Running for president? Resign, Governor | Letters to the editor

Our governor appears to be getting his campaign for president underway. Don’t elected officials in Florida have to resign when they run for another elective office? Why shouldn’t the governor be held to the same standard?

For the next two years, we won’t have an active governor running our state. He should resign. Then maybe we could get a governor to focus on issues that we in Florida care about, not the crazy directives our current governor and state legislators have passed on his behalf over the past few years to pander to the ultra-right.

It’s time for a change. It’s time for this governor to go.

Ed Redfern, Fort Lauderdale

(Editor’s note: Florida’s resign-to-run law requires an elected official to resign a current office to seek another, but it’s debatable whether the law applies to a presidential candidacy. Even if it does, Republican legislators have expressed a willingness to change the law to benefit DeSantis).

As an adamant DeSantis supporter, the president and CEO of the Central Florida Urban League, Glenton Gilzean Jr. writes that the proposed African American advance placement studies course does nothing to advance the teaching of Black history — only the political agenda of a small minority.

Gilzean suggests that what’s needed is significant, systemic change to how African American children learn and the support they receive. He spends no time discussing his assertion that the course advances a political agenda. Such thinking is eerily similar to those who refuse to support reasonable gun control while insisting that mental illness is the issue behind mass shootings.

When will people realize that it’s possible to walk and chew gum at the same time? Problems are tackled by approaching issues from all sides. Just who is truly advancing the political agenda of a small minority?

Lawrence M. Kopelman, Plantation

Congratulations to President Biden for visiting Ukraine and meeting face-to-face with President Zelenskyy. It was a nice photo op for Biden. My question is, did Zelenskyy ask Biden some questions? Such as:

The U.S. is sending Ukraine its advanced tank, the Abrams. Can you explain why the U.S. would send a tank which requires jet fuel and daily maintenance? How is that supposed to work in a battle environment?

Ukraine thanks you for two National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) in coming weeks. Will they be operational? Why has it taken a year to supply us with a weapon that we have been requesting for almost a year?

Mr. President, why did you veto our receiving airplanes from Poland? Ukraine has made no secret that it would like to receive fighter jets, such as the F-16 Fighting Falcon, a multi-role fighter aircraft from its allies to fight Russia. Why are you still dragging your feet on this? The war is being fought on Ukrainian soil. Why have you denied us weapons to take the war to Russia soil? Why have you sent us missile systems with their maximum distance restricted?

Mr. Biden, I appreciate that you talk of having my back and that you have invested billions of dollars in our defense. What I am curious about is, why couldn’t you have had our back sooner with the stuff that we needed?

Doug Cohen, Boynton Beach

FILE - Richard Belzer attends the premiere of "Mistaken For Strangers" during the opening night of the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival on April 17, 2013, in New York. Belzer, the longtime stand-up comedian who became one of TV's most indelible detectives as John Munch in "Homicide: Life on the Street" and "Law & Order: SVU," has died at age 78. Belzer died Sunday, Feb. 19, 2023, at his home in Bozouls in southern France, his longtime friend Bill Scheft told The Hollywood Reporter. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File) (Charles Sykes/Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

On the death of actor Richard Belzer:

As another investigator would say, “I don’t believe in coincidences.” But it’s interesting that last week’s Law and Order: SVU episode, presumably filmed weeks ago, included references to a “detective from Baltimore.”

Did producer Dick Wolf know that Belzer was in failing health and so included a remembrance?

Ann Carter, Rockledge