Needless

Please don't permit your writers to waste space and time using phrases like "needless to say." ARLA LEWIS LOS ANGELES

Carlos Quentin of the San Diego Padres offered this excuse when asked why he'd started a fight on the field Thursday before a crowd that doubtless included hundreds of children. “It's a man's game on the field,” the 30-year-old, Stanford-educated ballplayer said. “Thoughts aren't present when things like this happen.” I'm not a baseball writer, but I covered crime -- homicide, in particular -- for many years. So when I heard Quentin's excuse, my thoughts went to the kind of violence we see on the streets of America every day. On Thursday night we saw Quentin, in response to being hit by a pitch, attack the Dodgers' Zack Greinke and break his collarbone.

I work in an animal rescue shelter where we try to save some of the millions of animals put to sleep every year because they are either abandoned or live on the streets. If these hoodlums would come help us save these animals before they're destroyed, we could save millions from needless death. RACHEL WALTERS Los Angeles

SACRAMENTO - The message was in the vetoes. With a deadline approaching, Gov. Jerry Brown had hundreds of bills heaped on his desk, but just one key point to get across to voters: Sacramento had to take the tough medicine on fiscal discipline. "California faces fiscal challenges unparalleled since the Great Depression," Brown wrote in rejecting a bill that would have made it easier for the survivors of public safety workers to collect death benefits. "While much progress has been made to reduce our structural deficit, balance our budget, reform workers' compensation and rein in spiraling pension costs - much work remains.

The Times is to be commended for reprinting the surgeon general's comprehensive and informative report on AIDS. Intravenous drug abusers and those engaging in high-risk sexual activities have been fully informed by the report of the serious potential dangers, complications and probably death to which they are exposed. To date we have no cure for AIDS and needless exposure appears foolhardy. HARRY PERELMAN Rancho Mirage

"30 Brokerages Agree to Pay $1 Billion to Settle Class-Action Suit" [Dec. 25] says that the firms allegedly colluded to fix prices on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Needless to say, they all denied any wrongdoing. This is an almost daily pattern--one reads constantly of "settlements" by major companies. One comes away after a while asking, "Is anyone honest?" JACK H. CHESNER N. Hollywood

Thumbs down to your Newsbites column (Oct. 27) for your shameful absence of sensitivity and humanity in promoting the sale of "furry bottle closers, handmade of genuine raccoon fur" and rabbit fur "coonskin" caps available at Fess Parker Winery and Vineyard in Los Olivos, Calif. Has Fess's wine and merchandising hype gone to your heads? Acceptance and glorification of needless animal skinning and the opportunists who participate in such vanity-driven slaughter should be condemned, not condoned.

Re: "Should You Really Look Into That Seat-Back Pouch?" (Travel Insider, March 1): I am a frequent traveler, and on one occasion I did find a rather distasteful gift. I went to reach into the pouch to retrieve a magazine, and to my surprise I pulled out a soiled diaper! Needless to say, I was pretty disgusted and called the flight attendant immediately. She removed it (using another bag) and apologized. No lawsuit, no commotion. I realize that [flight] turnaround times are often tight, and I would rather depart on time than wait for cleaners to check every pouch.

Howard Cohen has received dozens of calls from "Rachel" at "card member services. " At first he thought they must be from his credit card issuer. Now he knows better. "It's a scam," Cohen, 67, of Fontana told me. "All they want is to get you into some new credit card with a higher interest rate - or worse. " The "worse" in this case is possibly having your identity stolen and bogus charges run up on your plastic. The Web is dripping with complaints from consumers nationwide about the "Rachel" calls.

Allergies were far from Christie Littauer's mind when she fed creamed spinach to her son Jack for the first time. The 6-month-old had already eaten peas and green beans. Why not try something more exciting? "A few bites into it, he started wheezing," says Littauer, of Henderson, Nev. "He got bright red. Something was obviously wrong."

More than a decade after he was captured in Afghanistan, John Walker Lindh, the so-called "American Taliban," was in a federal court in Indiana this week seeking not his release from a federal prison in Terre Haute but the right to pray with fellow Muslim inmates several times a day. Lindh makes a plausible case that the facility is needlessly restricting his rights under federal law. Lindh, a teenage convert to Islam who joined the Taliban before...

The PSA test should be abandoned as a prostate cancer screening tool, a government advisory panel has concluded after determining that the side effects from needless biopsies and treatments hurt many more men than are potentially helped by early detection of cancers. At best, one life will be saved for every 1,000 men screened over a 10-year period, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. But 100 to 120 men will have suspicious results when there is no cancer, triggering biopsies that can carry complications such as pain, fever, bleeding, infection and hospitalization.

Re "Beating video may be a mental health watershed," May 9 The fatal beating of Kelly Thomas at the hands of Fullerton police officers is another glaring example of failed police administration as it relates to the training of officers to properly handle resistive, combative or aggressive mentally disabled people. All medical staff and personnel employed in treatment centers for mental patients receive certified professional training on how to physically handle these types of incidents.

The national obsession with guns, and the lunacy of American gun laws that set different rules for gun resellers than new-gun dealers or that allow people to possess military assault rifles intended to kill cops rather than hunt deer or protect one's home, are frequent fodder for Times editorials. But things are different in California; not only does this state have some of the toughest gun restrictions in the nation, its largely urban and liberal Legislature sometimes treads unacceptably on 2nd Amendment rights -- in a way that offends even some gun-control advocates.

It's Tuesday afternoon, and I'm late for the office, delayed by a hectic morning in the operating room. I discard my scrubs, replace them with office attire, rush down a corridor and deliver the post-op orders from my last case into the hands of an anxiously awaiting recovery room nurse. Then I dart out the door and race to my office building. I open the waiting room door to a standing-room-only crowd that has accumulated due to my tardiness. I apologize, but they do not seem angry; I see only fear.

Nearly 70,000 Americans die each year because they do not receive optimal therapy as called for in guidelines promoted by national health authorities, researchers said Monday. Physicians have been slow to implement many of the procedures called for in the guidelines, according to the first national study of adherence to the treatment goals, the team reported in the June edition of the American Heart Journal. Heart failure, also known as congestive heart failure, occurs when the heart can no longer pump sufficient blood throughout the body.

AMC Entertainment wants to thank you for patronizing its movie theaters. But not too much. The company, which recently was purchased by a Chinese conglomerate, has quietly rejiggered its rewards program to be a good deal less generous in doling out credits for free tickets or food. AMC's revamped loyalty plan is reflective of an ongoing trend in the business world to clamp down on runaway rewards, experts say. Airlines, banks, retailers and service providers are all offering less when it comes to acknowledging customers' steady business.

The PSA test should be abandoned as a prostate cancer screening tool, a government advisory panel has concluded after determining that the side effects from needless biopsies and treatments hurt many more men than are potentially helped by early detection of cancers. At best, one life will be saved for every 1,000 men screened over a 10-year period, according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. But 100 to 120 men will have suspicious results when there is no cancer, triggering biopsies that can carry complications such as pain, fever, bleeding, infection and hospitalization.

Among the many anxieties of modern life is the arrival of the monthly cellphone bill — and the surprises it often contains. Anyone who has been made queasy by an unexpected roaming charge or a sky-high long-distance fee can appreciate how City Controller Wendy Greuel felt Wednesday when she revealed that the city of Los Angeles — in a variety of ways — wasted as much as $1 million last year on employee-issued cellphones. According to her audit, the city squandered thousands of dollars each month for directory assistance, call forwarding and overage text-messaging charges.

On today's NHL docket of missives, misdeeds and missed calls, we start with a significant sponsor threatening to withdraw its support in protest of a hit that drew no suspension but is being investigated by Montreal police, and another hit that was not penalized Wednesday but drew a three-game suspension Thursday. For good measure we also have the Montreal Canadiens' owner vowing to stamp out "violent behavior," and the NHL Players' Assn. metaphorically affixing a Band-Aid to a broken neck by saying it will inspect padding around the glass in NHL rinks, when it should have urged its constituents to stop skating outside the boundaries of accepted behavior to knock one another into the hospital.