Editorial #3

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/nyregion/17chimp.html?ref=opinion

Due to the recent attacks in Stamford Connecticut, laws regarding pet primates have come under scrutiny. After a 200 pound chimpanzee named Travis attacked and critically injured his owner’s friend, many are arguing that exotic pets such as Travis have no place in the American household due to their dangerous and unpredictable behavior. The Captive Primate Safety Act has already made it through the House of Representatives and is expected to quickly make it through the Senate. This Act will make obtaining a pet primate much more difficult in the future, and ban interstate transport of primates as pets.
The recent attack was certainly a tragedy, but one must question the judgment of a 70 year old woman living with a 200 pound wild animal who treated it as if it were a child. Though I think that owning an exotic pet like Travis, is a horrible idea, I do still believe that people should be allowed to have exotic pets, but with more regulations. Dangerous pets should never be allowed to run around freely like Travis, and the owners should always have to have a way to stop the animal if it posed an immediate threat to public around it, even if it means carrying around a gun. The article points out that there may be as many as 15,000 primates living in the United States as pets, and they have yet to lash out and attack somebody. Those statistics show that one can have a pet monkey without it ripping off your friends’ faces. Maybe those considering getting a pet primate should consider one smaller than a chimpanzee. I do not believe that congress should step in and make further laws about having exotic pets just because of this one incident.

Editorial 2

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/opinion/17tue2.html

I am all about granting DC a representative who has a voice in the house, but I don’t know if the bill that is going through congress right now is the right way to do it. The bill should not pass congress because both factions gain something from it; it should pass because citizens in the district deserve a voice because they pay taxes for this nation, go to war and die for this nation, and help elect our president. Republicans who don’t like this bill because it gives the democrats who seem to be dominating them at the moment another vote against them are being completely selfish and unfair. I don’t care if everybody in DC were Nazis; they are still Americans and deserve a voice in the House of Representatives.

Editorial 1

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/opinion/15sun2.html

I do not think that a grave injustice is being done by banning press coverage from places like Dover Air Force Base. If I were a soldier who fell in the Middle East (which I just might be if I don’t get into college), I would not want to be remembered and honored by my nation by having a picture of the box that I will be trapped in for the rest of eternity circulated in newspapers. I would much rather my beautiful smiling face be shown where people could gain a little of the individual that I was, not my box that looks just like everybody else’s. To those who think that one cannot grasp how many soldiers make the ultimate sacrifice for our nation without seeing a picture of a few coffins draped with the stars and stripes being brought off of a plane, I think you are wrong. An actual number value of the total lives lost is a thousand times more powerful than pictures of a handful of the coffins being brought back.