The Daily News Leader from Staunton, Virginia • 4

A4 Daily News Leader, Thursday, March 26, 1992 Opinions wMw mm Our view: Term limits unwise Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, California's new law limiting the terms of state legislators will now go into effect. The court has let stand without comment a California Supreme Court ruling upholding the law. State limits on the terms of executive offices are common. Extending them to state legislators would seem to be a small matter, but it isn't.

As a way to make government more responsive, or to promote more competitive elections, term limits are a fantasy. Legislators have always been responsive to the parochial interests of their districts, both out of conviction and to get re-elected. The length of their stay in office won't change this. Nor will eliminating incumbents from the ballot every few years lead to more and better campaigns. While the officeholder's advantages of name-recognition and the ability to raise money will be subtracted, both special interests and angry voters will still demand to be served.

The dedicated few will still shape the race. The difficulty of communicating a person's views to the many who are only half-interested will remain. Substantive messages will be watered down to offend as few as possible, while more will be promised than can be delivered. In the legislature, novices learning the ropes will be easily dominated by the more experienced. Mastering the intricacies of the legislative process and public policy takes time.

Lame ducks will, as they do now, pay less attention to public business. Or, if they remain involved, they will find their influence and the value of their experience diluted. The result won't be better government, or even government closer to the people, but more incompetent government, often deprived of its best talent. Voters in as many as a dozen states will face term limit proposals in November. They should say no to this false remedy for the disappointments of government.

Unfortunately, the check-writing scandal in Washington may act as a powerful incentive for voters to do precisely the opposite though check kiting has nothing to do with the merits of the term-limitation issue. New and old members alike turned out to be equally guilty. Despite the legality of state limits on state legislative terms, the Supreme Court should accept a case through which it can tell the public that a federal constitutional amendment is required to apply term limits to Congress, which many proposals would do. SHORT MESSAGE In writing this letter, I am very concerned about where Jesus Christ actually stands in our lives. How much time do we actually devote to him in the course of a day? Which brings me to my next question.

Why do not all church groups have equal time to present Christ as savior in a very important asset in our community, the Valley Mission? I am a supporter of the mission and am very clipping from your paper about the meeting of the trustees of the Thorn-rose Cemetery. The name Wayt Timberlake was mentioned. I well remember the original S.D. Timberlake, the founder of the Timberlake Dry Goods store on Main Street. I also remember him proudly telling me that he was one of "Morgan's Men." His son, Wayt Timber-lake, managed the store; his beautiful wife came into the store frequently.

Our family was also well acquainted with S.D. Timberlake one of the ablest trial lawyers of Virginia. His wife was a lady of culture and helped us high school students in CRANIOSYNOTOSIS My husband and I would like to thank you and staff writer Sam Carter for the article published March 18 about the Howdyshell family and 3-month-old Dylan. We have a 14-month-old daughter, Emily, who on May 23 of last year underwent the same surgery Dylan had at University of Virginia Medical Center. Emily was diagnosed at 2 months by our pediatrician and had surgery at 3 months, also at U.Va.

Emily has had two recheck visits and in June will undergo, hopefully, a final CT-Scan. She is doing remarkably well and will not have to return for a recheck for five years. My husband and I have shared the Howdyshells' feelings of pure grief and then joy when the surgery is over. I am an LPN and did not know about craniosynotosis. This has to be one of the most difficult things any parent could have to face.

All the decisions are inevitable, knowing the results of not having surgery but are nonetheless painstaking. Without the prayers of family, friends and area churches, I don't know how we would have made it. We also know the financial burden can be a shock. Almost a year later we're still paying what our insurance didn't cover. But we feel very blessed to have Emily, now walking and talking, and she is beautiful! I know the Howdyshells feel as blessed.

We would be glad to talk to others facing this abnormality. Helping others helps us heal and not knowing what's happening is devastating. We wish Dylan and the Howdyshell family our best! We also share another similarity with this family; we too have a daughter named Hannah. She is 3. Thanks to Dr.

John Jane, neurosurgeon at U.Va. and to our pediatrician, Dr. Robert Kluge, for a job well done! LORI CALDWELL Staunton Late at night while lying in bed in the dark I go over my life and try to justify it. I never do but at least I try. The menu said, "garden salad" and I thought: Where else does it come from? Still more people you don't want to invite to your party Jesse Helms.

"There are no careers anymore," a friend lamented. "There are just jobs." You've heard of couch potatoes? What about couch dancing? For $20 you sit on a couch while a naked woman dances around you. Only in New Jersey. North Jersey, not South Jersey, please. When I buy olive oil I assume it's extra virgin.

In this day and age it's a naive assumption. Who knows where it's been or associated with or if it practices safe pollination? The last person you should invite to your party: F.P. DANGEROUS STRETCH How many more innocent people have to be killed or injured before something is done about the stretch of road, Va. 664, between Lyndhurst and Sherando? The traffic in this area is enormous. We get a lot of traffic from Wintergreen plus all the delivery trucks that service this area.

We are also accessible to a lot of industry. In the spring and summer we have a lot of extra traffic to and from Sherando Lake and other recreation areas. I have contacted the Department of Highways and Transportation and the State Police and the only thing that has been done was a double yellow line which, to many eager motorists means nothing, as I continuously witness cars passing those that are adhering to the 35 mph speed limit. Speeding and reckless driving in this area is very apparent. The question is, what is going to de done about this situation? How many more lives have to be taken before this matter is addressed and something done about this situation? There is also vandalism to mail boxes, school buses, etc.

and the resident of this area have been told that, unless you see them or get license numbers, nothing can be done. As a resident of this area I urge local law enforcement to make themselves more visible and hopefully save an innocent person's life in the future. H.W. RODGERS Lyndhurst PIONEERS A friend of mine sent me a news dominance. In a recent issue of National Review, Kristol tries to hang the same sign around the Old Right neck.

There he launches a blanket accusation against "paleoconservatives" that anti-Semitism is "a symbolic issue, a signal that holds this radical coalition together." Of course, he names no names partly because there are no names and partly because when all you're concerned with is powermongeing, you don't have to. Since two of the most prominent our literary efforts and class play. Last but not least was Josephine Timberlake, who founded the Boy Scouts of Staunton. She was later joined by Esther White, a Staunton school teacher who lived on North Madison Street. These ladies were pioneers in the Scout movement.

I would have been the fourth or fifth Eagle Scout in America had not the national headquarters misplaced my qualifying papers. As it turned out, was the 19th Eagle Scout in America behind Russell Wodfin. I am the oldest Eagle Scout in America. I mention this as a matter of pride and also to show that the Staunton Scout organization was not only one of the first in the nation but also one of the best. Then there is the name Rudolf Baumgartner, lawyer and Confederate veteran.

I can see him now giving the rebel yell while marching behind the Stonewall Brigade Band as it played Dixie. I also knew a Rudolf Baumgartner who attended Washington Lee University around 1917. I am delighted to know that there are members of Staunton's old families still living there. JOHN LEVERING EARLY Sarasota, Fla. GCue AtrSs paleoconservative spokesmen economist Murray Rothbard and historian Paul Gottfried are Jewish, Kristol's smear is without merit or substance, as is his eagerness to sink the growing consensus on abolishing the NEA and grab it for his buddies in the neocon nest.

If Buchanan has achieved anything in his campaign this year, he has exposed who is a serious conservative and who is a phony. And what he hasn't exposed has now exposed itself for all the world to see. Follow The Leader Party poopsirs he's a liberal and slurred lesbians in a terrible aside joke that accidentally got broadcast. So what? So a lot. I believe what a person says in private is a reflection of how he really feels.

It's like citing Scripture to justify bigotry. People you don't want to invite to your party Jessica Fletcher. Conservatives would accomplish little without the liberals and vice versa. We feed off each other. Did you ever yawn and while you had your mouth open feel under your tongue with your tongue? Why would anybody listen to your entire answering machine message, wait for the beep and apologize for dialing a wrong number? OsSiioflig sooner had John Frohn-1.

mayer departed the Na-I tional Endowment for the Arts last month than the notion began to seep through the brains of Beltway Brahmins that maybe we didn't need federal support of the arts anyway. Not long after the Frohnmayer resignation, David Brinkley, Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts and George Will all agreed on that point, as did liberal pundit Michael Kinsley a few days later. Now, just as establishment liberals seem open to letting the NEA drift the way of Amelia Earhart, who should step forward as volunteers for a rescue mission but the beloved neoconservatives. In this week's Wall Street Journal, neoconserva-tive godfather Irving Kristol fretted about what "to do with the NEA." As so often with neocons, he came to no firm conclusion, but he's obviously against abolishing it, wants to save it and would like to deliver it over to National Humanities Endowment Chairwoman Lynne Cheney and the neoconservative Cosa Nostra she rules at the NEH. thankful for its services to the less fortunate in our community.

But why have church groups been cut back in their time limit on Christ? Several groups have been cut back to less than 20 minutes. How can anyone know anything about Christ in that short length of time? The sign hangs outside of the mission saying Jesus Saves but that sign contradicts what actually is allowed to go on inside the building. More time should be allowed for church groups to get their message across. LLOYD A. FITZGERALD Rt.

1, Stuarts Draft X-RATED I want to comment on the statement by the Associated Press on the number of youth sex crimes on the rise. Locally it's no wonder, for our library supplies all kinds of X-rated movies to anyone. I saw a book in the children's section that was very explicit in Kinsey sex imagery. Who can put a stop to this? Christians pray for them. BOYD TALBOTT Staunton William Bennett and Housing and Urban Development under Jack Kemp increased in size, expense and functions once the neoconservatives got their little mitts on them.

While paleos sought to reduce or abolish these tentacles of the state, neoconservatives were intent on preserving and expanding them. As with most groups that play politics with the leviathan state, the neoconservatives quickly degenerated into mere powermongers, content to grab whatever offices, grants, salaries and titles they could. The result is the corruption of American conservatism and the surrender of its agenda, defended and articulated by authentic conservatives since the New Deal, of reducing the size and scale of the state and governing by law instead of by bureaucracy. But anyone on the Old Right who points out the powermongering proclivities of neoconservatives suddenly finds himself wearing a nasty signboard he "flirts with fascism" or harbors "anti-Semitism." That's what's happened to Pat Buchanan when he challenged neoconservative off Naftioimall EoiKnloivmeinifi frw ft rescue SAMUEL FRANCIS Kristol acknowledges he has "more sympathy" for abolishing the federal agency that spends nearly $200 million annually to support the arts than he used to have. That's progress.

Maybe by the year 2000 he will muse favorably about lopping off other appendages of the leviathan state. But regardless of his sympathies, he is dismissive of the practicality of NEA abolition. Since the NEA is able to muster a state and local constituency that receives its largesse, Don Irving concludes that "abolitionist sentiment, however understandable and defensible, will be ineffectual." So much for the Reagan Revolution. Best hand over the NEA to someone who knows how to serve up the pasta to other loyal button men in the neocon syndicate. Kristol's thoughts on how to save the NEA are instructive because it is often claimed that real differences between neoconservatives and their rivals, "paleoconservatives" or the Old Right, are small or imaginary.

The NEA issue illustrates why they're neither and why neoconser-vatism contains a vision of what government should be and do that is fundamentally different from that of most rank-and-file conservatives, who remain distinctly paleo. Neoconservatives assume that Big Government is here to stay as part of some kind of historically inevitable process that we can do nothing about. In some respects, they may be right, but their assumption leads them to give up the fight against Big Government before the bell rings. What they really want to do with our swollen state is tinker with it, tighten a screw here and a gear there, and "reform" it, as Kristol puts it in pondering how to salvage the NEA. Hence, the two federal departments most clearly under neoconservative control Education under THE DAILY NEWS LEADER ISSN 0747-2501 Founded 1904 by Hierome L.

Opie Daily News 1890 The Morning Leader 1906 Evarts W. Opie Publisher and Editor Wesley B. Wampler, General Manager Roy T. Stephenson, Managing Editor IITIMrrMA IMS".