editorial 18 THE COURIER SUN • FEBRUARY 18, 2016 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.qns.com sun WWW.COURIERSUN.COM VICTORIA SCHNEPS-YUNIS JOSHUA A. SCHNEPS BOB BRENNAN ROBERT POZARYCKI AMY AMATO-SANCHEZ NIRMAL SINGH ALAN SELTZER STEPHEN REINA RON TORINA, JENNIFER DECIO, CHERYL GALLAGHER KATRINA MEDOFF, ANTHONY GIUDICE, ANGELA MATUA, ALINA SURIEL CLIFF KASDEN, SAMANTHA SOHMER, ELIZABETH ALONI DEMETRA PLAGAKIS WARREN SUSSMAN CELESTE ALAMIN MARIA VALENCIA VICTORIA SCHNEPS-YUNIS JOSHUA A. SCHNEPS PUBLISHER & EDITOR CO-PUBLISHER ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF VP, EVENTS, WEB & SOCIAL MEDIA ART DIRECTOR ASSISTANT TO PUBLISHER ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR ARTISTS STAFF REPORTERS CONTRIBUTING REPORTERS EVENTS MANAGER SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE CLASSIFIED MANAGER CONTROLLER PRESIDENT & CEO VICE PRESIDENT Schneps Communications, 38-15 Bell Blvd., Bayside, NY 11361 718-224-5863 • Fax 718-224-5441 Sales Fax: 718-631-3498 www.qns.com editorial e-mail: editorial@queenscourier.com for advertising e-mail: ads@queenscourier.com Entire Contents Copyright 2015 by The Courier Sun All letters sent to THE COURIER SUN should be brief and are subject to condensing. Writers should include a full address and home and offi ce telephone numbers, where available, as well as affi liation, indicating special interest. Anonymous letters are not printed. Name withheld on request. No such ad or any part thereof may be reproduced without prior permission of THE COURIER SUN. The publishers will not be responsible for any error in advertising beyond the cost of the space occupied by the error. Errors must be reported to THE COURIER SUN within fi ve days of publication. Ad position cannot be guaranteed unless paid prior to publication. VIctoria Media Services assumes no liability for the content or reply to any ads. The advertiser assumes all liability for the content of and all replies. The advertiser agrees to hold THE COURIER SUN and its employees harmless from all cost, expenses, liabilities, and damages resulting from or caused by the publication or recording placed by the advertiser or any reply to any such advertisement. SNAPS QUEENS SNOW DAY IN LIC PART 2 / PHOTO BY ORESTES GONZALEZ Send us your photos of Queens and you could see them online or in our paper! Submit them to us via our Instagram @queenscourier, Facebook page, tweeting @queenscourier or by emailing editorial@queenscourier.com (subject: Queens Snaps). Double-down on mosquito killing efforts Only a couple of decades ago, the worst thing Queens residents had to worry about regarding mosquito bites were their itchiness. That all changed with the arrival of the West Nile virus in 1999, and now the Zika virus from South America — which has already infected a few New Yorkers who traveled to the region recently — is an even greater mosquitotransmitted threat. Every year since the West Nile outbreak, the Health Department pre-treats marshy areas of the city — such as the former Flushing Airport site in College Point and areas near Jamaica Bay — with larvicide to prevent the proliferation of mosquitoes. Even with that treatment and pesticide spraying in the summer, the mosquitoes come anyway — and often, many New Yorkers wind up infected with West Nile. The chances of a major Zika outbreak in New York City are low, given that the mosquitos can’t survive in cold weather and the most infection-prone type of mosquito doesn’t reside here. We are glad Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Health Department are carefully monitoring the situation, and hope they continue amplifying efforts to kill mosquitoes and their larvae before the warm spring weather hits. We also urge our readers during the spring and summer months to take a simple step that might wind up saving someone’s life: removing any stagnant water, which are notorious breeding grounds for mosquitoes, from their properties. Mourning Scalia and the path to replacing him He was a staunch conservative, and his strict interpretation of the Constitution rankled many New Yorkers, but the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a tremendous blow for our government. A brilliant jurist revered even by the liberal wing of the court, Scalia was a proud son of Queens who fondly recalled through the years his childhood in the “World’s Borough,” from his time as a student at P.S. 13 to playing with his friends in local sandlots. But tragically, as the city and nation mourned his loss, Scalia’s now empty Supreme Court seat was swallowed up by partisanship. Acting like greedy relatives fi ghting over the will while standing next to a relative’s casket, the political grandstanders now debate over whether President Obama should — he most certainly can — nominate someone to take Scalia’s place before he leaves offi ce next January. Here are some facts ignored in all the shouting. The president has the Constitutional responsibility to nominate someone for the bench, even if there is less than a year left in his term. The Senate has the Constitutional responsibility to vet that nominee and vote to reject or confi rm the nominee. We can’t imagine that Justice Scalia would accept anything less than such adherence to Constitutional duty by the president and Senate. In a nation with so much dysfunction between two of the three branches of government, we cannot allow such obstructive incompetence to spread to the third branch: the highest court in our land. The president should swiftly nominate a successor to Justice Scalia. The Senate should, as swiftly as possible, properly vet that nominee and vote to confi rm or deny based solely on the nominee’s merits. And the grandstanders need to get out of the way and let democracy work. identify thisPLACE THE COURIER/Photo by Katrina Medoff
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