South metro readers write

390.09 is the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere! The website www.co2now.org has the current reading. It also has the history year by year since 1958. It is compiled by a group in the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This website is fantastic!

So buy a fuel-efficient car, recycle, shop local and turn off your lights.

HARLEY HORSAGER

LAKEVILLE

Bachmann's bluster I listen to Michele Bachmann bleating on WCCO about how "her party" is going to produce jobs.

Well, Michele, just who has been in charge of 20 of the past 30 years politically, when all the jobs disappeared? The Republicans, whose god is capitalism, who had the great idea to send our jobs overseas in the name of cheap goods -- apparently the real "opiate of the people." Has the unholy alliance with their huge voting block, the religious right, been of great benefit to that group's hot button issue: abortion? Did stacking the Supreme Court with "conservative" judges annul Roe vs. Wade? No! Instead, we got capitalist corporate rights to influence voting with their bottomless pockets.

SHARON ASTLEFORD

Stop lead bullet ban A potential lead bullet ban by the Obama administration is an assault on rural America and our hunting heritage. The EPA has announced it will decide to reject or accept a lead bullet ban by Nov. 1. This is 5 days before our Minnesota rifle season is scheduled to start. Banning lead ammo in rifles is tantamount to banning hunting in many households. Our rural areas depend on the money spent by hunters who travel into their communities and the DNR depends on license fees and tax revenue from ammo and rifle sales to make sure we have wildlife to hunt and enjoy. These Washington "bully boys" need to be stopped.

MIKE TIERNEY

BURNSVILLE

End death penalty A federal district court decision reached recently is a clear indication of why the death penalty is unjust and should be abolished.

Several years ago, Troy Davis was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer, without physical evidence, based solely on the testimony of witnesses, most of whom have since recanted their earlier testimony. The judge in the recent decision rejected Davis' petition based on the alleged lack of credibility of Davis' witnesses, yet they were the very people whose testimony put Davis on death row in the first place.

At the very least, his sentence should be commuted to life in prison, in which case he could be released if and when he is ever proven innocent. If he is wrongly executed, no exoneration can bring him back.

PHILIP KERLER