Tom Brown, in his excellent article headlined 'Booted Accountability' in Wednesday's News-Herald, asks and then comments:

"I now ask the critics that have lambasted the Sheriff’s Office boot camp out of existence: Would your motivations and actions be the same if Martin Anderson had been white?

"It just seems unbelievably unfair, all the havoc brought to so many lives as a result of this unfortunate incident. The men and women who had dedicated their lives to assisting young people to change their lives for the better and become contributing members of our community now find themselves outcast, and find the need to protect themselves from further persecution and possibly prosecution."

Virtue is its own punishment, Tom.  I agree with you completely on this issue.  But we are at issue with the editorial view of the paper, who want the drill instructors arrested and let the justice system sort it out.  I'm against arresting them without legitimate charges because I don't trust the legal system. The Emmitt Till, Rodney King, OJ and Jacko court cases prove me out.  Black jurors vote black and white jurors vote white. And my court cases, but that's another story.

The News-Herald is a worthy adversary here. Proof is the fact that they printed your article even though its opinion does not agree with theirs, and they even printed my letter to the editor knowing I never agree with them on anything.  And their excellent editors/wordsmiths went beyond that even to be fair.  They removed the counterproductive raw parts written in anger and they corrected my terrible English so I would not appear so stupid and inept.  I'm such a hypocrite I don't even know how to spell the word.  I didn't know it had an 'e' on the end.  And I didn't even know the difference between a 'block' and a 'bloc' I'm such a blockhead (or blochead, as the case may be).  And they didn't even attack me for my obvious errors (of course, it's my English teacher's fault!).  Mea Culpa.

You asked WHAT IF (Anderson were white)?  Well, now we know.  See my blog entry today NO LONGER WHAT IF BUT WHAT NOW?  www.stanclark.us   In Minden, LA Monday the Grand Jury indicted 8 'guards' in a youth camp for killing an inmate last September. The case is identical to the boot camp case with a single exception.  The guards there are all black and the victim is white.  Google 'Hope Youth Ranch' and prove it for yourself.  My position:  FREE THE MINDEN 8! The poor black accused are facing prison and crying for help from the NAACP over this blatant racial discrimination. The NAACP and News-Herald silence on the Hope Youth Ranch death is deafening.  To sin by silence -- whatever Abe said.  If the Minden 8 are guilty, so are the Bay County boot camp guards.  Justice doesn't change color going from LA to FL.

I'm on the next NAACP civil rights bus to Minden.  Sadly, they're all coming here instead. Just don't make me sit in the back of the bus. Rosa Parks is a good friend of mine.

The injustices to the Panama City boot camp drill instructors and the Minden Hope Youth Ranch Counselors, outrageous enough,  is nothing compared with the brewing injustice to Dr. Qark.  Here a brilliant research medical scientist has dedicated his life to saving young blacks with sickle cell trait from the dangers of dying from exercise related deaths in military boot camps, and what is his reward?  Destruction from the same people whose lives he's been saving! See my boot camp blog. What a country!     Stan