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• Focus on future, not past to make country better
  I was "channel surfing" one morning recently and happened on one of the C-SPAN channels (I think). It was about the views of college students on various matters.

• Officials hurt credibility with lack of candor
  A week after Beaufort County voters approved a school bond referendum, the school district indicated that one of the two Bluffton elementary schools included in the referendum might not be built on the original schedule.

• Clinton only pandering with windfall profit tax
  Lest there be any question about Hillary Clinton's socialist pedigree, witness her call for a windfall tax on the oil company profits. That is socialist philosophy. As a percentage profit, the oil companies earn less than Coca-Cola. As usual, Clinton is pandering by blaming the price of gasoline on the big bad oil companies.

• Candidate choice makes one fearful for country
  Because Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama seem to be the best this country has to offer her citizens in November, I fear our wonderful country is in mortal danger of going the way of all wonderful countries in the past.

• Congressional stalemate causing much frustration
  The federal legislature, Congress, is bicameral (with two separate bodies), the House of Representatives and the Senate. Any legislation, in order to become law, must pass both houses and be signed by the president. Failure to be passed by either house orthe president means the legislation dies. (The president can veto).

• Written survey preferred to intrusive phone calls
  Hilton Head Island officials have lost me. I do not want to be included among the 1,200 residents of Hilton Head who will get phone calls asking about their vision for the future of our town. I am very happy to read that the town is updating the comprehensive plan regarding the legal framework for development regulations, goals for recreation, cultural resources and housing.

• Local sports news better than sterile stock report
  In response to the letter writer who wrote suggesting that The Island Packet "cut down on the excessive space they give to high school sports rather than butcher the stock and mutual fund listing."

• Is Clinton's threat policy or election ploy?
  "Madame Strangelove," aka Hillary Clinton, has threatened to "obliterate" Iran, provide an unasked for unilateral umbrella of military protection to many of the Middle East and Persian Gulf states at our expense, and I assume, the lives of our young men and women.

• Is Clinton's threat policy or election ploy?
  "Madame Strangelove," aka Hillary Clinton, has threatened to "obliterate" Iran, provide an unasked for unilateral umbrella of military protection to many of the Middle East and Persian Gulf states at our expense, and I assume, the lives of our young men and women.

• Who's kidding whom on employment audits
  Congratulations to Beaufort County and the contractor conducting the legal employment audits.

• Who's kidding whom on employment audits
  Congratulations to Beaufort County and the contractor conducting the legal employment audits.

• True Christians hold to Bible's truths
  Modern Christianity? No, Leonard Pitts, it's about original Christianity. ("Modern Christianity losing sight of what Jesus taught humankind," April 28)

• True Christians hold to Bible's truths
  Modern Christianity? No, Leonard Pitts, it's about original Christianity. ("Modern Christianity losing sight of what Jesus taught humankind," April 28)

• Americans finally realize Bush's shortcomings
  According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released May 1, President Bush has managed to earn one of the highest disapproval ratings of any American president. Since the 1930s, which is when Gallup polling started, Bush is the first president to have more than 70 percent of the American public disapprove of how he is handling his job. Bush is even more unpopular than Richard Nixon was just before he resigned in August 1974.

• Oil companies need incentives to invest here
  Exxon-Mobil just issued its first- quarter financial report, showing a profit of $11 billion on revenue of almost $117 billion. This is only 9.4 percent, below the 10 percent considered good. Exxon-Mobil stock fell in trading on the report. Even with this, the public response was to call for taxing the "windfall" profits. A close look at the source of the profits shows a far different story.

• Reclaim Mother's Day historic call for peace
  Devastated by all the death and carnage of the Civil War, Julia Ward Howe ("Battle Hymn of the Republic" author) called on mothers everywhere to protest what now appeared to her as the futility of war -- sons of mothers killing sons of other mothers. She gave a stirring call instead for an international Mother's Day to celebrate instead both motherhood and peace, so the first North American Mother's Day was conceived with her Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870.

• Wright's allegiances may belong to Clintons
  Did it ever occur to anyone that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright might just be a closet Clinton crony? After all, he was one of a roomful of clerics invited to the White House for a Sept. 11, 1998, prayer breakfast, in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky affair, to hear President Bill Clinton confess that he had sinned.

• November election is Democrats to lose
  The United States is involved in an unpopular war in Iraq. The economy is in the tank (according to the mainstream media). The housing industry has been rocked by the subprime mortgage debacle and the resulting foreclosures and plunge in home values. Gas and oil prices are at record highs. Jobs continue to move to other shores. The sitting president has one of the lowest approval ratings on record. The list goes on: Hurricane Katrina, global warming, deficits, etc.

• Full-scale recycling no job for limited services town
  In a recent guest column, Hilton Head Island Town Councilman John Safay outlined what he thought were the options available to Hilton Head residents. What is lost on Mr. Safay is that the Town of Hilton Head Island, as opposed to Myrtle beach or Charlotte, is a limited services government, not currently in the waste removal-recycling business.

• Do-nothing Democrats not helping Americans
  In 1994, when the Republicans took control of the House led by Newt Gingrich, they signed a "Contract with America" promising to pass 12 bills if elected. They subsequently passed all of the 12 bills in question within 120 days and the majority of them became law.

• Politics, life prompt questions, observations
  A few thoughts and questions:

• Environmentalists thwart viable energy solutions
  We have a food pricing crisis, while Congress hands over billions in additional subsidies to rich farmers. Oil is $120 a barrel and climbing.

• Haulers seem to want recycling to go away
  I read Town Councilman John Safay's guest column in the April 27 Packet and could not resist sending you a true story of my latest experience with recycling.

• Film reveals threats to scientific freedom
  I just saw the documentary "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." The documentary considers the concepts of Darwinism versus intelligent design within the framework of freedom of scientific thought. Depending on the viewer's point of view, either concept might emerge as the winner.

• Attacks on America our biggest worry
  There were three recent letters I wish to address. The first writer was concerned with the amount of money we are spending on the war and fears that Social Security and Medicare programs will go broke. The second was upset because the American people aren't suffering as much during this conflict as we did in World War II. Therefore we can't consider the war in Iraq a real war. The third thought we have spent way too much money on developing weapons and previous wars. The writer's contention is that we should spend all our money on climate change where the real threat to our well-being is.