Opinion

Earlier this year National Crime Victims Rights Week was marked both in Lake County and the City of Clearlake. How many of these victims were a result of a driving under the influence (DUI) tragedy? How many of these victims have struggled to rebuild their shattered lives all because someone made a selfish decision to drink and drive?

The family and friends of DUI victims struggle daily with the thought that the victim’s senseless tragedy or death was because someone made a conscious decision to drink and drive. The offender was aware of the risk, but he/she chose selfishness over responsibility. That decision is NO ACCIDENT. That decision instantly changes the lives of many forever. DUI fatalities and recklessness must never be labeled as accidents, but rather tragedies.

When a loved one is taken from their family suddenly without warning because of a selfish DUI driver, there is no way their lives will ever be whole again. The hole in their hearts can never be repaired.

Each day of their lives they are victimized, as every day is a reminder of what is not here. Each day a victim struggles to learn to live with the enormity of their loss and pain, trying to reconcile their permanent loss with the fact that the negligent DUI driver just has to do some time and then they are free to get their life back.

The victim will never be “free” again because the pain is deep and it cuts so sharply, consistently and, sometimes, at the most inopportune times. The negligent DUI driver has to live the rest of their life with what they have done, but they do not have the burden with the fact that the family of the deceased has on a daily basis with the loss of their loved one.

Summer festivities are under way. These can be happy times with fond memories or tragic times with fatal memories.

Remember with these festivities comes accountability. Accountability comes when you step into a motor vehicle. When you are the driver of a motor vehicle, you hold your passengers life in your hands along with the life of passengers in other vehicles.

No matter what one’s age is, please stop and think what the consequences of drinking and driving can do. Don’t be the one that is selfishly responsible for permanently damaging someone’s life or cutting another person’s life short. Don’t be the one responsible for robbing a victim and their family of all of the years that should have been theirs together.

If you are an adult and are partaking in a social festivity that offers alcohol, you can still enjoy yourself while still being responsible. Remind yourself before you participate, that you need to be responsible for your actions.

Don’t think you can risk driving home without being caught after consuming those few “extra drinks.” Will your selfish negligence be worth the risk of a lifetime of pain and guilt that you could infringe on yourself and an innocent family whose life will be forever victimized by injury or death of their loved one? A designated driver will help keep everyone safe as well as just saying “no” to those extra drinks.

If you are a parent, do your best to alert your child to the tragic consequences and legalities of under age drinking. To tragically lose a child is the most piercing pain imaginable.

Lake County is stepping up the “good fight” against drinking and driving. Various agencies, organizations and individuals are joining together to help stop the drinking and driving malignancy that has unfolded in our County. The more aware each of us are to the tragic consequences of drinking and driving, the less victims there will be and more lives will be saved.

Join the “good fight” against drinking and driving by being a responsible driver behind the wheel. DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE.

Judy Thein is the mayor of the City of Clearlake. Her daughter was killed as the result of a DUI tragedy.

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Details: Written by: Judy Thein; Published: 03 July 2007

In case you have not yet been informed there is no longer a Constitution or a Bill of Rights in this country.

Ask your banker. He or she will tell you that your ATM does not belong to you; it belongs to the bank. He or she will not state that there are any rights available to you that might conflict with those who run the country. That is: banks, corporations, members of Congress whose Web sites cannot be reached much of the time, aides to members of Congress, and their spawn.

The last one of those I talked to, in Congresswoman Anna Eshoo's Palo Alto office, could not or would not and certainly did not tell me anything that might lead me to think I actually still might have any rights under the Constitution and certainly not under that suspect Bill of Rights.

I worked for a very liberal newspaper for about eight years way back when there may have still been a Constitution. One of its reporters famously went out onto the Square in Madison, WI, where the state capitol is located and took along a copy of the Bill of Rights. He asked passersby to sign it. No one would. Most thought it might be a communist document or, at least, a communist plot.

That was at the height of Tailgunner Joe's tyranny, the time George Clooney so correctly depicted in "Good Night And Good Luck." That was at a time when your thoughts or your refusal to be a traitor to your friends by turning over their names, were the soup du jour.

Now there isn't even any soup. George the Lesser has pocketed the Constitution, or what little is left of it after congress failed in its care and feeding. The Bill of Rights, he stomped to death one minute after, maybe even before, he was anointed the Supreme Court's President in 2000. We don't elect presidents anymore; we anoint them. Or, maybe Jesus does.

After all, King George IV does have breakfast with him or the voice of Dick Cheney on the intercom and disguised as the Son of Man, to whom Shrub has long sworn allegiance.

Presidents, not to mention your own congressional representatives, used to take an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States then maybe even try, at least, to do so.

They still take that oath as do credentialed teachers such as myself who have no choice in the matter. Some of us actually take that oath seriously. But, just try to act on it? Double dare you!

This president and his minions – and they are legion – has done everything that could be done to make the Constitution and the (what is this?) Bill of Rights disappear "Ala Peanut Butter Sandwiches!" just like on that commie plot to destroy all that is good about our beloved country, Sesame Street, which currently harbors a nasty little red furry subversive puppet with a high voice, ELMO.

ELMO, according to congressional neo-cons, is now the enemy, just as any of us who want to know if there is still a Constitution or maybe (and cross your fingers here) even a 10 point Bill of Rights is?

How dare we ask knowing how Elmo "hates our freedom."

I called my congresswoman's office recently to ask just that and no one, at least not her personal representative on the other end of the phone, could say anything in response to my questions about whether or not there still is a Constitution or a Bill of Rights and whether or not I could still call upon or even hope for their protections.

Silence. I got lots of silence. It was so loud I could hardly not hear it.

That Constitution's not for the little people, the ones who still pay taxes, as the unforgettable Leona Helmsley, once informed us all. We, the little people, are just supposed to roll, over, play dead or maybe get up and beg like Tony Blair, Bush's lapdog, does in the presence of his master.

Ask the same questions of your banker or at least the under assistant night vice president in charge of the day crew (I think) and you will be informed that all rights are the property of your bank. Your job is to get back in line and goosestep like the good German you ought to be.

The people who run your life at the retirement center you might live in will inform you that you are "insulting their intelligence" if you ask them the same. Then they will hang up on you.

Have the decency to at least act like one of the Lemmings!

I guess the only one who can address these questions now is the Decider. And we all know what he decided a long time ago.

He decided like Mel Brooks in "History of the World, Part One," that "it's good to be king."

But Mel Brooks was funny. The Attorney General of the United States. some of those Vietnamese displaced understudies to "Duck" Cheney, who work for our fearless leader, pick any bank vice president, director of housing in the "free" world or in the homeless underground of hopelessness- and you will not find them funny at all.

They ain't gonna take your side.

Lobbyists and Corporations, those entities Dianne Feinstein sneaked through a law for recently, a law that says it is a crime to do anything to harm a Great God Almighty They Are, At Least, Free At Last, omnipotent corporation!

And La Diane has her 18 million dollar new home, one meant to make room for her grandchildren. It's paid for by the blood of the people of Iraq – the country her husband is rebuilding with all those fat contracts.

Wait a minute: Didn't we, or George the Great Argument for Birth Control, destroy it first?

Ghosts of "You're Doing A Great Job, Brownie," those same ghosts Cindy Sheehan told a San Francisco audience "don't exist" in 2005. Yet they still "make us afraid."

Don't try to wash that off your hands, Senator. It didn't work for Lady Macbeth and it won't work for you, either.

Corporations are, legally, individuals, and these individuals, who you may well have hated in high school, now run the world.

So send not to know for whom the bell tolls citizens?It tolls for them.

You can maybe take a number.

Gary Peterson lives in Belmont.

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