Letters to the Editor
Silenced
Published Letters: 1359 Editor's Choice: 75
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I'm a bit cynical after New Hampshire
[Read the article: A new democratic spirit]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When a presidential candidate's staff doesn't know what the Supreme Court has been up to in the last three months, that worries me.
Of course maybe they're not completely to blame. Maybe they get their Supreme Court news from Salon.
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I finaly found Obama's science package
[Read the article: How bashing Hillary backfired]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Doubling funding sounds nice, but to which agencies, when, and why?
Hillary's plan for science is very detailed. That to me shows how much she cares.
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She's the one with the details
[Read the article: What Hillary would do tomorrow, if she could]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Her science funding proposal also has nice bullet points. Obama says he'll double funding but he has no bullet points with details like she gives.
I'm torn. She's clearly got the experience and is ready to hit the ground running.
But then she carries a lot of baggage.
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Blah blah blah
[Read the article: More about race and the Democrats]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This election won't change much for race in America no matter who wins.
Look at Seattle -- the citizens voted to make marijuana the lowest priority for the police, and yet the police still insist on arresting the black potheads.
The police are able to see the white potheads as their lowest priority but they still insist that the black potheads are a high priority.
Neither Clinton or Obama is going to do anything about that, because both of them have to suck up to the law enforcement lobbies to get elected.
Although -- Clinton COULD make it substantially worse -- if she tries to duplicate her husband's feat of tripling the national arrest rate for potheads.
Symbolically I suppose it will matter if we elect Obama.
But it won't really change anything on the ground.
I still haven't made up my mind between them.
She has too much baggage and he doesn't have enough -- that's where I seem to be right now.
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There probably won't be any more Obamas in the future, by the way
[Read the article: The Clinton-Obama contest gets rougher]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Obama is probably the last of his kind -- a black man who was able to use marijuana without ending up with a criminal record.
Since the national marijuana panic of the nineties, the police have gotten much more efficient at giving criminal records to black marijuana users.
So there probably won't ever be another Obama we can vote for.
Maybe that's another reason to vote for him now.
This could be our last chance to have a black president, ever.
The only chance we have in the future is if some black kid manages to survive adolescence without being criminalized.
But the national marijuana arrest rate has gone nowhere but UP since 1992.
So I'm not very optimistic that another Obama is going to escape the system and make it into national politics.
America seems willing to vote for someone who used pot and didn't get caught.
But I don't think it's realistic to believe that someone who used pot and did get caught is ever going to climb as far as Obama has been able to climb.
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Maybe I will vote for Obama
[Read the article: The Clinton-Obama contest gets rougher]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's not our last chance to have a white female president but I think it is our last chance to have a black male president, just from looking at how extremely efficient this country has become in the last 15 years at giving black youth criminal records.
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You should call it Joanwalsh.com
[Read the article: Another San Francisco tragedy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Salon is really all about you, Joan, so maybe you name the whole publication after yourself.
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Call off your stupid old useless destructive war
[Read the article: Stop him if you've heard this one before]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]See, I want to vote for Hillary, because I like her health care plan and she has the best science bullet points between the two of them.
But reminding me of the nineties anti-drug fever isn't helping me out here.
I just saw some friends last night who recently turned 82. They both suffer from macular degeneration.
Guess what -- scientists have discovered that among its other amazing powers, THC also suppresses VEGF -- Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor.
VEGF is what stimulates the production of all those unneeded little blood vessels in the eyes that cause macular degeneration.
See -- I care about health care and I care about science.
Put those two interests together -- and I absolutely LOATHE the system of prejudice and paranoia that keeps my two older friends from being able acquire to marijuana to see whether it helps with their macular degeneration.
They live in a medical marijuana state, but in their state you have to be half dead already to qualify.
Just being half blind isn't enough.
I hate this damned paranoia and prejudice surrounding marijuana with such a passion I feel like I could set my keyboard on fire.
I want to vote for Hillary but her husband's record in the war on pot keeps coming back to haunt me.
I keep leaning towards Obama every time the Clinton campaign tries to resurrect nineties paranoia and prejudice with their little passive-aggressive whispers about drugs.
My friends are going blind and I can't do anything to help them.
So --- okay I'm not going to curse but I want to.
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Whispers and innuendos instead of an open and honest debate -- that is an anti-democratic way to deal with this issue
[Read the article: Sound and fury on the campaign trail]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Finally on Sunday BET founder Bob Johnson got Clinton into hotter water by seeming to refer to Obama's self-confessed youthful drug experimentation in a speech on Clinton's behalf in South Carolina.
The War on Drugs has been censored as a topic for open discussion this election.
That's why it's being used in such a passive aggressive, high school manner.
Why can't we just have an open debate on this freaking endless war?
No, of course we can't do that.
Instead there has to be campaign of innuendos that taps into the paranoia that the Clintons helped foster back in the nineties.
That's a pretty stupid and anti-democratic way to deal with the issue, if you ask me.
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Great piece, now I wish I could ask her some followup questions
[Read the article: Big Think: Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the clash between Islam and the West]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Christian Reformation was very bloody and involved witch hunts and violent repression and extremism and war.
What does she think an Islamic Reformation will look like? Where would the fault lines be drawn? How long would it take for the Enlightenment phase to kick in?