Letters: Penn State OK again, Maxwell?

RON JAWORSKI and the Maxwell Football Club should be ashamed of themselves. In November 2011, the club wrongly removed coach Joe Paterno's name from the Coach of the Year Award, citing the Jerry Sandusky scandal as the reason and wrongly blaming Paterno for the crimes. It was as if the head coach himself was the pedophile instead of Sandusky. Now, this hypocritical organization has announced its awards for the 2012 season and look who some of the winners are:

Coach of the Year - Penn State's Bill O'Brien.

Thomas Brookshier Spirit Award - The Penn State senior football players.

As a lifelong Penn Stater, I am offended by the announcement of these awards. The Maxwell Club joined the rest of the country in the systematic defamation of Joe Paterno's life and career. When it suited them best, The club couldn't distance itself fast enough from Joe Paterno and the Penn State football program. Now that the club can benefit from the perceived success of this year's team, the Penn State football program is all of a sudden back in its good graces and receiving numerous awards from the Maxwell Club.

Is this the Maxwell Club's way of apologizing for their error in removing Paterno's name from their Coach of the Year award? If it is, it's a lousy apology and one I don't wish to accept. You want to do the right thing? Put Paterno's name back on the award, and then maybe this year's awards could have some legitimacy. Otherwise, the Maxwell Club should take its insignificant awards and destroy them as quickly as they helped to destroy the career and legacy of one Joseph V. Paterno.

William A. Thorpe

Collegeville

Assault guns are crazy

Even if the NRA can successfully oppose a ban on assault weapons, conducting background checks to prevent those with severe mental-health problems from obtaining guns would have the same result since anyone who feels the need to purchase an assault weapon can not be mentally competent.

Jim Saldutti

Philadelphia

Guns vs. more guns

Another school massacre. Our children are dying, and the left uses this as an excuse to renew attacks on the Second Amendment. Gun control is not the answer. The simple fact is that at every location where these mass shootings occur, there was a strict gun ban in effect. The shootings occur because the shooter knows they will not be stopped because everyone will be unarmed. This is the problem with "gun-free zones."

Here is the solution - and make no mistake, it is the only solution. You arm the schools: armed security guards, armed teachers and armed staff.

Every school in this nation should take heed. We entrust our children's safety to these institutions. They need to arm themselves, or, simply admit that they are unable and unwilling to protect our children's lives. No more nonsense about armed citizens creating more problems. If a madman is walking through a school, randomly shooting children, armed guards and school staff members can shoot him and kill him. That's not speculation. That's a living, working reality.

I'm a proud life member of the National Rifle Association. The Second Amendment gives all law-abiding citizens the absolute right to keep and bear arms. So, arm yourselves, damn it. You are a teacher. You are a principal. You are a campus security guard. Part of your job is to protect those kids that are entrusted to you, by their parents. Let this be the final tragedy. Let this be the last time schools are defenseless against evil that threatens our children. Shove the political agenda where the sun doesn't shine.

Stuart Caesar

Philadelphia

Be strong, President O

The president must not give in to John Boehner's demands. He must not yield to the party of racists, gun nuts and evangelicals who have been fooled into backing the 1 percent's war on the poor. Conservative Republicans created our economic problems with their wacky free-market, trickle-down ideas. They are the ones responsible for the 2008 Wall Street collapse. They created the fiscal cliff. The elderly, the poor, the working poor or the middle class should not be asked to pay. They fell off that cliff 10 years ago; during that time the 1 percent has grown richer and richer.

Donald Wood

Neptune, N.J.

Once again, "It's Morning in America." And moving forward, the White House appears it will no longer tend to the day-care center that the House of Representatives has become.

Hell, yes he can! . . . and I believe President Obama has a majority-backed focus on briefly pushing that whole dysfunctional branch of government off the fiscal cliff.

Bipartisanship at this point might only be the image of President Obama lending both hands to drag the Republican's stubborn opposition forward.

Anthony D. Johnson

Philadelphia