Letters to the Editor
heyjude
Published Letters: 397 Editor's Choice: 42
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Things to get over
[Read the article: Politico: "Clinton has virtually no chance of winning"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Florida: It was not a "real" primary and everyone in Florida knew it. Many Democrats who did not vote, not to mention independents and Republicans who might have registered Dem and voted, not to mention the voters who never had the opportunity to take part in a campaign and see the candidates, would be disenfranchised if Florida's votes were counted as is. Watch out for major lawsuits from the truly disenfranchised if Florida apportions delegates according to the "beauty contest" as it was.
Michigan: The Democratic party asked the candidates to remove their names from the ballot. All but Hillary, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich abided by the rules. It was not to their advantage at all to do so; they did so because it was the right thing to do given the agreement of the senior party people. No one fought the logic of the party -- that may have been a mistake -- but I didn't see Hillary out there, either, fighting for a "real" and "fair" election with everyone on the ballot. She quietly left her name there, disregarding the party rules. What about the people who voted for "not committed" -- if the name of the person they wanted to vote for was not on the ballot, were THEY disenfranchised? Why isn't anyone concerned that Hillary broke the rules and now she's trying to change the rules?
It's really sickening that so many people have taken up the cause of the so-called "disenfranchised" and are acting as though any candidate could block the party or the states from doing whatever they wanted to do. Give this a break. No one cared at the time because back when this decision was made, Hillary had already been "crowned" as the obvious candidate and no one thought it would make any difference. So everyone just ignored it.
On the face of it, it would be a disaster for the Democratic party to make a decision at this point that would CHANGE THE RULES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GAME and advantage any candidate, either candidate. It's best to let sleeping dogs lie and take a lesson from this.
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@ethics professor
[Read the article: Politico: "Clinton has virtually no chance of winning"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It would make a lot more sense if the Florida Democrats flooded Governor Crist's mailbox and the Republican legislature's mailboxes.
Please be informed before you pronounce. The Dems in Florida wanted to abide by the party rules; they knew that otherwise they would be left out. The Democratic party was aligned.
The REPUBLICAN LEGISLATURE passed a law, signed by the REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR that changed the primary day and forced the issue.
Democrats don't have to blame each other.
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A relief
[Read the article: "It is possible ... that she misspoke"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Frankly, as a mother, it's a relief to me to see actual news footage of her arrival in Bosnia with her 15-year-old daughter and see a small crowd of people, including children, and smiles all around -- no snipers and no one looking frightened.
It means that, BACK THEN, she had enough good sense not to drag her only children into a dangerous war zone.
It's unfortunate that she doesn't have enough good sense NOW not to know that lying about this (1) is bound to come back on you because there were other people there who will remember what actually happened and (2) really calls your judgement into question because of taking your teen-ager with you.
And, in either case, how is flying into Bosnia and meeting with troops an event that would cause her to be any more "ready on day one" -- for what?
The only thing that, in my mind, qualifies as "ready on day one" is the ability to remain calm in the face of difficulty, not over-react and take things personally (see GWB as a negative example here), and be able to draw differing, but wise and well-informed, advisers together and weigh their advice well.
I'd like to see some evidence of that. Thus far, I've seen from Hillary a snarky temperament and an ability to be misled by a number of outrageously bad advisors.
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@W.E.S. and others
[Read the article: Nagourney: "At least one scenario where Clinton could win"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Free speech is a healthy part of our political system, and I defend your right to it, regardless of my own opinions.
But it's over the top for rational people to demand that any human being leave his church. We have separation of church and state in this country for a good reason. Religion is a private and personal belief and religious tolerance is the hallmark of a free society.
Voters may use any reasoning they want to, including their own judgments about a person's religion, in making up their minds. But no one has the right to tell anyone, not even a candidate, to leave his church or leave the race. That is outrageous.
There have been many scandalous, humiliating, offensive, and sometimes laughable words and deeds uttered by church leaders in every religious organization in the world. People have the right to deal with this in their own way; most people tend to see the TEACHINGS and the MEANING of their church community as being more important to them than one pastor, minister, rabbi, priest, imam or whatever ...
Would you expect me to move out of my neighborhood in order to run for office if it turned out that my next-door neighbor, to whom I spoke every day for all the years I lived there, turned out to be a pedophile, or a bank robber, or a lunatic liberal?
We can't blame Barack Obama for his preacher's statements; and we can't blame the preacher for Barack Obama; and we can't expect the church to be a pawn in a political game.
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New light on Bomb, Bomb Iran
[Read the article: John McCain's plan to ignore the economy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe McCain is hot to bomb, bomb, bomb... bomb, bomb Iran because he read somewhere that war is "good" for the economy. But he may have missed the part that that is only the case when we actually have a manufacturing base and don't outsource everything.
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Eisenhower family did it, too
[Read the article: Nancy Reagan to endorse McCain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was more impressed when Dwight D. Eisenhower's grand-daugher endorsed Obama. Really. She did.