Adele offers her insight on recent news events

ITEM – Two American men arrested by Iran over three years ago while hiking along the Iraq-Iran border have been sentenced to eight years in prison on charges that include espionage and illegal entry. A third hiker, a woman, was released last year because she was ill and has since refused to return for her trial.

COMMENT – Sorry, but I have maintained all along that anyone dumb enough to take a hike along the border of Iraq and Iran deserves little sympathy. I’m sure they weren’t spying but I don’t quite buy their going into Iran as an accident either. Surely there were a lot friendlier places to hike than what they chose.

ITEM – The White House, in a surprise move, said federal authorities will review the deportation cases of 300,000 illegal immigrants and might allow many to stay in the U.S. Those who haven’t committed crimes or are considered a threat to national security will have a chance to stay in the U.S. and to later apply for a work permit This includes immigrants brought here as children who finished high school and went to college, which was the substance of the Dream Act which was voted down by Congress.

COMMENT – Well, no question this is the first chunk of illegal immigrants to get amnesty and there will be more to follow. He slams members of Congress for putting self over country but look who’s talking. Was anybody surprised that he got the news that the Libyan rebels had captured their leader’s headquarters home while he was golfing?

ITEM – Traffic enforcement or red light cameras were first installed in Lynnwood in 2007 and ever since Lynnwood police have insisted the controversial program is all about safety. Lynnwood Police Chief Steve Jensen, however, has just conceded that he depends on the revenue from tickets – over $4 million last year – and if that isn’t forthcoming as the result of a newspaper investigation, he’ll have to lay off cops. He also called for an outside investigation into whether two key officers, including his own domestic partner, have unethical dealings with the company that supplies the cameras.

COMMENT – They should probably keep the cameras since they need the money but dump the chief and his girlfriend.

ITEM – President Obama and his family just spent nine days vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., his usual fall vacation spot since he took office, for which he is reported to have paid $50,000 a week to rent a house. Several notable allies and adversaries suggested in blunt terms that this was not the time nor the place to go while the unemployment rate is 9.1 percent, financial markets are unstable and the nation narrowly avoided default.

COMMENT – If he has to go to mingle with the swells at Martha’s Vineyard every year, which has been the case, what did we build and staff Camp David for? I thought that was supposed to be the getaway so the president could be close to the action yet relax in privacy.

ITEM – Over 300 foreign students who paid to come here and work for two months before being allowed to travel walked off their jobs at a Hershey chocolate plant, saying the work was harder than they expected and this wasn’t the America they wanted to see.

COMMENT – I don’t know what they expected. Maybe they heard about my aunt Nanny who came here with her family from Norway as an immigrant during World War I and got a job at a factory in Minnesota dipping chocolates. She brought her apron home each night so her brothers and sister could scrape the chocolate off and eat it. They thought this was a peachy America.

––Adele

(Adele Ferguson may be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, WA 98340.)