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This past week I wrote a short note to some neighbors requesting that they consider removing their front yard Halloween display that has a witch lowering a little girl headfirst into a boiling cauldron of water. The thrust of the note was that some things simply are not funny or cute, and should not be shown to children as if they were. So that led me to thinking about couple of “popular” songs which, for many years, I have shunned for the same reason.

  The theme of this column is treating all people with a threshold of respect.  So I begin by adding one more story about my wonderful and even heroic father, Federal District Judge William P. Gray.  (I hope you remember and utilize his comment that “You have every right to disagree, but you have no right to be disagreeable.”)  But this new story is as follows: Many years ago my father was asked if he would agree to take a tour of the Federal Correctional Facility at Lompoc, California.  Naturally he agreed, and he took my mother with him.  While he was there the warden told him that, coincidentally, there would be a talent show later that afternoon presented by some of the inmates, so would they like to attend?

While on my recent vacation I read a book written by four members of the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) entitled NO WAY HOME: The Crisis of Homelessness and How to Fix It with Intelligence and Humanity (Encounter Books). And the title says it all. In that regard I hope you agree with me that having such a large homeless population is a blight upon who we are as a country. All lawful residents in our country should have a place of shelter for themselves and their possessions. But today California alone has more than 150,000 people who are homeless. Why?