Dad finally stopped driving at 86 after he crashed into a stop sign.
Months later, his bank discovered that his driver’s license expired when he needed current photo ID to open an account, as in boarding a plane or voting. We went to the Deerfield Beach driver’s license office for a state ID.
Dad also had no passport, never having left the country since arriving at Ellis Island 85 years before.
Having been born in Romania as my grandparents fled Russian soldiers slaying family members and neighbors outside Kiev in 1921, he also had no original birth certificate.
So Florida refused to issue Morris Herbert Samuel Chernow a state photo ID.
They made me drive him to an immigration office to obtain proof of citizenship. It was extremely difficult to get the appointment. The man there said there were no records that went back that far and to call in two weeks when his supervisor would be there.
Months passed. It was impossible to get through to Immigration. Finally, we called our congressman at the time, Rep. Ted Deutch. His office got right back to us with an appointment with a supervisor who took care of us immediately and got Dad his ID.
Because it can require congressional intervention to get a photo ID in America, it should not also be a requirement to vote.
Elin Shusterman, Boynton Beach
A grandson’s insights
My 31-year-old grandson is very stressed about the direction the U.S. is taking.
Even at his young age, he remembers a better time. In one of our many discussions, he said something that seemed such a novel, yet commonsense idea. I had never heard it before.
He suggested that all laws and appointments, especially to the Supreme Court and Cabinet, require bipartisan support, and that the Constitution be amended to demand this. That way, no one temporarily in office could make sweeping and partisan edicts affecting the entire nation.
In my home, we are astonished and dismayed to see how the Constitution is being ignored, and the U.S. is on a dangerous slide toward an authoritarian state that, in my grandson’s words, we only read about in fiction such as Orwell’s “1984.” No one ever thought it would happen here.
I fear for the future of our children and grandchildren.
Barbra Nightingale, Hollywood
Tax-free guns and ammo
It could only happen in Florida: a tax-free holiday on guns and ammunition for four months.
Only Florida would have a longer tax-free holiday for guns and ammo than for parents to buy back-to-school supplies and clothes for their children. Only Florida would take away the mandate that children have to be vaccinated for their own safety, yet encourage purchases of tax-free guns and ammunition.
Only Florida encourages buying guns and ammunition rather than raising the tax on them to deter more people from having them. Buying guns and ammo seems more important than school supplies or hurricane supplies.
Hal Krantz, Coral Springs
The right to bare arms
The English language can have contradictory usage. Florida’s Republican administration, which supports the Second Amendment right to bear arms that can kill innocent people, also opposes mandatory vaccinations that can save lives. It seems strange, but proponents of the right to “bear arms” do not support the right to “bare arms.”
Sheldon I. Saitlin, Boca Raton
A long season ahead?
From sports columnist Dave Hyde, (after the Dolphins’ season-opening 33-8 loss to the Indianapolis Colts): “The real question by the end was whether having 16 games left is the good news or the bad news.”
The glass is very most definitely half empty, Dave.
Kent Kensill, Fort Lauderdale
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