With the possibility that Assemblywoman Grace Meng’s Flushing seat will become vacant if she’s elected to Congress or if she wins the June 26 Democratic primary but loses the general election, candidates from both parties are already starting to line up to fill it.

Last week, the Queens Democratic Party endorsed Ron Kim, 33, as its candidate in the newly created 40th District, the redrawn version of the existing 22nd. On Thursday, Sunny Hahn, 60, announced that she is running as a Republican for the seat. The Queens Republicans have not endorsed a candidate yet.

Councilman Peter Koo (D-Flushing) would like to honor the “comfort women” of World War II with either a memorial or street renaming if he can get a consensus from the Korean community.

Comfort women were young females taken by the invading Japanese forces to service the troops. Up to 200,000 young females from China, Korea and other occupied areas were forced into complying.

Dear Editor:

With the recent spate of violence involving U.S. troops being killed and the individual from the U.S. Army who killed 16 innocent Afghan civilians in cold blood for no reason at all, it is time for the United States to say to the Afghan goverment — we are out of here!

There is no longer any logical or logistical reason to retain troops in Afghanistan — a country that is totally out of control, thanks to insurgents and the Taliban, both enemies of the United States. President Obama needs to implement an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all military personnel, as well as nonmilitary personnel. And the individual who committed that heinous, unprovoked massacre must be severely punished.

Enough is enough! Let the Afghans handle their own country and their own internal problems. The U.S. can no longer be the policeman of the world. We cannot and must not endanger unecessarily our men and women in uniform.

Save the animals

Dear Editor:

There are reasons why some shows become classics, and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music,” the summer attraction at Maggie’s Little Theater in Middle Village, is a perfect example.

Though often dismissed for being overly saccharine, the show has its heart — a large one, at that — in the right place, and its score overflows with melodies that people of all ages can hum at will. With songs like “Do-Re-Mi,” “Climb Every Mountain,” “So Long, Farewell,” and the title tune, audiences enter the theater singing.

My gratitude

Queens businesses lose almost $369 million every year as a result of online thefts, according to Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-New York), and she said this, is only a conservative estimate.

The city has paid $98,000 to a woman who accused former Community Board 1 District Manager George Delis of sexual harassment, but Delis still says she had no case.

As winter approaches and the weather gets colder, New Yorkers will be spending more to heat their homes and stay warm. In these recessionary times when budgets have already been stretched thin, that task may prove even more difficult, but help is on the way.

In light of the alleged terrorist plot by suspected Qaeda operative Najibullah Zazi to detonate explosives around the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Rep. Peter King (R-Long Island) and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-Brooklyn) have announced that they will fight to get funding restored to a federal program designed to prevent even worse attacks.

Najibullah Zazi, the suspected al-Qaida operative whose visit to New York last week prompted the raids of three Queens apartment buildings, was arrested on Saturday at his Colorado home along with his father Mohammed Wali Zazi. In New York, FBI agents also arrested Ahmad Wais Afzali, an imam from Flushing with alleged connections to the two men.

Michael Den Dekker’s first order of business after being tapped by Queens Democrats to replace long-time Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette, was to call his wife, Angela, to say, “Our life as we know it is over.”

Greed Is Good

When a high tide and a full moon brought Jamaica Bay to the doorsteps—and car interiors and basements—of Hamilton Beach residents in early February, some found themselves looking longingly across the overflowing basin at the concrete bulkheads on the opppsite shore.

Complaining that their management is expecting them to be “15-minute nurses,” over 30 registered nurses from St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center Home Healthcare protested in front of the agency’s offices in Rego Park last Thursday.

Thanks to St. Gregory’s Theatre Group in Bellerose, audiences will now be able to see “The Sound of Music,” one of the most popular musicals of all time, as it has never been seen before. This new incarnation of the show, opening on August 9th for a nine-performance run, will include scenes that had been cut prior to its original Broadway engagement in 1959, as well as other changes which, in all likelihood, will prove particularly enlightening to the show’s many ardent fans.

When Charles O’Neill first arrived in the United States from Liverpool, England at the age of 23, he helped raise money for his shipmates who could not afford health insurance.