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Editorial voices from elsewhere

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Editorial voices from newspapers around the United States as compiled by the Associated Press:

Does it strike you as wrong that lying to your stockholders is a felony but disobeying mine safety rules – an act that can result in the death of workers – is a misdemeanor?

It should.

The recent trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship has brought up some important issues. Blankenship was convicted of conspiracy to violate mine safety rules at Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine, where 29 miners were killed in an explosion in 2010.

Criminal conspiracies are usually felonies, but because the jury found that Blankenship’s goal was to violate safety standards, not to defraud federal safety regulators, the conviction is a misdemeanor. The sentence is up to one year in prison, instead of up to five years had the conviction been a felony.

But, even as Blankenship’s lawyers work on overturning this momentous conviction, public attention has been brought to the disparity between penalties for trying to fool safety inspectors versus breaking life-and-death safety rules. Now that the public is more broadly aware, it is everyone’s responsibility to correct the error.

The Blankenship verdict went a good way in showing that safety rules matter. More proportionate penalties for violators are the next step.

Tolerance for a wide spectrum of speech and thought is a hallmark of a free society. Unpopular or bizarre ideas should have the chance to compete in the marketplace of ideas. But there are limits.

James Tracy has crossed the line.

Tracy is the Florida Atlantic University communications professor who gained notoriety three years ago when he claimed on his blog that the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that took 26 lives was a hoax.

At the time, university officials reprimanded Tracy for failing to make it clear that his views didn’t represent those of the university. But they determined he couldn’t be fired for views he expressed on his private blog. That took a certain integrity because, as a school administrator told a Florida reporter, a number of prospective students withdrew their applications to Florida Atlantic University and at least one donor withdrew his support.

The Newtown issue heated up again on Dec. 10 when Veronique and Lenny Pozner, whose son, Noah, died at Sandy Hook, wrote an op-ed in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel newspaper accusing Tracy of taunting them for trying to keep photos of their son private.

The Pozners also filed a police complaint against Tracy for harassment.

This finally was too much for university officials, who served Tracy with a notice of proposed discipline recommending termination.

Harassing the Pozner family is unconscionable. Their tormentor ought to be dismissed.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta received many honors during her lifetime for her charitable work. But she may be about to attain her greatest honor, Catholic sainthood.

Born into a Kosovar Albanian family, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. Congregation members follow the vows of chastity, poverty, obedience and providing “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor.”

Some groups argued that her opposition to abortion and contraception was not compassionate to the poor. Her clinics were attacked for a lack of medical care and poor conditions. She associated with Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, and questionable business figures such as Robert Maxwell and Charles Keating.

Whatever her failings, Mother Teresa did devote her life to giving poor people hope and a place to live. She cared for her fellow human beings that others often ignore. She never earned a dime for her hard work.

Certainly, those aspects of her life were saintly.

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