FREE 'COOLIO' AND DITCH GOV. SHAHEEN

Hats off to Coolio. Here we have a 17-year-old kid who, recognizing
the hypocrisy and waste of money that the DARE program represents, has
hacked into and defaced the program's Web site.

The Monitor has subtly denigrated this young boy in various ways, most
recently by commenting on the shearing of "his scraggly locks." Is
this germane to the issue?

A reporter who puts a kid down for his long hair, messy room or funny
shirt should be working for the nasties at the Union Leader, not the
Concord Monitor.

In case you haven't noticed, not everybody is getting rich by
investing in Lucent. Not all kids have parents who can send them to
private schools. This particular "danger to society" is only 17 years
old. He's probably a lot smarter than the Monitor reporter. For crying
out loud, kids like this are some of the best and smartest we've got.

We have on the one hand an alienated youngster who has embarrassed the
anti-drug lobby. The DARE program is a failed program, as most
educators and psychologists point out. Most kids think that DARE
presentations and pretensions are laughable. This kid Coolio has
pointed up the futility of the program by hacking into the DARE Web
site. For this we're going to put him in jail?

On the other hand we have our supposedly liberal governor promising to
veto an anti-death penalty bill that the House has passed. Her support
of the death penalty puts her on the same side as those who want to
put the Coolio kid in jail. These are powerful people who cannot
distinguish real right from real wrong. Justice would have us free
Coolio, address the issues of poverty and neglect that lead to drug
use, and turn our smug governor out of office.