[fabsroman]

Val,

I am pretty adversarial on subjective topics, especially when there isn't a clear answer, yet people think there is a black and white. Always, have been, always will be. Law school just gave me the ability to argue my point better.

Like I said, we "think" that hunting teaches us things we need to know to survive and it teaches our children certain values. With that said, I have seen some pretty pathetic/undisciplined hunters out there. Guess it doesn't work on everybody.

My point is that neither the school system nor a judge can say, yeah, hunting is an excused absence, but ballet or competitive cycling is not. Trust me, I did plenty of competitive cycling when I was younger. Even raced against George Hincapie who was Lance Armstrong's teammate/leiutenant, and school didn't allow me to leave early on Friday's to attend races held in upstate New York, South Carolina, and Arizona early Saturday morning. As far as I am concerned, sports and hunting and a million other things can teach discipline. So, should the school system turn a blind eye to abscences for anything the parent thinks is beneficial for the child?

Where do we draw the line? How can we say on thing is better than the other? How about letting parents take their children to PETA protests of hunting because it teaches the children to be stong and voice their opinion?

What if a parent is a survival nut and doesn't think that books and an education are worth anything? Should the child be excused from the entire year of school for that reason? I use extreme scenarios in most of my posts to try and prove my point. Where does a school system or a government draw the line on school attendance? Children already have Saturday and Sunday off to do whatever they and their parents want. How many more days do they need?

As far as disagreeing with you on everything, I think you will find a recent post wherein I said your letter to the editor was pretty good. Just not too much to write about when you and I agree. Just like reading some of TBO's posts. I read them, agree with them, and pretty much move on. Kind of like his post about the 5 "gangsters" that were killed in New Orleans by police when 8 gangsters shot at a construction crew. The only thing I didn't like about that post was that it wasn't 8 dead gangsters.