What’s up with the contrails?

Is it just me, or does anyone else notice the streaked cloud patterns over our fair city lately?

Mornings typically start out with cobalt-blue skies, only to be crisscrossed with jet contrails, which spread and expand into gray cloud-cover. Some days, the jets don’t start a contrail until the edge of the mountains, then stop out on the plains, or vice-versa.

My 2 ski buddies and I have witnessed this same phenomena up at Monarch Mountain ski area, with mornings of blue sky, afternoons gray contrail-spread. None of us remember seeing this happen until about a dozen years ago.

In our Air Force and Space Force community, does anyone have a credible explanation for what is going on? Is this some sort of cloud-seeding operation? If so, it doesn’t seem to be working, with the lack of snow this winter. Not to go over the conspiracy theory chemtrail cliff, but I did see an interview with an ex-Air Force procurement employee, who said she had ordered large quantities of aluminum, barium and strontium to be used in-flight. For cloud-seeding operations, silver iodide, potassium iodide, or sodium chloride are typically utilized.

Several pilots I’ve spoken with say these are harmless vapor trails, consisting of water that evaporates. This explanation doesn’t seem consistent to what many of us have observed.

Bill Hellwig

Colorado Springs

Support for voter ID

With regard to the latest version of the SAVE act currently before the U.S. Senate, will Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper represent Colorado voters or the Democrat leadership? Neither has indicated their support for this bill, while polls indicate very strong support for voter ID.

If the senators vote against the SAVE act, I refer voters to advice from Mark Twain, “Politicians and diapers need to be changed often, and for the same reason.” Voters remember who these men represent – it’s not you!

John Norris

Colorado Springs

Entitled to due process

Joseph Ford (The Gazette, February 15) asserts that illegal immigrants have no legal rights. I have heard that this view is widespread in the Department of Homeland Security, which may explain the behavior of some employees of ICE and CBP. It is, however, incorrect.

Many of the rights enumerated in the Constitution don’t refer to the citizenship, gender, or race of the individual involved. They are restrictions on the actions of government officials, without regard to the person with whom they are dealing.

For example, the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution says, “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, …” That’s “no person,” not “no citizen.”

The Sixth Amendment states, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”

People are entitled to due process of law, regardless of their citizenship status.

Glenn A. Knight

Colorado Springs

ICE and existing laws

A recent letter to the editor has some disturbing content about ICE and illegals in general. First, protests against ICE and their illegal actions clearly infringes on the valid use of First Amendment rights. Video shows that Alex Pretti was protesting peacefully when he was dragged out by ICE, thrown to the ground, and killed. Renee Good was trying to pull away from an illegal confrontation with ICE when she was shot through the windshield of her car. ICE treats peaceful protests as “interference.” ICE’s brutal tactics should be punished through application of existing laws. ICE is not punished and continues to violate the laws and the Constitution.

The phrase from the letter to the editor, “Illegal immigrants have no legal rights,” is blatantly false. Any person, in any country including the USA, is under the jurisdiction of that country’s laws. Many American citizens have been arrested for violating another country’s laws. In the USA, illegals can be arrested and charged with a crime. Under ICE, they are denied basic rights any people in the USA are afforded by law – habeas corpus, lawyers, a right to know what law they violated, the right to present evidence. For ICE, “probable cause” means that anyone who is brown skinned and/or speaking Spanish is a suspect. ICE, with the full backing of our President, deports these people, including American citizens falsely accused. Very disturbing, when one considers that “no legal rights” would mean that anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant could be shot and killed by anyone, for any or no reason.

Roger Thomas

Colorado Springs