OPINION

In an episode of the original Star Trek TV series, Captain Kirk and the crew encounter the Greek god Apollo on a planet.

Apollo captures them and says he is going to make them his children. He will provide for all their wants and needs. All they have to do is love and worship him.

Of course, Kirk and the crew reject this all encompassing, egomaniacal control over every aspect of their lives.

Count me in with Kirk and the crew, and, evidently, Massachusetts, too.

Re: "Advocacy rules eased for Tebow ad, CBS says," Wednesday Briefs.

When I first heard that pro-choice groups were objecting to the proposed ad about Tim Tebow during the Super Bowl, I was really confused. Why should they object when the ad will point out that Mrs. Tebow did have the right to choose an abortion?

Isn't that what pro-choice is all about -- that a woman should have the right to choose?

It seems they do not want an ad that might influence women to make the same choice Mrs. Tebow did.

So it looks like the pro-choice movement is no longer about a woman's right to choose. It is about what they think that choice should be.

Re: "Mickelson accused of 'cheating' in latest PGA Tour uproar -- Loophole allows use of controversial wedge but touches off debate," Saturday SportsDay.

Golf, a "gentlemen's game," is a joke. Anyone who disagrees has never been on a public course with a bunch of big-belly salesmen that are playing on company time. Or a bunch of wannabe tour players who would make a drunken sailor's language seem tame, with tempers like bubble gum that explodes with just a little wind. Not to mention standing over a putt for five minutes for a quadruple bogey.

Golf's gentlemen image is as fake as wrestling's bloody faces.

Re: "Abstinence approach works, study finds -- Only a third of children became active in 2 years after classes," Tuesday news story.

The study described in this story claims a statistically significant decrease in teen sex through abstinence-only education, compared to other approaches. Its methodology seems flawed.

The study depends entirely on self-reporting of teenagers.

If you have ever had a teenager or were one yourself, do you think he or she (or you) would report sexual activity accurately to an adult, when told it is wrong, even when allowed anonymity?

Those being told, "don't have sex, period," probably respond less truthfully than those being told: "There are serious potential negative consequences if you have sex, but condoms help prevent those."

If so, the conclusion that abstinence-only education works is unjustified.

The comparison of rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in the several groups would be better measures of success. Those are the societally more significant events.

The research paper, unfortunately, appears to be silent on those.

Re: "Park goes from green," by Nancy Furth, and, "To 'infinitely better'?" by Bill McDonald, Saturday Letters.

The great irony of the done-and-redone Barbara Hitzelberger Park at the corner of Hillcrest Avenue and Lovers Lane is that the oligarchy of University Park can squander close to a million dollars, yet they cannot find the coin to build a public library.

President Barack Obama's priorities are badly distorted. A big portion of our national expenditures are poured into projecting our military muscle through military bases spread around the world.

We need to dramatically scale that back and firmly rein it in, since militarism is draining away our national resources, while making us less secure as a nation. Health care, not warfare, should be our national slogan.

Evidently, this administration and Congress think a struggling business needs to borrow money. If I am barely making it now, how will paying on a loan and interest improve my financial condition? They are proposing that I get a tax break if I hire a new employee or raise my current employees' wages. That would only make my cash flow worse.

What business owners need is a break on our upfront taxes like income taxes and employment taxes.

Without the oppressive tax structure, I would be profitable and hire more employees to expand, but I cannot borrow money, hire people, expand my business and pay the same taxes and survive.

If the government were serious about addressing our financial crisis, they should do what businesses are doing to survive. They could reduce the number of federal employees and implement an across-the-board pay cut, including Congress and the executive branch.

Has anyone figured what an across-the-board 10 percent pay cut for government employees would do for our budget? Many of us are trying to live on much larger cuts than that.

Re: "... was a good first step," by Jim Hays, Tuesday Letters.

Hays wants President Barack Obama to listen to Republicans. OK. Should he follow their advice on tax cuts for the rich, further reducing revenue?

Should he follow their advice to put health care "on a shelf" for what, forever? Our company's costs went up over $30,000 last year and $45,000 this year. Let's not do anything about that for a few more years, and watch what happens to America's small businesses and the millions they employ.

Maybe he should listen about a bipartisan panel to figure out how to reduce deficits? He did, and Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison helped defeat it.

Should he follow their example and enact another entitlement program but not pay for it or start two wars that were not paid for?

There is a real disconnect from the perception of what a conservative Republican is and what they actually do. They ran this government for eight years on a line of credit and left a mess to whoever came next. And now they embarrassingly try to stand in the way of anything happening, lest the truth become obvious to all.

Chalk up years of conservative Republicans. Nothing to be proud of.

The editorial board just finished an hour-long conversation with Gen. David Petraeus, chief of the U.S. Central Command and the mastermind behind the 2007-2009 turnaround in Iraq. It was interesting to hear his perspective, having been assigned by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2005 to do an assessment of Afghanistan at a time when things were falling apart in Iraq.

"At that time, Afghanistan was the good war. It was the war we were winning, and it was just heading wonderfully in the right direction -- everybody thought," Petraeus recalled. "Of course, Iraq was the bad war, the war of choice, the war we were losing."

So imagine the joy in the room when Petraeus warned -- this is 2005, remember -- that his sense was "that Afghanistan is going to be the longest campaign of the long war."

Though he was trying to be upbeat, what Petraeus described to us over the course of an hour was an exceedingly grim picture of Afghanistan today. But he also reminded us of the exceedingly grim picture in Iraq at the time he made his 2005 assessment. During the month he arrived in Iraq in 2007, there were 230 attacks a day, and virtually no attacks in Afghanistan. The picture is completely reversed today.

So what happened? First of all, there were far too many assumptions made in Washington about security in Afghanistan. American forces were allowed to dwindle to the point that no one was minding the shop when the Taliban and al-Qaeda began reinfiltrating the country, stockpiling munitions and establishing links with Afghanistan's multibillion-dollar opium trafficking industry. What emerged was a far more economically powerful Taliban that now had the advantage of stealth, better weaponry and an ability to instill fear across the countryside -- but with no central command base that the United States could strike against.

I keep writing this phrase: "Southern Dallas deserves better." I keep reading it in other people's headlines and commentaries. And it strikes me at how hollow it is, especially considering the voting record of southern Dallas residents.

Let's look at one voter in particular: Gloria Hogg. She's the precinct chair in District 100. Here's her take on this week's events: "If Hodge's name is still on the ballot, then I will vote Terri. That doesn't mean I don't like Johnson. We don't know a lot about Mr. Johnson. Terri has been out here fighting for her constituents for 14 years. Until I hear further, Gloria Hogg supports Terri Hodge."

My god. And she's actually in a Democratic Party leadership position.

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I admit, when I heard what the Baptists from Idaho did, I thought about nominating them for a Miss, one of our brief editorials on Saturday. They were clearly too hasty and sloppy in their desire to help kids orphaned by Haiti. I don't think they gave enough serious thought to the problem that nation has had with child trafficking.

That said, it's fairly clear that their intentions were good. They should not be made an example because, frankly, no one who traffics in children will be deterred if they are charged. But charges have been brought.

This nation does not have the luxury of being able to make an example of careless do-gooders. It has far greater battles to fight. I know, because like so many other Americans, I was moved to support them in fighting those battles. The $100 million they have gotten from the U.S. government and the more than $60 million raised by one night of celebrity phone work should not enable this country to foolishly shift its attention away from the urgent work that needs to be done to rebuild Haiti.

Were the Idaho Baptists careless? Were they wrong? Yes. But don't compound the problems in Haiti by wasting time pursuing a case against them. Send them home. The lesson has been learned; the message has been delivered and received. Now get back to work digging out of the rubble and making sure that these children won't be vulnerable in their own country.

1. WATKINS -- Pegged to a news story last week regarding DA Craig Watkins trying to stop an independent investigation into allegations of wrongdoing against constables by submitting secret grand jury testimony in a civil case, we note that legal scholars interviewed in the article suggested he may have broken the law. We've talked to the DA and he feels otherwise. Yet we maintain that he has repeatedly tried to throw off this investigation, and this is a new wrinkle that can't be overlooked. Colleen writing on behalf of the board.

2. Our next two election recommendations -- both of them GOP legislative primaries in Denton County. Bill and Tod writing on behalf of the board.