Every human has a conscience - “the sense or feeling in what is right or wrong. However, some people develop or make their conscience to do terrible wrongs against human life. Abortion is a very bad example. A tiny little baby is growing and waiting to be born in their mothers’ womb. If a probe or instrument is put into the womb and touches the baby, that baby feels the touch and will move. That unborn baby has a conscience and the sense of feeling.

Mr. Obama was elected in Illinois as a State Senator and voted to kill a baby that survived an abortion - was born and kicking and wiggling on the abortionist table and 3 different voting times, Obama said he would let the baby die. Of the 100 Senators, 99 voted to save the baby and the 1 voting to kill the baby was Obama. He did not want to have any part in seeing ‘Roe versus Wade’ overturned. Can you imagine how bad this Obama is?

56 million babies have been murdered since 1973. Obama is more into having same-sex couples getting ‘married’ and having open sex oriented people in our once great U.S. military. He spends money that our government cannot afford. His conscience somehow drastically ceased to believe in God’s 10 Commandments and all of our ancient history of good morals and the right conscience! Because of Obama, Ms. Sebelius, Senator Bob Casey, and other Democrats – Religion and any business with 50 employees or more will be forced to pay for baby killing drugs against their conscience!

Sincerely,

Bruce Moorehead

Susquehanna, PA

After driving around this county for over 15 years, I have come to realize that the IQ of many motor vehicle operators is evidently several deviations below the mean. In other words, many Susquehannans are clueless as to what are unsafe and illegal driving practices.

Prime example: drivers who use their high beams in the fog. Using your high beams in the fog, rain or snow reduces your ability to see the road because the light will reflect directly in your eyes. Even in clear nighttime weather, when you are driving with high beams on a 2-lane road like Rt. 706, you are temporarily and dangerously blinding those drivers coming toward you. Also, if it is foggy or snowing or even if it is not, do not tailgate. I brake for animals. So if the distance between your car and mine is such that I can see your eye color in my rearview mirror and I slam on the brakes because of a wayward turtle or woodchuck, and you rear-end me, then you are to blame. According to PennDOT, tailgating that results in a rear-end collision is 3 points against the license of the driver who rear-ended the vehicle in front of him. And that driver is legally responsible for repairing the vehicle that he or she hit, not to mention making restitution for any injuries incurred by those persons or pets in that vehicle.

Don’t throw your empty beer cans and other garbage onto the side of the road. Didn’t we learn about litterbugs in first grade? Perhaps you weren’t thinking clearly because your alcohol level was 3 times the legal limit when you chucked your liquor containers out the window.

Apparently, gas money is saved by driving in the late evening with your headlights off. That’s the only reason I can think of when people drive with no headlights on at dawn, dusk or in inclement weather. When you do that, I can’t see you. The same thing goes for not using your windshield wipers in the rain. Is it one of those macho things like never asking a stranger for directions or never needing a bag for something one buys at the hardware store? In December 2006, the Pennsylvania General Assembly enacted the Headlight Wiper Law, title 75, section 4302 of the Pennsylvania Vehicle Code. The intention of the law is to make vehicles more visible to one another in foul weather. Likewise, how many times have I seen a vehicle with only one functioning headlight, so that in the dark it looks like a motorcycle coming at me? The same section 4302 of the Pennsylvania code indicates that a vehicle must have both headlights in working order.

What about the driver who zooms past you on the right, while you are attempting to turn left? According to the law “Overtaking vehicle on the right,” title 75, section 3304, “when the vehicle overtaken is making or about to make a left turn, except that such movement shall not be made by driving off the berm or shoulder of the highway.” I once stopped to make a left hand turn in Hallstead only to realize it was the wrong intersection and when I continued going straight, I almost clipped a car trying to pass me on the right shoulder – while, may I add, she was using her cell phone.

Tell me why people who go into the post office or any other business have to leave their car running? Isn’t that an invitation to steal the car? I have seen moms who have left their infants and/or toddlers inside a running (and presumably unlocked car) while they run into Pump & Pantry or the post office. My belief is that a child could be snatched from that vehicle in seconds. According to the Pennsylvania State Legislature’s House Bill No. 804 of 2006, “it is illegal for parents to leave a child unattended in a vehicle, and if more than one child is left unattended it will count as multiple offenses. While Pennsylvania is strict on many of its laws regarding children in motor vehicles, it is looking out for the welfare and safety of our most innocent citizens, and adults who do not adhere to these rules will face consequences.”

The number of police officers is thinly spread over the 832 square miles that make up Susquehanna County. Consequently these laws are not normally enforced due to the shortage of manpower. Fatal accidents are common out here for a variety of reasons from drunkenness to inattentiveness. Since the perpetrators of the above offenses probably will not think this letter to the editor pertains to them anyway, protect yourself by being alert to vehicles operated by unsafe, unthinking drivers.

Sincerely,

Ron Gasbarro

New Milford, PA

Pope Benedict XVI has decreed Oct. 12, 2012 to November 24, 2013 as The Year Of Faith. The Pope has called it a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world. I see this as a call to all lapsed catholics to turn back to Jesus and enter into a deeper relationship with him through his church and sacraments. It is time to stop blaming Christ and his church for the sins of its members. There is sin in the church, any church but Christ remains patiently waiting for lapsed catholics to return to him and the great love he has for each of us individually.

Lent begins on Feb. 13. Pray for the grace necessary to take the steps back to Christ. One of the gifts of the year of faith is a papal plenary Indulgence for a pilgrimage to a papal basilica. St. Ann’s Shrine in Scranton is such a basilica. There are many opportunities for private confessions, almost daily. If you sincerely want to return to Christ and his church go to the Shrine, make a good confession, worthily receive Communion and pray for the Holy Father. This can return your soul to the state it was at your baptism. I guarantee you the best Easter you have ever celebrated. For information on times of mass and confession, go to St. Ann’s Monastery and Shrine Basilica, Scranton, Pa website.

Sincerely,

Annette Corrigan

Jackson, PA

Excepting Washington, no president is more revered than Abraham Lincoln. It was he who saved the union, ended slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation, a benevolent leader who had “malice toward none,” and a staunch defender of the Constitution. Quite a legacy. But not a word of it is true, That’s the movie, Lincoln.

Let us strip away the dross of deification, the history written by the winner of a dreadful war, the legend and myth melded into a fictionalized president who never existed.

Yes, Lincoln saved the union geographically but destroyed it philosophically. Contractually, it was a union of states described in the Constitution as “free and independent.” These states granted to the central government powers specifically listed in the 10th amendment, but they retained their sovereignty. Lincoln destroyed that.

It was the North’s victory that crushed states’ rights and inaugurated the all-powerful and ever more intrusive central government we have today.

Nor did the sixteenth president end slavery. The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to southern states. As Lincoln cynically said, “We show sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”

The Proclamation was inspired by the exigency of war not by an enlightened benevolence. In Lincoln’s words, “The Proclamation has no legal justification, except as a military measure,” that is, to foment a slave rebellion in the South.

For him, slavery was not an issue: “If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would do it.”

But it is Lincoln’s character that creates the widest rift between perception and reality. But a look at the generals he appointed reflect Lincoln’s true image.

General William T. Sherman. Perhaps the kindest comment that could be said about Sherman is that he was a homicidal maniac. Insanity is his best defense.

Sherman cut the Confederacy in half with a swath of utter destruction 60 miles wide and 250 miles long. He boasted that “a crow would need a haversack to cross it.” He was opposed by an “army” of old men, wounded veterans, and boys to protect the women and children. They could do little but add to the casualty list.

History does not record how many civilians died from exposure and starvation, nor how many survived the pillaging, plundering, burning of every building, every home, every crop. Sherman’s horde gang raped both white and black women, and slaughtered civilians in their uncounted thousands.

Sherman: “I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash.”

In that same year 1864, Union General Philip H. Sheridan’s army rampaged through the Shenandoah Valley leaving a similar trail of ruin. A union soldier wrote that “the whole country around is wrapped in flames . . . such mourning, such lamentations, such crying and pleading for mercy by defenseless women I never saw or want to see.”

What was Lincoln’s—-the great humanitarian—-response? He personally conveyed to Sheridan “the thanks of the nation.” And both he and General Ulysses Grant gave their wholehearted approval to Sherman.

Then there’s Lincoln, that stalwart defender of the Constitution. But in fact, he was more dictator than constitutionalist. During his administration tens of thousands were imprisoned without charge or trial, 300 newspapers were shut down, telegraph communications were censored, Democratic voters were intimidated by federal troops, elections were rigged, and draft protesters were gunned down by Union soldiers.

There remains one more myth, that self-congratulatory fiction that the war was fought to free the slaves.

The economies of the South and the North depended on slavery. The plantation South needed slaves to pick cotton and the industrial North needed that cheap cotton for its industry. But the South wanted to sell its cotton on the world market for the highest price endangering the economic underpinnings of the North.

Additionally, the North demanded the tariffs collected in southern ports be sent to Washington while the South grew resentful over the disparity in the division of these monies. Lincoln promised to invade any state that failed to send these “duties and imposts” to the nation’s capital. He kept his word.

In that appalling conflict, 620,000 troops were killed together with 100,000 civilian fatalities. Correcting for today’s population, that would equal a death toll of 7.4 million.

What, then, are we to make of Lincoln, the man? That is for you, the reader, to decide.

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA