Obama's Agriculture Secretary Vilsack and Interior Secretary Salazar recently met in Arizona with proponents and opponents of McCain- sponsored copper mine "land swap" legislation. Mine supporters participated in the meetings, as did opponents such as local townspeople, Native Americans and conservationists.

Here we go again. I've lost track of what round this is over health care, but it doesn't change the fact that the federal government cannot "mandate" American citizens to purchase health care coverage.

I am a local political activist. I brought up the issue of child endangerment to the local press during the school override election for Apache Junction Unified School District. I also raised the issue during city council meetings and in the blogs.

H2244 was appropriately defeated because, by definition, removing print publication of public notices defeats the very purpose of public publication of the notices. The intention is to provide as broad a public notice to the citizens as is economically and reasonably feasible without preferring, by the method of publication, which group should get the information while intentionally not providing notice to other citizens.

I toured some our neighborhoods recently, and you know what I saw? Feral cats everywhere. Does no one in this town care that these animals are potential reservoirs of diseases like rabies that might affect our children?

Anyone who thinks a 35-page law is a good idea needs a brain scan. With so many lawyer words in one place, the mischief the marijuana- regulation law is bound to do will be enormous and filled with stupidity. I would never vote for any initiative so complex that I cannot readily understand it.

As an 18-year-old high school senior, I decided to join the lawsuits against the state of Arizona over school finance. I have seen my school go without many of the basics that help create better students, while other schools have the things that better prepare students for the rest of their lives and the world.

As a lifelong resident of Superior, I resent Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl and U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick for promoting a mine here for two foreign companies, BHP and Rio Tinto.

Some Apache hope they might get jobs from the proposed Oak Flat/Apache Leap Resolution Copper mine. They hope these British/Australian mining companies (BHP and Rio Tinto) will hire Native Americans. In fact, the "block cave" mining jobs are highly specialized and not about truck driving or picks and shovels.

I am writing to complain about the article/photograph of the motorized railcar shown in the "Times Past" column in the Feb. 13, 2009, issue of the Arizona Capitol Times. The article states the "Hum Dinger" was used by the Mascot and Western Railroad that ran between Willcox and Dos Cabezas, Ariz., in the 1920s. The photograph included with the article is incorrect.