Letters to the Editor
Nequals1
Published Letters: 332 Editor's Choice: 7
-
@ sysprog
[Read the article: Interview with Bill Donohue: Catholic League denounces McCain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Please tell me that those questions are snark and not for real. But I kno better - do you know who asked each of them?
Gut wrenching.
-
Incapacitated president?
[Read the article: George Bush told the truth yesterday]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I strongly believe that Bush is severely mentally ill and that he meets the criteria for being declared medically incompetent via the imminent harm to self and/or others criteria.
However, is there a duty by anyone to evaluate him, diagnose and treat him? To declare him unfit from a medical and a legal standpoint? As far as I can determine, if a person is declared mentally incompetent, they are held harmless if they signed contracts, and indeed, cannot sign if their condition is known. That's the principle by which patients may not signed informed consent after being administered sedatives or anesthetics, for example.
I am beginning to speculate that this might become a future defense of Bush when and if he is charged with crimes. His signing statements, treaties and executive orders could all come under this, at least from a civil perspective.
The Constitution speaks to removing the president from office, but it doesn't stipulate under what conditions. What ARE those conditions and how does the process work to have a president declared unfit for office?
-
@WT: re the pleasure of the president
[Read the article: George Bush told the truth yesterday]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The preznit is mighty pleasured these days. In fact, he's joyful and sleeps well at night, donchaknow.
In the face of clear evidence that he's delusional and is committing harm to others (Iraq civilians, our military, Afghani civilians, US citizens left unprotected from unsafe food, air, water, medication and consumer products, just for starters), isn't there some remedy besides impeachment that is based on the Constitution?
If Bush were a private citizen CEO, I believe he would already have been evaluated, diagnosed and treated for mental illness. Certainly a corporate board of directors would have removed crticial decisions from his purview. So why can't we the people effect a call for removal from office based on medical incapacitation (mental illness)?
-
@ Paul Daniel Ash and Aycharaych
[Read the article: George Bush told the truth yesterday]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A very large percentage of the prison population is diagnosed with some form of acute or mental illness. Indeed, over 50% of ALL inaptient psychiatric care is delivered in prisons. In a perverse way, the old "state mental institution warehousing" of patients that was so vilified in the middle of the 20th century has simply been transferred to prison compounds, where even less treatment is provided and where the risks and dangers to the patients (AKA prisoners) is extremely high.
With the return of brain injured and mentally ill soldiers, expect burgeoning prisons for our veterans, already committing suicide, violence acts and running afoul of the criminal justice system in record numbers. Just wait until they're all back in the States....
-
Oops
[Read the article: George Bush told the truth yesterday]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I meant to write "diagnosed with some form of acute or chronic mental illness"
Sorry for confusion above and beyond my usual incoherence.
-
It reminds me
[Read the article: The McCain/Hagee story picks up steam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]of a group of psychiatric inpatients with delusions of grandeur and delusions of being Jesus and other religious figures. When they bump into one another and have to confront their delusions while acknowledging the delusions in their peers, the tolerance, love and religious dogma smack them hard. The falls can be truly agonizing as they literally splt apart under the cognitive dissonance.
But these untreated mentally ill people: Hagee, Farrahkan, Robertson and their ilk, are instead treated as legitimate leaders with important messages, and they are lent credibility. The cognitive dissonance they are facing is exponentially greater - and it will foment a violent response - from those they lead and from among themselves. It won't be pretty.
-
@ Major
[Read the article: The McCain/Hagee story picks up steam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]At ease. Read slowly. Re-read until you understand. Don't comment until then. Buh-bye.
-
@ RMP
[Read the article: The McCain/Hagee story picks up steam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Pelosi blathered about duty and some dumb thing about accountability to the people. She. still. will. not. say. the. magic. word. impeach
The American people demand that we uphold the law. As public officials, we take an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect our system of checks and balances
Ha! That's a good one! Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me a thousand times, ....
-
@ Casual Observer
[Read the article: The McCain/Hagee story picks up steam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Very much a Republican problem, I believe. They have pandered to hate mongers and all manner of bigots. Now that the many elements of that rotted base are splintering, fracturing and going against the grain, it will be a sad, but interesting spectacle to watch them devour each other as termites to wood.
They exhibit both the elements of termites AND wood: rigid, at times immobile, swarming, persistent, and parasitic with a tendancy toward fossiliziation.
-
@ William Timberman
[Read the article: The McCain/Hagee story picks up steam]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This isn't news. Everyone understands that what is reported, and how it's reported is -- consciously or unconsciously -- a political decision.
Your comment about the power to influence the message over time and process by which that influence grows is so important.
I'm not so sure about everyone understanding the political power of the facts and how they are framed. I remember my father railing about the "librul media" on the teevee and in the local paper. Even though I was an extemporaneous speaker on the high school debate team, I foten couldn't distinguish the framing from the actual news. I still have to take time to consciously look for and fact check reporters' frames and assumptions. Sometimes they are based on history unkown to me, and I miss the distortion entirely.
When the harried two-job-to-make-the-rent-adult tunes into the headline news or the TV/radio "news" pundits, he or she isn't about to take the time to do due diligence on news reporting. That's the reality and that's the danger.
And that's why it's so incredibly important that the informed segment of the blogosphere continues to highlight and take the time to do that service.
Now if only we could find a patron base which would allow for such activites to occur on a global scale the way they exist here and at venues such as MediaMatters, TPM, Balkinization, Informed Comment, ThinkProgress, Digy's Hullabaloo, Marcy Wheeler's emptywheel, FireDogLake and the like.