Comments from our readers:

MY WIFE CALLED a doctor's office to check on a payment. When she did, the receptionist closed her account and wrote off a $620 balance. After doing this , she said "Merry Christmas" and do something good for someone else. That's the Christmas SPIRIT !!!

IF SMOKING IS YOUR right and privilege, why do you smokers keep throwing your butts out of your car instead of keeping it in the ashtray? Isn't this littering?

A RAVE FOR ALL the Salvation Army bell-ringers who help me teach my 3-year-old daughter about the goodness of giving. She now tells me to put my pocket change in the bucket instead of her piggy bank, because "I'm already lucky!"

ON DEC. 22 MY DAUGHTER fainted in Barnes & Noble. She is fine and I would like to thank everyone who were there for her and her younger sister until help arrived.

PASTOR RICK WARREN says: "I was trying to point out I'm not opposed to gays having their partnership. I'm opposed to gays using the term marriage for their relationship." Doesn't that mean Warren favors sin as long as you call it something other than sin?

INTERESTING THAT BUSH pardoned so many crooks who were convicted for drug crimes and immigration crimes. Looks like the Mexicans continue to rule Mr. Bush.

RAVE TO TEEN BOARD member Jonathan's wonderful article about gifts.

LETTER WRITER SAYS the death penalty in modern America is "a barbarous holdover from a less civilized time." Alas, when we had the death penalty, we lived in less barbarous times. Check the stats. Besides, before roughly 1950, people weren't afraid to take evening walks on public streets near their own houses.

GEORGIA PROFESSIONAL Standards Commission is "charged with certifying the state's teachers and investigating complaints against them." Now, government claims it has more internal crime, but it can't tax enough to investigate, thus it doesn't police itself. What a racket! Their logic forecasts more corruption and less policing because it can't do its job against itself.