Byline: The Register-Guard

Tax protest an act of conscience

How can I protest our military action in Iraq if I pay for it with my federal income taxes? By my own actions, I cannot control foreign policy, but I do not have to accept complicity in the bloody imperialism of the

The war-mongering of the Bush administration threatens the already compromised well-being of the entire planet. It targets those citizens of the world who are already impoverished and suffering unnecessarily due to our greedy monopoly of the planet's natural resources. I will not support my government in staining human history with even more innocent blood.

I refuse to pay my federal income taxes until the government of the United States stops killing for oil. I may not save the world, but I can save my own conscience.

ABIGAIL ROSE

Eugene

Let experts deal with cougars

The recent editorial "Call off the hounds" (Register-Guard, April 14) motivates me to contribute my two cents' worth. The editor offered rational arguments against two bills now before the Legislature to reinstate hound hunting in selected counties.

I'm not a hound owner, nor am I familiar with politics, but my family homesteaded Oregon. Five generations later, family members still make their living from our central Oregon ranch.

Living close to the land provides us the opportunity to experience first hand the impact of legislation generated in Salem and approved by voters in Portland.

In 1991, walking the family fields, I counted more than 120 deer feeding on the alfalfa. Last fall I walked those same fields and counted seven deer.

"What happened to all the animals?" folks from Portland might ask. The cougars ate them. These big cats are dominant predators, top of the food chain. They kill and eat a deer or elk every three to five days.

This presents a problem. It's evident in the decimated deer population and by the fact that we recently shot a cougar in the front yard, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, while our farm dogs cowered on the porch.

As good stewards we need to manage our cougar population. City editors and valley voters are not experts in this management process.

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists working with farmers and ranchers are the experts. If hound hunters are their method of choice, it seems wise to defer to their expertise.

J. D. CARTER

Springfield

Taxes bought right to dissent

David Hazen's guest viewpoint (Register-Guard, April 15) advocating withholding taxes until the world is a place of total peace and justice is pure drivel.

If defense of the United States is unlawful, why reduce the military budget by only 25 percent?

If our defense budget is evil and illegal, the reduction should be 100 percent, shortly after which Hazen would have to start learning Chinese, Arabic or Russian so he could present his case intelligibly (not intelligently) to his new masters.

Oh, I forgot: You're not permitted to argue with that crowd, only with the American leadership - a point Hazen might learn to appreciate, this being one of the rights purchased with his defense dollars.

President Bush, as usual with this sort of tripe, is the named villain, though he and Ronald Reagan are the only true Christians the country has enjoyed in the presidency during the 21st and 20th centuries.

Bill Clinton doesn't count, since he only carried his Bible between church services and services of another sort from his mistresses.

And Rep. Peter DeFazio, who'll endorse any bill he knows will never pass if it gets him a few far-left votes from the wide-eyed, is, as usual, the named hero. Pathetic.

REIS R. KASH

Springfield

Time to pass law on civil unions

With both the passage of Measure 36 and the Oregon Supreme Court's move to void the nearly 3,000 marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples in Multnomah County, I hope our legislators will make the just and fair decision to allow civil unions within Oregon, similar to legislation passed in Vermont several years ago.

During election season, many supporters of Measure 36 said that the intention of their measure was simply to define marriage as being between a man and a woman, not to discriminate against same-sex couples.

To not allow civil unions in Oregon would be to deny thousands of individuals the same rights and protections that so many of the rest of us enjoy on a daily basis, and this would meet the very definition of discrimination these same Measure 36 supporters claimed they were against during the election.

KRISTEN DUNDER

Eugene