Why is it in America when tradgedy strikes we want to create some law, ordinance or rule to "prevent" it from ever happening again, yet it never prevents anything? An example is DUI laws. We have more DUI's today than ever it seems and yet we keep wanting to make the laws more strict on those who have driven and gotten pulled over and blown over the legal limit. But what do we do to those who drink, drive and kill? We give them 30 days if they're an NFL player.

Dante' Stallworth of the Cleveland Browns just got a whopping 30 days in jail for drinking, driving and hitting and killing a man in Miami. His defense? He flashed the lights to warn the guy before he plowed into him. Thanks Dante', you're all heart. I mean, you should warn a guy before you decide to run him over with your car, don't you think?

 

He's not the only guy who plays in the NFL who has gotten away with murder. Leonard Little of the St. Louis Rams hit and killed a mother and a daughter some 10 years ago and he was back on the playing field by the end of the season. How can you kill two people because of an irresponsible decision and be playing football again within months? How did our DUI laws to prevent this not prevent it? What can we do to stop this kind of senseless killing?

 

I'll give you an idea. Let's go back to doing things the way our Founding Father's intended. They believed and expected us to operate under the premise that you have the right to do whatever you want to do, whatever you want, so long as you didn't violate someone else's rights or damage person or property. If you did violate someone's rights or damage person or property you were to pay a price equal to the damage you did. They didn't want a bunch of laws to prevent things from happening; they realized they were going to happen anyway. They believed the way to deter crime was to make sure that the consequences of your actions fit your crime.

So here's how we prevent DUI's, or at least reduce them. If someone decides they can drink and drive and they make it from point A, the bar, to point B, home, without hurting anyone or damaging anything, why should they be punished? They didn't do anything to anyone nor violate anyone's rights. However, if that same person hits and kills someone on the way home because they were drinking and decided to drive, give them the death penalty! "That's to drastic" I can hear many of you saying. Well, we want more laws to keep a guy who can drink and drive without harming anyone off the street and in jail as a habitual criminal but, we don't really want to stop the killing. Otherwise Leonard Little and Donte' Stallworth, among many others, wouldn't be alive to get back on the field or back to their jobs.

 

If you make the decision to risk your life to drink and drive, then by all means go for it. I know, MADD, SADD, GLADD, RAD, WHATEVERADD think this is crazy. What if it's your daughter that's killed, they'd say. Well, if it was my daughter that Leonard Little ran over or Donte' Stallworth mowed down, would I feel satisfied it wouldn't happen to someone else's little girl? NO! Forget prevention and let's go back to accountability. When we have the guts to do that, maybe, just maybe we'll finally start seeing a reduction in senseless deaths and injuries. Until then, wear your seatbelts; Little and Stallworth maybe be driving on a road near you!

Today I dedicate my time and my blog to my dad, Keith Edward Cole. I only got to spend 24 years with him on this Earth. Seems like a lot of time but, in reality I've known many people who might read this blog longer than 24 years, and yet it seems like it was only yesterday we met. I have already spent 21 years with my son and 17, almost 18 with my daughter. It's unimaginable that I'd only have two or three years left with them but, that's all I got with my dad.

I went to my dad's grave yesterday with my children. There we kneeled down on his and my stepmom's tombstones, knowing they were really not there but, feeling closer to them nonetheless. They say time heals all wounds and that there is a certain mourning period and then you'll get over it. I disagree. When I reached down to touch my dad's tombstone, with my children at my sides, it was as if I were kneeling there for the first time, feeling the pain of the loss I felt over 20 years ago, as if he just died yesterday. Hoping he realized in life how much I loved him and in death how much I miss him. At a time in my life when I find it hard to believe in true love, I kneeled knowing my dad loved me unconditionally everyday of his life and nothing else or anyone else mattered at that moment.

I know I am not the only person who has lost a parent or a loved one. I have a dear friend experiencing this Father's Day as her first without her dad, having only lost him days ago. Tears fill my eyes because I know the pain she is feeling and will feel for the rest of her life. But this is my blog and this is about hoping what I express here can be related to by all those who have and are in the same shoes I am, including her. I have no regrets about my dad; no long, sad stories about what I wish I'd done and said. He coached my ball teams, attended school functions, went to Principal's office when I was in trouble; we worked together, played together, argued and disagreed together; all the things fathers and sons do. We fished together, camped together, drank together, traveled together. He was the person who was there when my mother left us; the person who was there when my grandmother died and I felt true loss for the first time in my life; the person who was there when I finished playing a ball game and, win or lose, gave me a dad hug and said, "I'm proud of you son".

 

Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago if I had one day to do whatever I wanted to do, how would I spend that day? That was an easy one, I'd spend just one more day with my dad. It brought to mind that song, "one more day, one more time, one more sunset maybe I'd be satisfied. But then again, I know what it would do, leave me wishing still for one more day with you". I have spent the last 20 plus years wishing for just one more day, one more hour, even one more minute with my dad. Heck, I'd give anything for just one more of those dad hugs and another, "I'm proud of you son" moment.

So on this day, Father's Day 2009, please wish your dad Happy Father's Day.  Don't worry what he isn't or what he didn't do. Don't care about yesterday and childhood memories that were never made. Forget the hurts and the pain, the bumps and the bruises. Remember, he is your dad, your only dad. And one day you too will wish for one more day. Make today that day!!

I love you dad today and everyday. You are missed; can't wait to see you again one day in Heaven. Happy Father's Day!!!

Ok, I have waited to start posting to my blog so I could make sure what I write is perfect and exact, eloquent and flowing, yadda, yadda, yadda. Whatever. I obviously have changed my thinking. I am a talk radio guy, not a writer. I am going to just write what I think, just as if I were talking on the radio. If you like it great; if you don't, oh well. I am what I am, a believer in the Scriptures and the Constitution and that is my "cause" for this blog.

So here we go. I am sick and tired of hearing about the so called "separation of Church and State". I read today where they are trying to ban some cross in the middle of the desert because it "violates the doctrine of separation of church and state". How stupid are people to not only say that but, to believe it. The cross is apparently a memorial to fallen Marines and other soldiers who gave their life for the real Constitution and our liberty, not some warped version or view of it.

Where is this doctrine? Oh yeah, the First Amendment, right? Well, the First Amendment says, as pertaining to religion, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...". Now I am not Barack Hussein Obama or any other Constitutional scholar but, I can read English and I don't see how this little cross or the Ten Commandments in a courthouse, or praying before a ballgame is Congress making any kind of law, much yet one establishing a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof?!

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802, in response to a letter from them said this, "I contemplate with sovereign reverence the act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state". This is a letter to a Baptist Association, not the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, not even something passed by Congress. It's a letter from the President to a bunch of Baptist. Since when did that constitute the making of a law?

 

It's time we Christians in all walks of life and on a broader scale, true Patriotic Americans, whether Christian or not, stand up and say enough is enough. No more lies, no more Supreme Court blunders, no more religious persecution. We'll say what we want, pray what we want, and display what we want, whether we're in Government or on "public" property or not. Because nothing any of us do or say or pray is Congress making any kind of law about religion or anything else. It's about the Constitution and the rights that it protects for us all and it's high time we read it, we understand it and we hold our elected officials accountable for properly carrying out their duty to uphold and defend it.