Letters to the Editor
Susan Wood
Published Letters: 379 Editor's Choice: 27
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Where is Molly Ivins when we really need her?
[Read the article: Hillary vs. Obama: It's a drawl!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Vast oceans of swill" just about sums it up. Four pages to spout gossip-column trivia about candidates and to tell us that she thinks Ann Coulter is a "smart woman?" Ann Coulter is smart in the same degree that Paglia is a scholar. Coulter is forty-very-something mutton dressed as lamb impersonating a grade-school bully. It takes no intelligence to spout mindless abuse, but Paglia has built her career doing much the same with a more pretentious vocabulary.
Of course, the world is just dying to know all about her fascinating trip to Camden and her epiphany that trucks going in and out of a warehouse epitomize the glorious achievements of patriarchal culture. Um, most people I know discovered a fascination with cars and trucks at the age of 18 months, and are not still congratulating themselves for their brilliant insight decades later.
Time for Bill Maher to award this woman his "get over yourself" prize.
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HappyJack
[Read the article: All roads lead to Rove]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I didn't hear Gonzales's press conference, but did you see his picture on the front page of yesterday's New York Times? Was it ever worth a thousand words! He looked like a frightened, guilty schoolboy being called up on the carpet by the principal. Which is exactly what he is. Let's hope that he, like the cowardly schoolyard bullies we all remember, starts singing like a little canary-bird.
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Please don't pretend to be naive.
[Read the article: Clinton: Did I mention that homosexuality isn't immoral?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hillary has been plagued by baseless and malicious rumors that she is a lesbian since the day Clinton first began running for President. She knows perfectly well what the right-wing bloggers would do with any statement that seemed to condone homosexual behavior.
Of course, Edwards has been subjected to the same sort of slime-mongering, as we all know, but before we sneer at Hillary for trying to avoid a "have you stopped beating your wife" type question, let's see what the right wing noise machine does to Edwards for being more forthright. Some may already be declaring this the final nail in the coffin of his candidacy.
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It's worth putting that old Jeane Kirkpatrick quotation in context.
[Read the article: Howard Kurtz, Michael Barone & Argument by Anecdote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]She didn't just say "They always blame America first," but cited three examples (no names, of course, and no specifics about who "they" were, but three examples nonetheless). You can read the whole speech here, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/conventions/san.diego/facts/GOP.speeches.past/84.kirkpatrick.shtml
but to my mind the most galling and infuriating example of what "they" think is this one:
"When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the "blame America first crowd" didn't blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.
But then, they always blame America first."
Show of hands from all Democrats old enough to remember this incident who DIDN'T think the suicide bomber was to blame for the carnage? Of course no one thought that. How absurd. We did, however, ask pointed questions about just what our Marines were doing there, why their base hadn't been adequately safeguarded, and whether their mission in Lebanon was worth such loss of life. Reagan obviously didn't think so, since he soon pulled them out. Unlike Bush, he had the sense to cut his losses.
And now here we are, over twenty years later, once again watching suicide bombers slaugher our men who have been sent on a badly planned mission, with inadequate protection, trying to achieve a goal that no one can quite define, and the right is repeating that same empty mantra that anyone who could question the wisdom of the operation is "blaming America first."
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Rats, sorry about that.
[Read the article: Howard Kurtz, Michael Barone & Argument by Anecdote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I didn't know that including that link would knock the page caddywumpus. Please just scroll down past the white space to read the continuation of my previous post.
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Any fan of the BBC Prime Suspect series knows that
[Read the article: Federal agents seek to conceal their behavior in obtaining confessions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]in Great Britain, taping all interviews with suspects is not only standard procedure but mandatory procedure, and that the tape cannot be turned on or off without a witness to verify that the interview ended when the tape was turned off. And the reason British law requires that is the flagrant abuses that happened in some investigations of IRA bombings, notably the one that inspired the film "In the Name of the Father."
Now, if it's good enough for the lovely but tough investigator Jane Tennison, why isn't it good enough for American law enforcement?
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m.b.f:
[Read the article: Federal agents seek to conceal their behavior in obtaining confessions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I pride myself on being smart enough to spot a parody poster, so I was very smugly pleased with myself that I recognized your list of ways to handle a "liberal" as a spoof. I also had a great reply planned about how we should bring back the Volksgericht, like the one that convicted Sophie Scholl and the White Rose members: just an hour or two of abuse screamed at the defendants, followed by their beheading the same day. Quick, efficient, no pesky ACLU to interfere. And then I followed your link and discovered that you were in fact already quoting Goebbels, with the word "liberal" substituted for "Jew." Damn, I hate it when you spoofers stay a step ahead of me ;-D
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Not only are we reliving Viet Nam, we're reliving Watergate!
[Read the article: What's missing from the document dump]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Executive privilege? The institution of the Presidency? Sheesh, they've hardly even changed the wording from the excuses Nixon used to try to withhold the White House tapes.
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The only thing more ludicrous than Snow's cognitive dissonance
[Read the article: The president's oh-so-noble reliance on "executive privilege"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]is that of Bush himself in his statement yesterday evening that he didn't want to allow a "fishing expedition" that would harrass "honorable public servants." Yes, God forbid any over-zealous prosecutor should destroy the careers of honorable public servants, or drive them into bankruptcy with legal fees, trying to shake them down for any possible incriminating evidence they might have on their boss, even if it was just a little inappropriate behavior with an intern. Hey, anything you can get on the guy is fair game, right?
When Bush took office, he made a great public and symbolic point of having the oval office steam-cleaned. His successor should have it fumigated.