Tell us some more, Chattanooga Gas
You likely got one of those "Important safety information" mailings from Chattanooga Gas, but did you bother to look up the boasted "Pipeline integrity management process?" You'll see there some lovely bureaucratic verbiage and assurances that, "Oh yes, we're doing that."
Doing what? Measuring and gauging? Oh, and the insides of pipelines are checked occasionally by a "pig" ... that's nice.
As they say, pipeline fires and explosions are (ahem) "uncommon." Thank God for that.
What about the outsides of those pipes? How often do you survey them for corrosion or shifting earth? And, how old are they? Do you replace them regularly? Buried, unseen and (hopefully) OK forever; what could go wrong?
And then one fractures.
And a dozen homes go up in flames.
Oh.
Bill Laudeman, Red Bank
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Not confident of high court actions
I do not share the optimism of Hugh Hewitt that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court will bring us any closer to the ideals of the Constitution.
History will remember the Roberts court for allowing the wholesale disenfranchisement of voters. The Republican-led court has allowed Republican legislators to implement voter restrictions just as racist as did the Jim Crow Democratic solid South.
All citizens have the right to vote. The 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments give the federal government explicit and implicit control over the electoral process; the voting rights legislation, signed by Ronald Reagan, just spells it out.
The fact conservatives on the Supreme Court rejected portions of it, implying that racism is dead, was ludicrous and an indication of lives lived in a bubble. The ghosts of the Confederacy are alive and well.
When the cases of voter disenfranchisement start rolling in, we'll find out if the court will uphold Republican control or the Constitution. Let's hope they do the right thing.
Joseph B. Harris
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Get it straight: U.S. is a republic
Will somebody tell those who do not know that the United States is a republic, not a democracy? The word democracy is not in our Constitution, nor in the Declaration of Independence nor in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
In our Pledge of Allegiance, we say " ... to the republic for which it stands ... "
So please, let's get it right.
Cassidy Neighbors, Soddy-Daisy