Letters to the Editor
Ijon Tichy
Published Letters: 452 Editor's Choice: 69
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principles shminciples
[Read the article: Battling Democrats' indifference]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ok, I can understand that the GOP's strategy of "fool all of the people some of the time and when that doesn't work bring out the bogeyman to scare them" is beyond the principles of Democratic leadership, but is it really too much to ask if, in the history of human discourse, a rejoinder and rallying cry that isn't greater than waiving the bloody shirt, the stars and bars or the fear card?
The Dems have a hundred and one reasons to challenge the simplistic, racist, fearmongering, Godloving dreck they impose on the American people. Problem is, that is the problem. One hundred and one reasons needs to be trimmed down about to say one reason.
I don't know whether to blow this party up ala the Whigs or keep looking for someone to unify the party, ala Clinton. (Aaahh Bill Clinton. He's taken charge of trying to save the world. Did you notice? Yeah, small potatoes, but think locally. The guy should really be the next UN director. He knows how to shake the bushes, as it were).
My two cents is that the Dem Leadership is not listening to Dean, and more importantly, doesn't realize that taking a stand is better than taking too many stands. Opposing Iraq would have cost the party the election in 2002, which it did anyway, but might have won it in 2004 and definitely in 2006. The Dems are fighting against money, lots of it. Principle is the only asset they have and if they are not willing to invest in it, then lets blow them up, not by creating a third party, but by creating a new second party. Because right now there is no second party, or any other party but the fear and war party.
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Why don't Congressmen use bookmarks?
[Read the article: Foley pushed child porn bills, asked: "Do I make you a little horny?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That dark humor came courtesy of the congressional Page scandal in 1983:
Reps Gerry Studds (D. Mass) and Dan Crane (R. Ill.) were discovered to have engaged in sexual relationships with one of their 17 year old pages. While Gingrich demanded their expulsion, the House settled on censure.
The House Ethics Rules, as revised in 1976, provide for censure for sexual misconduct with teenage pages. Once censured, the rep can remain a member of the Houses, but may not hold any position of leadership. My guess is that Foley resigned because he had lied to Republican leaders about his continued involvement with the intern, and could expect no support.
In most, if not all states, the legal age of consent is 16, so it is likely Foley committed no crime.
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speaking of pontificating
[Read the article: Should abortion be prevented?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So, let me get this straight. You think it is ok for women to get abortions but only so long as the agonize over it and consider some Bush like standard of whether it goes beyond cruel and unusual punishment toward the fetus.
Yeah, lets go all Geneva convention on this cytoplast. The last thing we want is some woman waking up six weeks after some guy dumped her and tossing her cookies in the toilet without stopping mide puke to consider the true value of the blessed event wreeking havoc with her digestive system.
No she must ruminate over her one night stand and feel shame for her weekness and responsibility for that "living thing" within her womb. To do otherwise would be the worst of woman and life, someone who would cast away a few fertilized cells like so many soiled tissues. What a horrible woman for doing that.
Meanwhile, while she agonizes over committing the next eighteen years to either a blessing or a curse, and all the costs and medical expenses and pain and loss associated with it, the father of that child, which this auther neglects to mention in anything more than passing, is tossing her life and her future away like the tissue he did not use before impregnating her.
While, she gets to suffer this author's guilt, he doesn't. How totally unlike centuries of religious responsibility. She could have been stoned, burned as a witch, sent off to a school for wayward girls, or just placed on welfare. She could get an abortion and reset her life, but like the author so eloquently argues here, that would be so immoral.
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Nothing new??!!
[Read the article: Condi Rice's mystery meeting]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So let me get this straight. The CIA Chief warns the NSA Chief that Al Quaida is planning to attack the US two months before the attack, and the NSA Chief now admits that this was nothing new. What this means is that the CIA had been REPEATEDLY warning Condi Rice and the administration that the US was facing an imminent attack. And she did what about all of these REPEATED warnings?
Oh yeah, nothing. No security alerts to airport screeners. No joint meetings with the INS and FBI regarding potential suspects that might be entering the country or already in the country. No meeting with Richard Clarke or the FBI anti-terrorism chief to discuss leads or to post Be On Lookouts for suspicious activity of Middle Eastern nationals in the country. Nothing.
The real gravity of Condi Rice's "denial" is that she was not just warned on July 10, 2001. She was warned repeatedly. Over and over again, until it became "old news."
As Secretary of State I have to wonder what other "old news" is she currently receiving REPEATED reports about? What is she currently NOT doing about those?
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Age of Consent
[Read the article: Hastert flip-flops, Foley's lawyer equivocates]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Until 1983 the minimum age for House pages was 14. After the two scandals of that year involving innappropriate sexual contact between House members and pages, the minimum age was raised to 16. It was felt by House leadership that it was better to protect House members from the risk of statutory rape charges than to protect pages from unwanted sexual advances from alcoholic power hunger pedophiliac former altar boys and Baptist Christian camp kids.
Good thing Foley supported the anti-gay marriage bill or we'd end up seeing a wedding even more gag inflexing than Dennis Rodman and well, uh, just about anybody.