped by any version of Jessica's Law. He didn't kill her in a school or a park where a GPS system may have tracked him. Laws like this are ineffective and unenforceable.

Bill O'Reilly apparently has paid no attention to the fact that Iowa is trying to repeal its law for just this reason. There, authorities have lost track of many sex offenders because they are forced underground. This leads to the possibility of other children being brutalized.

Politicians who blocked Jessica's Law in Vermont and Massachusetts are not cowardly; they are realistic and understand what works and what does not.

-- Alexis Marie

West Hills

Same old Al

Re "Gore now all shiny and new" (Their Opinions, Feb. 28):

Richard Cohen looks at Al Gore, sees shiny and new. I look at Gore and see tarnished, old and, yes, fat. Word in Democrat circles -- he diets; he's running. So keep an eye on that bulge.

Meanwhile, Gore still gives occasional lunatic rants and still looks painfully uncomfortable in his own skin, and his global-warming perfidy is as digestible as his having created the Internet. Why, the hypocrite's energy bill for just one of his four homes equals what other Nashville folks are paying per year.

We might not be in Iraq today with Al, but only because he'd still be meeting, deciding what to do about 9-11.

-- Roger Olsen

Burbank

Wi-Fad

Re "MTA moves toward riding a Wi-Fi wave" (Feb. 23):

Instead of putting wireless Internet services on buses and trains, the MTA should just take the money and buy new buses or install shelters at bus stops.

First of all, most times you can't even sit on the bus, so how are you going to use a laptop?

Then there are the unsavory types on some buses -- and especially the subway. Imagine the crime wave this will create! People will be mugged, maybe killed, to get their computers.

First the mayor wants to give free Wi-Fi to the city, and now the MTA jumps in. Wireless Internet is a fad now just as 3-D movies and Hula Hoops once were.

-- Norman Moore

North Hollywood