At this time DIRECT PAC has

neither met nor agreed to endorse any candidate for any office. Please

be assured that if we feel any candidate is to be endorsed by our organization

we will most certainly provide an accurate and timely press release.

In the best interest of the

local citizenry and to avoid confusion and unfounded innuendo, we urge

your newspaper to make every attempt to provide accurate and timely information

to the public. With this in mind we encourage you to call or e-mail us

if you are interested in accurately reporting our intentions, goals or

endorsements. DIRECT PAC is always willing to respond with factual information.

Jim Stinson and Sharon Waples

Candidate Support Committee

Co-Chairpersons

DIRECT PAC, A Political

Action Committee in Peachtree City

www.directpac.org

The editor replies:

I am running your letter

to the editor as I received it, without checking with anybody. For your

information, I provide the following:

One supposes that a group

with "political" in its name would expect to engage as an equal

among equals in the sometimes hurly-burly give-and-take of politics. Part

of the price of entrance into that engagement is having all sorts of sinister

or hidden-agenda motives attributed to a group and its members, whether

warranted or not. (Would you believe that sometimes happens to editors

and publishers and newspapers, too?)

action committee," you step onto the same stage as all the other

players, with all the same rules of engagement.

Second, following your logic

about the paper "checking" with you before we publish any opinion

about you or your group, I should have to submit your letter above to

Mayor Steve Brown and many others to "check" whether your letter's

assertions are "factual" or not. Presumably, using your logic,

if they disagreed with your assertions, I should feel compelled not to

publish your letter. I think you know it doesn't work that way. Steve

Brown doesn't get to censor you in these pages, and you don't get to censor

him.

Letters are where people

express opinions about various things, including motives, including yours,

if you choose to participate in this public forum.

News stories are different

than letters of opinion. In this media outlet (unlike some other papers

and a local Internet site), reporters report while editors and opinion

columnists opine. News appears on the news pages; opinion is clearly labeled

as such and appears only on the Opinion and Letters pages. Political charges

made in a news story warrant giving the object of the charges a chance

to respond, in the same story. Not so in Letters. But you have opportunity

to defend your position, as you have done in your current letter, in the

next Letters issue.

This forum belongs as much

to DIRECT PAC as it does to any other person or group in Fayette County.

Therefore, I welcome your contributions to our Opinions and Letters pages,

and I welcome all other contributions, pro, con or in between.

Cal Beverly

publisher