In regard to the guest column, "Sen. Santorum got a raw deal" (DLN, Jan. 6):

When Rick Santorum first ran for public office, I’m sure it occurred to him that his daily duties would impact upon his personal life and family ties. As a citizen of Pennsylvania, I’m fine with his decision to move his family to Virginia and closer to his job. I’m equally accepting of his desire to educate his children via home school, charter school, or cyberspace as opposed to sending them to local public schools in Pennsylvania or Virginia.

Many of my friends and family members have made similar decisions regarding their children’s education. They know that if it isn’t traditional public school, it isn’t free. Education via alternate options is expensive. I find it difficult to understand how an educated senator from my state could expect his family to be exempt from the extra expense that so many other people readily embrace and work hard for.

I have no problem with the senator’s having to pay taxes like the rest of us. However, based upon my career potential and lifestyle as an empty-nester in beautiful downtown Downingtown, I’d wager that I pay more in school taxes than the good senator pays for his two-bedroom, titular, fa--ade of a home near the rolling waters of western Pennsylvania.

The senator is a lawyer. Having worked for lawyers, I learned that ignorance of the law is no defense, especially when confronted with a "Whoops -- got caught with my finger in the cookie jar" situation. The senator enjoys pointing a righteous finger at those who do not suit his personal moral values or political persuasions, but in his smug, self-impressed, superficial, supercilious way, he doesn’t like fingers pointed back at him.

As a mother and mother-in-law of public school educators, I’d like to borrow a few old-school tactics and banish the senator to a stool in the corner of a classroom, facing the wall, with a pointed cap on his head.Cheating is as cheating does, be it copying an answer from a classmate’s test paper or expecting gratuities beyond those already overextended to a man of his rank.He needs a few remedial courses in honesty, integrity and reality.

I feel no pity for him. Truthfully, he frosts my Mini-Wheats with his I-want-it-all attitude. Like the Rolling Stones said:"You can’t always get what you want." Wake up and hear the school bell ringing, Senator.Your voters await you.

Regina DiLabbio King, Downingtown

Letter to the editor, Daily Local News Jan 10, 2005

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