LIMBAUGH DESERVES CHANCE AT MERCY

Editor:

When I was a little boy in Providence, I would go to Patterson's grocery for
my mother. Being someone who likes to listen almost as much as I like to
talk, I would stop to hear the old men on the porch. Between generous
squirts of tobacco juice I had to dodge, I would hear their solution for
every problem known to man.

When I returned to my home with the groceries, I would have to explain why I
was late yet again. My mother had no time for my consorting with a bunch of
"old windbags." My father took the time to tell me that these guys who could
resolve poverty, settle the race issues and make the schools what they ought
to be were just talking to hear themselves talk. He told me that none of
them were likely to get the Nobel Prize for their innovative approach to
government.

In short, they might ought to start out working on their own problems before
they addressed the difficulties the world faced.

It isn't a porch our philosophers sit on today. Too often it is before a
microphone or behind a word processor. Unfortunately, the evidence is the
same at that I first discovered in Providence. It is easy to talk a good
game.

No greater example of this know-everything is our friend with "talent loaned
from God," Rush Limbaugh. For years Rush has accused the judges of being too
soft on crime. He has made the statement so many times that the only
treatment for drug offenders is to send them up the river. Well, now Rush
finds himself on the other side of the bar with the serious threat that he
will be judged for crimes he so deplored. The harsh judgment he so wished on
youthful transgressors looms over his own head.

It is tragic that Rush has to have the threat hanging over his head to
understand that locking people away for a long time does not eliminate the
drug problem in this country.

There are no shortcuts and no easy answers for Rush or for the millions of
drug-addicted individuals in our society. In fact, the sheer cost of the
correction system has damned the river and left many other social programs
in the lurch.

Locking up Rush or any other drug offenders seems like the easy way, but it
certainly isn't the best way to handle the situation. We cannot build
prisons fast enough to make the inmate solution viable. When the "lock-up"
solution is the only alternative we have, we must put off improvements in
the education system, roads and tax relief.

I hope that there is a drug court available for Rush and all the other
novice criminals who can be reformed. In spite of his condemnation, it is in
our interest that he get mercy rather than justice.

Roy N. Pullam

Henderson