Letters to the Editor
barryaus
Published Letters: 38 Editor's Choice: 1
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Using a veteran amputee
[Read the article: Ari Fleischer's misleading message]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So nice to see the RightWingers making such use of an amputee veteran for their own purposes, when we remember what they did to destroy a true American hero, Max Cleland.
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Miss South Carolina
[Read the article: Miss dumb blond USA?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The author (listed as Rebecca Traister) is incorrect. The question was not in any way a geography question. The beauty princess (not yet a queen if she is Miss TEEN USA) was not asked to show the USA on a map. She was asked her opinion of why her fellow young Americans could not find it. Whether or not she herself could find the USA and not confuse it with South Africa or "the Iraq" is immaterial. It is a problem of US education in general, not the education of one silly girl from South Carolina.
By the way, I happen to know a very beautiful blonde woman from South Carolina. I know her from Mensa, the organization that is restricted to the top 2% of the population in intelligence, so it is hardly true that all pretty blondes from the south are ninnies.
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Two Elizabeths
[Read the article: Miss dumb blond USA?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yellow Dog states, "The epitome of Southern Womanhood is Elizabeth Edwards." I certainly agree here, but also want to add another brilliant southern woman (although I deplore her politics and that of her husband) Elizabeth Dole.
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Selective tradition
[Read the article: McCain's selective defense of "traditional marriage"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Greenwald thinks that divorce is not traditional and nobody divorced can remarry in a "traditional marriage." This is true in the Roman Catholic church, but it is hardly true in other traditions. Christianity derives from both Jewish and Greco-Roman roots, and both of those traditions did have (and for Jews still do) divorce laws and rituals.
Certainly you might want to speak against an adulterous union that leads to divorce and remarriage, but divorce and remarriage itself is hardly non-traditional.
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Armani Dinner Jacket at Columbia
[Read the article: Columbia to be punished for hosting the new Hitler enemy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Too many are making this a free speech issue. It is not. Sure, Armani Dinner Jacket, as I like to call him, has the right to speak, or at least would were he an American citizen, but that does not mean that he has the right to be heard. Not giving him a venue to speak at Columbia (or anywhere else) is any different from Columbia's denial of my speaking on campus, just because I wanted to. (Actually, since I am a, now very disgruntled, alumnus of Columbia, I would have more of a right to speak there.) In other words, free speech allows me to put up a sign on my own property, but it does not give others the right to put a sign on my property.
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Electoral College: my respectful objections
[Read the article: Let's abolish the Electoral College]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1. The author is right; this is to protect the smaller states, but is this wrong? It is, after all, a federal system, a union of sovereign states. Frankly, I think we made a mistake in 1913 with the direct election of Senators. It made the Senators not representatives of their states but of the people of the states, a big difference.
2. With a nationwide election, why bother campaigning in small states at all? Candidates would campaign in California, Texas, Florida and the northeast, where the largest numbers of votes are. Would this not disenfranchise the people in the interior?
3. Visualize the recounts which would happen with a nationwide popular vote election. In 2000 Florida was bad enough, but remember how close the election was nationwide. What would that recount do?
4. In two elections we had no majority of the Electoral College, and the elections were thrown to the House of Representatives (1800 and 1824). In a popular election it is very unlikely that there ever would be an absolute majority of the vote, given that there are third parties. How would be decide an election where the "winner" receives not 48-49% but, due to many parties, less than 25%? Would there be a Louisiana- or French style run off?
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Security at airports for pilots??
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let's see: the reason for passengers going through security is to make sure they don't have weapons that can overcome the pilots, forcing the pilots to divert to another airport or crash the plane. Right? Why, then, need pilots go through security at all? Does he have to hold a gun on himself to do something bad? Reminds me of Clevon Little in Blazing Saddles holding the gun to his own head, creating a hostage situation where he himself is the hostage.
I should think that in a rational world a pilot should be able to circumvent security, just as the people who fuel the planes and load the stale peanuts into the galleys do. Frankly, those people are far more a danger. One of them could stick a bomb on the aircraft and be safe, whereas a crew member is putting himself in jeopardy.
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Get your chemistry right
[Read the article: Bamboo shoots and trees]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sodium hydroxide a volatile organic compound? As a professional chemist that is news to me. The compound (also known as lye or caustic soda) is neither organic nor volatile.
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Obviously in error
[Read the article: Sexiest Man Living 2007]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Obviously it is in error, as I am not on the list :-)
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Utah?
[Read the article: American politics in bad faith]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bwaage's tirade that the Book of Mormon was "written in Utah" shows his ignorance of the Mormon religion. Joseph Smith's revelation (if that was what it was; I won't take sides) was in upstate New York. The group was persecuted and fled first to Illinois, where Mr. Smith was assassinated and finally to the Utah desert. Whether you are for or against the LDS your opinions would hold more weight if you were to get your facts straight.