Why the rush?

Dear Editor,

Many question the timing and rushed process used to remove the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds. Honest answers to a few questions are revealing. The flag was at its location on the Statehouse lawn for 15 years, if it was such a pressing issue, why wasn’t something done about it during the last 15 years?

Why did they only act when national TV cameras showed up? Is it right to bypass the

The evil of recent days

Dear Editor,

I am a very patriotic American and love my country. Many men and women have paid the ultimate price defending our Constitution, freedom and our flag.

Our Constitution was written in three weeks by Godly Christian men who put God first in their lives and then their love for America. These men lived by the very words from the Bible, God’s Holy Word.

Our Constitution has served our country well for 239 years, and we have thrived as a nation because we honored God and supported Israel (Genesis 12:3).

Today, we have politicians who abuse their power, and I wonder how many of them would be willing to pray and seek God’s wisdom as our forefathers did.

Over the last few weeks, we have had tragedies to hit our state. Nine lives were gruesomely taken on a Wednesday night, during a Bible service in Charleston. My prayers are with the families of each victim, the shooter and his family as well.

My problem is with many calling this a hate crime. I like what Dr. Martin Luther King’s granddaughter said: “This was not a hate crime — my grandma was shot in church by a black man. This isn’t a crime of hate — it’s just pure evil.”

I agree with Dr. King’s granddaughter and applaud her for wise statement.

The Confederate flag stands for Southern heritage, not hate. We, the people of South Carolina, compromised in the year 2000 when the flag came down from the top of the Capitol.

One individual’s evil crime can’t be prejudiced toward an entire state. Rap singers can brag about killing cops, and our liberal media will blame the officers who protect our families. Look up authenticenlightenment.com/2015/06/28/how-does-your-silly-flag-outrage-feel-now/ and decide for yourself who you trust.

America, we better wake up and repent from our evil ways and stand up for our rights while we still have them (2 Chronicles 7:14).

One last thing — you can’t sing about the amazing grace of Jesus and hours later ignore His definition of marriage (Ephesians 5:31, Matthew 6:24 and Leviticus 18:22), more of God’s words that describe His amazing grace.

Recent days truly have been some of the most evil our land has seen. We need you, Jesus, to heal our land. Our hope is in you alone, and may God bless America again!

Brad Dover

Liberty

Why are so many of our mentally ill in jail instead of treatment? According to statistics, almost half of the jailed population in our country are suffering from some sort of mental illness. And Pickens County is not an exception.

These are the people who are locked up instead of treated. They also make up about half the homeless population. Many of our veterans are also among these populations.

Recently there was an opportunity for county council to secure funding through a grant to screen inmates for mental and substance abuse conditions before throwing them into the general population. Unfortunately for all of us, they chose not to do this.

We seem to be moving backward instead of forward. Just as alarming is the fact that

Time for legislators

to do their part

Dear Editor,

I applaud the Pickens County Council and Pickens County School Board for their hard work the last few years in these tough budget times. Now it is time for our state representatives to do their part.

County residents pay sales taxes to the state. By state law, 4.5 percent of the previous year’s state revenue is supposed to be given back to the county

The greatest thing about family is they’ve known you longer than you’ve known yourself. That’s where some of your earliest memories begin, because they’re not really your memories.

You think you remember these things, but actually you’ve heard the stories so many times they have become embedded in your memory bank.

Every time my family gets together we hear the stories. And the stories all begin the same way — “Do you remember the time?” And it goes from there.

I don’t remember the time my brother threw a toy truck at me and split my lip.

It was a typical afternoon in June. A sunny day, hot, but shady and cool on the porch, or cool enough to stretch out on the porch swing with a book.

The plan was to read and sip ice water, but after a pretty rigorous morning of yardwork, the book lay open atop the reader, unread. The reader dozed in the half-awake, half-asleep state of the twilight zone.

The family who live on the hill across the road are excellent neighbors, kind and helpful. On this particular afternoon, the father was out in the yard cutting up a felled tree with the chainsaw. The sound of the chainsaw was almost hypnotic and didn’t bother the swing dozer in the least.

His companions in work were the dog, Molly, and Oswald, the goat. Yes, the goat. Some time back, the family acquired a baby pygmy goat as a pet. He is now an adult, an unneutered Billy,

One of the questions of the tragic killing of Rev. Clementa Pinckney and eight of his church members at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston is why him? And why now?

Maybe, just maybe, the answer is the date — June 17. It was on this date that Dylann Roof opened fire. It was also on this date, 193 years earlier, that Denmark Vesey, a founder of Emanuel, planned to launch a slave rebellion in Charleston.

We don’t know what is in the twisted mind of Roof, but we do know the history and significance

Gillespie continues

Dear Editor,

There are several funds or budgets within the school district. These funds can’t be intermixed. The two largest are operations and capital improvements.

The goal of the administration is to raise taxes for operations. The school board presently has three members who won’t vote to raise taxes. That leaves two strategies for the liberals in Pickens County: pick out one board member and smear him till he resigns or add a liberal spender to the board.

When Danny Merck said in his newspaper interview that taxes hadn’t been

Hardly a week goes by now without the surfacing of a cellphone video of police abuse, often of minorities.

These private camera videos are providing the best and often only record of police confrontations, such as the shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston, or the more recent incident at a pool party in Texas.

South Carolina just passed a law requiring police to wear body cameras, and while they may do some internal good, don’t expect to see the

Thanks for Doodle Trail

Dear Editor,

I would like to give a special thank you to Pickens mayor David Owens and everyone who made the Doodle Trail a success. I have been riding a bicycle for more than 50 years. The roads were getting too dangerous to ride on. The Doodle Trail is