To say the suicide bombings at Baghdad pet bazaars were "disturbing" is a gross understatement ("2 Bombings Kill 91 in Baghdad," Feb. 2; "General: Faces Tied to Down Syndrome," Feb. 3). When terrorists resort to using children or people with disabilities -- those who do not or cannot understand the ramifications of their actions -- it amounts to murder. Violent. Vicious. Devoid of all humanity. Murder.

The women were strapped with explosives and sent into the busy marketplace.

"These two women were likely used because they didn't understand what was happening and they were less likely to be searched," Major Gen. Jeffery Hammond said in one news account. They were used as nothing more than weapons. The explosives were remotely detonated, killing the women as well as other innocent people and animals at the pet bazaars.

The U.S. government and military and the Iraqi government have expressed outrage and have condemned al-Qaida for this act of unspeakable evil, calling it "the most brutal and bankrupt of movements." We agree. It is time that the Iraqi government courageously and strenuously acts on this outrage and protects its most vulnerable citizens, including innocent children and people with disabilities.

NANCY J. MURRAY
President
The Arc of Greater Pittsburgh
South Side

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The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board is issuing grants to local police departments to crack down on illegal gambling machines in local bars, taverns and restaurants ("Pulling Plugs on Poker Machines Just Got Easier," Feb. 4). These illegal machines have been in our local establishments for many years. We all know local hangouts that have them, or maybe did at one time until they paid off the wrong person. The timing of this is wildness!

OK, the state turns a blind eye to illegal poker machines until it legalizes gambling. But we all know that the local police actually play these machines. They already know where the machines are. I'd seen police officers gambling on these machines in the past. Why does the Gaming Control Board need to spend millions of dollars to find and dispose of these machines?

Is this yet another version of Ed Rendell's selective enforcement uncovered by KDKA's Marty Griffin in his recent interview of the good governor (referring to the drink tax in Philadelphia)?

Why can't this money go toward property tax reduction? If we didn't want the police to end this illegal activity in the past, then what is the money really for now? What on earth is going on here?

DAVID MARKS
Duquesne

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Pennsylvania's touchscreen voting is "faith-based" voting. The invisible ballots of touchscreen voting are never verifiable or accountable. With touchscreen voting, recounts are reduced to a reprinting of the summary results.

Currently 35 million Americans will vote on touchscreens that are fragile, unreliable, unaccountable and easily hackable voting systems. However, if New Jersey Rep. Rush Holt's bill, HR 5036, were brought out of committee for a vote, Congress could fund the voluntary replacement of touchscreens prior to November 2008.

Allegheny County could be using precinct-based optical scan voting machines this November with dependable, verifiable and auditable paper ballots. Such ballots with verified voting are now in more than 10 Pennsylvania counties, which could use HR 5036 to fund random audits.

Across the nation, several states are moving in part or in whole toward verified voting with optical scan: Maryland, Ohio, Florida, California and New Mexico are among the most recent in sending eVoting to the dustbin. These decisions follow Sarasota, Fla.'s, loss of 18,000 touchscreen votes and a chorus of risk analyses showing eVoting systems are easily and undetectably hacked. Routine audits of these paper ballots restore election accountability and confidence in the democratic process.

HR 5036 will fund the voluntary replacement of touchscreens. Across Pennsylvania only three of our 19 representatives have co-sponsored HR 5036: U.S. Reps. Mike Doyle, Chaka Fattah and Jason Altmire. Please call your representatives and urge them to support this bill.

RICHARD KING
Squirrel Hill

The letter writer is a member of VoteAllegheny.org.

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Is Sen. Arlen Specter serious about an inquiry into the destruction of the New England Patriots tapes by the NFL office ("Destruction of Spygate Tapes a Crooked Act?" Feb. 2 column by Gene Collier)? In an interview with "Mike and Mike in the Morning" on ESPN, Sen. Specter said he wanted to protect the integrity of the game.

Where was Sen. Specter when the NBA referee was arrested for actually betting on games? A U.S. senator getting to the bottom of integrity would be a feat in itself, since the Senate is sorely lacking that commodity.

JERRY ROBBINS
McCandless

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Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter doesn't have enough to do with his time. Currently, a looming recession, a war taking place in a distant land, a very real mortgage crisis and an election looming that most definitely will change the direction not only of the country but also of the world swirl around the national scene.

So, what is Sen. Specter's pressing cause? He wants to hold hearings about the NFL front office destroying videotapes of the New England Patriots "spying" on the New York Jets. Maybe Sen. Specter hears the word "spying" and thinks it is a national crisis.

What happened with the events that took place in the NFL were rules violations and have nothing to do with Arlen Specter or anyone else, for that matter. The NFL has its own rules that do not affect any national interests that should concern any politician in Washington or anywhere else.

This one incident shows very much how out of touch our national leaders are. What a waste of national energy.

STEPHEN ARCH
Findlay

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I will start by saying that I am not for government paying for sports stadiums or complexes, but that aside ...

I have a lot of concern for what is going on in Pittsburgh. I am a designer of more than 100 houses (mostly in the Baltimore, Md., area), and I cannot understand who or why the city would tear down Mellon Arena (aka the Igloo.)

I don't have the data, but haven't there been some historic concerts or meetings in that building? And, most of all, is it not the first building in the United States, if not the world, to have a large opening roof like it has? I really think it should be saved as a historic landmark and not bulldozed for parking places.

BARRY L. HENDERSON
Belle Vernon

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In her Jan. 28 column, Ruth Ann Dailey purports to correct the factual inaccuracies of the Democratic Party's racial narrative ("The Racial Narratives Are Up for Grabs"). It is Ms. Dailey's revisionist history that needs serious correction.

The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln gave way to a Republican Party of big business and corporate interests. Mitt Romney today personifies this wing of the Republican Party. President Bush, with his long family ties to the oil industry, also protects corporate interests and the interests of the ultra-wealthy.

President Kennedy, a Democrat, introduced the Civil Rights Act in June 1963. Its key sponsors were Sens. Mike Mansfield and Hubert Humphrey, Democrats. President Lyndon Johnson, Democrat, worked hard for its passage and signed the bill into law. Senate Republicans gave it 80 percent of their support compared to 63 percent of Senate Democrats. However, non-Southern Senate Democrats supported it at a rate of 98 percent. Those segregationist Southern Democrats soon switched their allegiance to the Republican Party.

Ms. Dailey alleged that, as a senator, Lyndon Johnson was one of those Southern Democrats. However, Sen. Lyndon Johnson was one of only three Southern senators who did not sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto, which criticized Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and opposed the integration of public facilities. During the 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon and the Republicans executed a "Southern strategy" designed to pit white Southerners against their African-American counterparts. Today, the "solid South" remains, though it is now solidly Republican due to GOP opposition to civil rights.

Finally, Ms. Dailey asserted that Southerners and states' rights proponents abandoned the Democratic Party due to "radical" court decisions on issues such as busing. But federal courts employed busing to achieve racial desegregation of Southern schools only after Southern states engaged in massive resistance to Brown v. Board of Education.

MARSHALL DAYAN
Oakmont

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