Readers Write (June 4): Adrian Peterson, distracted driving, state auditor legislation, dance teams and sportsmanship, basketball and the dunk, FBI surveillance planes, field trip to Smitten Kitten

What started out as child abuse when disciplining his 4-year-old son has now evolved into a lesson learned for Adrian Peterson ("Peterson comes full circle," June 3). There have been many bumps in the road to get to today. Peterson went from "that's how we discipline our children, that's how I was raised" to "I made a mistake." From receiving a seasonlong suspension from the NFL to "it's time to move forward." From (at times) erratic tweets to doing his job. From feeling unsupported from the Viking organization to this is my family. AP will never be a victim in this scenario, as at times he attempted to imply. He was a PR disaster until he apparently sought a media consultant. Those may not be his own words when issuing statements to the press, but his contrite stance will go a long way in repairing his fan base.

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Practicality is the basis of morality. If Adrian does well, all will be forgiven.

I read with horror the story about a North Dakota driver running over and killing someone training for a triathlon while taking a selfie (June 3). Most concerning was that there were two similar cases in recent months — in one case, the driver got six months in jail; in the other, no jail time at all.

While local U.S. senators are working on distracted-driving legislation, what is the point when killing someone while breaking other laws and driving carelessly has such light penalties? Offenses of a much smaller magnitude are receiving much harsher penalties. What is the justice in that, and what does that tell our children about how to behave behind the wheel?

If the penalties are this light, they need to be toughened. If the courts are deliberately giving out such light sentences, this must change.

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Thanks for shedding light on the dead-of-night deal to "cripple the office" of the state auditor ("A foolhardy attempt to gut auditor's office," editorial, June 2). The Senate conferees, of which we were two, were told during the day that this agreement by leaders to have the "legislative auditor study the state auditor" was necessary to close the bill. At 3 a.m., there was the bait-and-switch to privatization. We weren't even aware of the repeal of the auditor's entire authority to audit local government. I can't help wondering if a local official wants to hire his brother-in-law to do the audit. We need an independent state auditor to guard the public purse.

In regard to the misguided criticism of the Minnesota State High School League decision to suspend the coaches of four metro-area dance teams after they and their teams turned their backs during an awards ceremony, what we've got here is a failure to communicate the importance of sportsmanship. The Star Tribune's June 3 editorial supporting the decision was a welcome voice of reason in a surprisingly large sea of sportsmanship-be-damned, we'll-see-you-in-court criticism of the decision in letters and online comments.

The credibility of the opposition to the decision can be assessed with a simple question many have asked: Would the teams have turned their backs if Faribault had finished last? It's tempting to explain the opposition with sound-bite reasoning such as helicopter parenting, or that the schools are in comparatively wealthy suburban districts and losing to a school like Faribault isn't possible without some cheating. Whatever it is, it doesn't belong in high school sports. Still, the notion that high school sports should be about sportsmanship as well as dedication and winning is an old-fashioned value, one that may not stand up should a legal challenge to the MSHSL decision be mounted.

Asher Price, in his June 3 commentary "WNBA should bring the basket down (and attendance up)," argues that the dunk in professional basketball "is arguably the single most exciting maneuver in all sports." I have often argued that the sorry state of professional basketball is due to the ugliest move in all of professional sports: the dunk. It reduces a finesse game to a show of swagger — the swagger of aggressive behavior. It creates a different game. Perhaps we should allow the throwing of punches as well.

I recommend bringing back some semblance of what the game used to be; you had to get the ball into the basket by finding a way to do that below the hoop. A good beginning is to raise the hoop to 11 feet or so.

I read "Mystery plane was part of the secret FBI fleet" (June 3) with a sense of disbelief. All I could think about was those Nazi "snooper trucks" that drove around in World War II looking for underground radio signals. This is America, right? What a bunch of sheep we are. Rand Paul may be a bit of a goof, but he may be on to something — and I really hope he gets on this.

There are plenty of good questions to ask following the recent student field trip to an adult store ("Private school takes kids to sex toy store," June 2). The breach of trust some parents felt is real, and the school's decision not to ask parental permission for the outing is difficult to understand and even harder to justify. But make no mistake: If the question is what to do about sexual images and messages our children are exposed to, the greatest concern we might have is not what is found at the Smitten Kitten (a store committed to sex education and open approaches to human sexuality) nor what is discussed in sex-education classes. Rather, we should consider the sexually provocative advertising and media programming that fills the very air our children breathe. In an age where the Internet has unquarantined sexual content of all kinds, including the most explicit and the least healthy, children and adults increasingly need opportunities to ask questions and participate in conversations where sex is not a tool for shaming or manipulation, commercial or otherwise, but rather an expression of our most intimate human connection to another person.