Oak View

Two teenage boys who reportedly belonged to a local street gang were fatally shot early Saturday in the Oak View section of Huntington Beach, the first slayings in the city in nearly 2 1/2 years. Heriberto Tapia Vasquez, 16, and his close friend, Oscar Gaytan, 18, were shot as they walked though the intersection of Wagon Drive and Nichols Street about 12:50 a.m., police and relatives said. Gaytan fell where he was shot, but Vasquez managed to run a block east.

The campaign to turn a former elementary school into a library and community center may soon be won by Oak View residents--if they are willing to pony up the needed funds. Ventura County Supervisor Steve Bennett said he expects the board to approve the county's purchase of the closed Oak View School from the Ventura Unified School District for the asking price of $1.2 million. That action should come May 7 or 14.

An Oak View resident died Monday evening after being carried from her burning home by firefighters. Mary Mortensen died at Ojai Valley Community Hospital minutes after being taken from her small brick home on Grapevine Road, fire officials and neighbors said. They described her as a retiree, but did not know her age.

Re "Media Bias--Once a Sin, Now a Virtue," Commentary, Nov. 9: Now let me get this straight. It's OK for the media to be biased in favor of a liberal agenda on a daily basis but it's not OK to be biased in favor of an American agenda when it comes to fighting a war to eradicate terrorism that threatens the very freedoms journalists enjoy? Right! It would appear that the events of Sept. 11 caused a sudden awakening among those in the media to be more objective and balanced, and heaven forbid that they appear to favor America's cause by even so much as wearing a tiny flag lapel pin. Give me a break!

"As the Dodgers Turn," a recap: The general manager is fired after challenging a fan in the stands to a fight. He then becomes a radio talk-show host and tells what a great job he did. The ex-movie producer/fan who is now head honcho lays low after a run-in with the star player as the payroll escalates to $110 million, letting P.R. department, talking-head employees and announcer do his speaking for him. P.R. department prematurely celebrates...

For Mary Palevsky, ground zero wasn't a remote test site in far off New Mexico but the living room of her Long Island home. It was there as a 9-year-old, confronted by photographs of the first atomic blast, that she began asking her parents what they did during the war. She was troubled by the answers--answers that led to a book and now a major Japanese documentary. For the past month, a camera crew from the nationally-owned Japan Broadcasting Corp.

Re "Clinton Brother-in-Law Was Paid $400,000 to Help Win Clemencies," Feb. 22: Now the proverbial cat is out of the bag. Is it enough for our honorable leaders and elected officials to simply parrot statements of "apology," "deeply disturbed," "nothing illegal," "not against the law," etc., to placate voters? After the dots are all connected, indictments should follow to honor the dictum that "no one is above the law." Cardinal Roger Mahony and the various elected officials can now sleep in peace, knowing that it was not their letters and/or phone calls that got the clemency for Carlos Vignali.

Re "Can Drive-By Poetry Speed Up Casitas Bypass?" Ventura County Life, Dec. 31. In our campaign for a Casitas Springs bypass we are finding an undercurrent of bias from other segments of the county, a feeling that Casitas Springs folks are second-class citizens. This bias is so pervasive that we have come to realize that it is probably the major reason that we do not have an alternative to the highway in our front yard. A little history might help provide perspective. In the mid-1960s, a four-lane was proposed to bypass Casitas Springs.