Skattershooting 1999

Skattershooting for the First Time in 1999 (3/31/99)

Why are we in Kosovo? The NATO air strikes have caused an increase in Serbian attacks on the Albanians which has, in turn, caused a mass exodus of the region. Now Kosovo is the equivalent of an occupied wasteland occupied by the Serbs. Is this what we had planned?
And why choose Serbia over other geographic areas in need? Over 65,000 have been killed in Algeria (as opposed to 2,000 in Kosovo) and we don't blink an eye. If the decision is based upon humanitarian intervention, pick up a copy of this week's Life Magazine's "Year in Pictures" and take a look at the people starving in Sudan. A cruise missile could by a lot of grain.
For those that have accused me of being a Clinton sympathizer, I'm certainly not on board with him on this military conflict. How can he, who adamantly opposed Vietnam, consider Kosovo to be a legitimate battle.
The National Rifle Association could not have purchased an advertisement that spoke as loudly as a letter to the editor in this week's Dallas Morning News: "President Clinton said that the atrocities in Kosovo began with dragging people from their homes. He said the same thing had happened earlier in Bosnia. Several weeks ago, in the rebroadcast of Schindler's List, the crimes against the Jews began with removing people from their homes. Am I the only one to notice that at least the start of these atrocities would not be possible against an armed populace? - WILLIAM E. DRISSEL, Grand Prairie".
Changing gears a bit. A postal worker receives 15 months in prison for sending an e-mail to a co-worker stating that he might go "postal" and that it "would be [like] a shoot-out at the OK Corral". The recipient, not thinking anything of it, laughed when he received it. Moreover, the sender of the message never acted on this "threat". I'm not so much alarmed by the e-mail's content as I am that it was the federal government, and not the state of Texas, who prosecuted the case. The basis for the federal government's claim of jurisdiction was that the e-mail traveled across state lines. Well, yeah, but the message was sent from one computer in Larado, routed through Tennessee, and then received by another computer back in Laredo. My point? The feds are slowly but surely usurping the local state prosecutor's authority to review, evaluate, and prosecute criminal cases.
I've always thought that Jack Kervorkian was more of a crazed madman that an advocate of euthanasia. His famous 60 Minutes video crossed the line when he injected the poison into the critically ill man instead of simply setting up the apparatus for the "patient" to operate. At his trial last week, he couldn't quite understand that the jury was simply going to be asked if he "intentionally and knowingly caused the death of another". The appropriate punishment might be up for debate, but his guilt was not.

Barry Green is the District Attorney for the 271st Judicial District.