Gainesville Daily Register

Hate crimes legislation is a slippery slope
Are some violent crimes more heinous than others? Is killing a person because of race, sexual orientation or religion worse, say, than murdering someone because you were drunk or he rear ended your car?
President Barack Obama recently signed into law the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Well, actually he passed the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, slipped onto it was the hate crimes legislation.
Points to Ponder - Chew on this
The World Series is full-on and I’m watching it. At the time of this writing, the Yankees and Phillies are tied 1-1.
Nobel intentions
The reaction to President Barack Obama's selection as the 2009 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was predictable. Conservative Republicans declared utter contempt, while Democratic liberal counterparts hailed the decision as a fitting tribute to a new order.
Points to Ponder: Bubbling tax controversy
Hollywood sure seems to be aware of America’s weight problem.
Points to Ponder: Pew results stink for mainstream media
Feel free to believe this column or not, but the public’s view of media accuracy is now at an all time low.
Points to Ponder
Brewing over President Barack Obama’s 35 percent tariff on tires imported from China, Beijing has retaliated with a hard stomp on our chicken feet.
Americans' distaste for the bony appendages has long forced U.S. chicken processors to peddle them in feet-friendlier markets, the biggest being China. It buys and eats an estimated $700 million in U.S. chicken each year -- half of it in feet alone.
Tracking hefty profit margins to the poultry industry, chicken feet are worth only a few cents a pound in the United States. As delicacies in China, they fetch 60 cents to 80 cents a pound, a price that no other foreign market comes close to matching, according to industry experts.
The chicken dance may soon be ending. China, this week, launched an investigation into alleged anti-competitive practices by American chicken importers that could threaten chicken foot traffic to the Asian country.
Points to Ponder
Children who “opted out” of the president’s back to school speech missed an inspiring yet pragmatic pep talk, and that’s a shame.Points to Ponder
Barack Obama wasn’t the first president to address children on the traditional opening day of school, but I cannot recall an instance when parents considered it inappropriate for children to listen to the leader of their country.
Controversy spawned over a lesson plan the White House posted online to aid teachers in conjunction with the speech. Included was language about how children could “help the president.”
Some interpreted that to mean that President Obama would ask children to help him advance a radical social agenda - phrasing that was later pulled from the plan.
We may never know if the speech was altered likewise in response to the controversy.
However, as presented, President Obama’s talk to students had everything a parent could wish — even, perhaps, a politically conservative parent.
Paying the price for secure banking
Points to Ponder:Kennedy passes but hishealth care battle lives on
U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, who died Tuesday at 77 and was the last of the storied Kennedy brothers, was a legislative giant. He was an American icon, a powerful political leader and a revered elder statesman who served the public almost 47 years, making him the third-longest-serving senator, after South Carolina's Strom Thurmond and West Virginia's Robert Byrd.

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