Kids still in peril

I was a house parent in a residential-care home for foster children in Key West for almost five years. In 2011, I wrote a letter to David Wilkins, who had just been appointed secretary of the Department of Children & Families.

I had two concerns: The licensed group home had seven teenage boys and girls in three bedrooms. I was especially worried the boys slipped into the girls’ bedroom early one morning for a beer party. (Maybe this is why the community-based-care office sent our girls home one day with bags of colored condoms.)

As for my second concern, I wrote: “A final request is that all people and transporting vehicles of precious abused and abandoned children not reek with smoked tobacco odor.”

Neither Wilkins nor his staff responded. But Gov. Rick Scott has publicly embraced Wilkins after the deaths of four small kids in DCF’s system in six weeks under his DCF watch. At least Scott didn’t get religious with, “Can I hear an amen?”

Mike Sawyer, Denver, Colo.

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Last year, a non-binding straw ballot question was put to Miami-Dade voters that asked whether the county should raise property taxes to help fund enhanced animal services in our community. Voters strongly supported the question posed and the idea of saving pets’ lives. Unfortunately, the voters were given only one choice to make: raise taxes to provide for animal welfare or let the pets die.
Rain, it’s free water

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Egypt’s revolution

Instead of celebrating the triumph of a liberal and progressive movement in Egypt, the Obama administration and the media are not actively embracing this second revolution.

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