Gov. Quinn’s a Catholic sellout

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Updated: May 9, 2012 10:01AM

Disturbing to read the remarks from Personal Pac Executive Terry Cosgrove to Gov. Quinn at the event at the Hilton Towers. You can safely say “it got my Irish up.”

Cosgrove was just getting warmed up when he yelled down to Quinn, “Governor, I think that’s the Irish Catholic in us, isn’t it?”

That’s as disgusting as it gets. Both of these lightweights are total sellouts to their ancestral and faith beliefs.

Canon laws 1398 and 1329 of our Catholic Church clearly state that those who by their assistance allow abortions are automatically excommunicated from the Church that both Quinn and Cosgrove membership within.

I must admit, as I was one of the 61 standing in the cold in front of the Hilton Towers, I thought that without a sincere confession from both of these so called “Irishmen,” the cold might be the least of their worries when their earthly journey is over.

James Patrick McManus Finnegan, Barrington

Editorial flawed

I’m writing in response to an editorial that ran on Nov. 11 titled: “Keep new invasive species out of our vulnerable lake.”

While the writer begins the editorial talking about Lake Michigan, he makes a significant error that must be corrected. He states “according to the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, many ships still don’t flush their tanks.”

Since the late 1990s, U.S. law has required that all vessel operators report their ballasting operations to the U.S. Coast Guard. The data is compiled by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. The report referenced by the editorial author speaks to coastal ports — not Great Lakes ports.

Vessels entering the Great Lakes region undergo the most stringent ballast management and inspection regulations in the world. Under existing federal law all ships must exchange ballast water while at sea and flush the tanks with sea water before entering the St. Lawrence Seaway. A February 2011 Canadian government-funded study found that these two practices of ballast water exchange and flushing were 99.993 percent effective at removing or exterminating freshwater zooplankton that could possibly invade the ecosystem of the Great Lakes.

Furthermore, to ensure compliance, the U.S. and Canadian Seaway agencies stop, board, inspect and test every foreign ship entering the Lakes in Montreal. As your writer noted, since these protections were put into place in 2006, there have been no new discoveries of aquatic nuisance species in the Great Lakes. There is 100 percent compliance to this law and there are data to back that up.

The shipping industry is willing to absorb the cost of ballast water treatment systems, and looks forward to having a national standard of fact-based, scientifically-sound regulations that will not arbitrarily change in multiple jurisdictions. Laura M. Blades

Director of public affairs

American Great Lakes Ports Association