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ceived dozens of suggestions for new names and narrowed the list to three finalists before deciding on Howes Creek.
• If anyone objects to the new name, they have 45 days to voice their concerns, and a public hearing will be held.
• If no objections arise, the name will be submitted to the U.S. Board on Geo

graphic Names, which has final say on such matters.
• This is a good process, and it's one that is long overdue. Even one single creek that goes by the name "Negro" is too many.
• There is no reason whatsoever that such a name should exist on today's South Dakota maps.
• ___
• Yankton Press & Dakotan. Oct. 17, 2012
• The Death Penalty And The Moral Fog
• Deep down, it's hard for many of us to know what to think.

• The recent execution of convicted murderer Eric Robert brought a quick end to what is usually an interminable procession of appeals. Robert was convicted, along with another prisoner, of killing prison guard Ronald Johnson during an escape attempt from the South Dakota State Penitentiary just last year. Robert never sought to avoid the fate that our system of justice said he had coming to him, declaring he would kill again if he wasn't put to death. Recently, he met that fate -- an eye for an eye, according to Exodus 21:24, not to mention state codified law.
• But the morality of such matters is never so comfortably clear for some people. That was demonstrated in vigils of protest such as one recently conducted in Yankton while a lethal injection was swimming through Robert's veins in Sioux Falls. The main counter-argument the protesters put forth was simple: One of the Ten Commandments that our Christian society professes to revere declares: Thou shall not kill. And yet, the state carried out a killing to atone for a killing, as a judgment on another human being.
• There is no question that Robert's crime was abhorrent. He deserved to be punished for his action; no one argued otherwise. And Robert's willingness to die was clear: In a letter he sent to Attorney General Marty Jackley earlier this month, but just recently made public, Robert wrote, "... my actions deserved the penalty of death." He added, "I do not want to or desire to die, instead I deserve to die. ... The victim's family deserves their justice swiftly to begin their healing." That's a powerful argument, albeit from a flawed source.
• But opponents of the death penalty say it is not the place of a government to dictate life and death on such terms, and they viewed the state's execution of Robert

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