Dear Editor:

In the end, it really makes little difference who is going to be the next President of France. No future president is going to take away the free, cheap and high quality health care which the French have as a right. No future president is going to take away the legally mandated six weeks of vacation that the French enjoy. No future president believes that social services and pensions should be "privatized" so that the public's monies and future financial security can be better pillaged by the friends, direct and indirect, of the president. Most importantly, no future President of France is going to take that country into costly, disasterous, murderous, and politically destabilizing military adventures. To be succint, what the American political system is usually accused of by the Left in our country and abroad is more applicable to France. The consensus on the larger issues is shared by all participants in the politics there. All that is left is the details, and those are not very devilish at that.

Whoever is the next president of France will have to make reforms to the economy and also deal with the issues of identity, the marginalization of the the "immigrants," the open racism of the society, and crime and violence. In the absence of any clear plans or proposals by Royale, there is no assurance or guarantee that the policies what she adapts in a crisis or emergency situation will be any less drastice, and potentially more drastic than what Sarkozy is proposing.

In contrast to Royale, who is a true ethnic French, Sarkozy has proposed the use of affirmative action as a policy instrument to force the integration of the "immigrants" into French institutions and power centers. Perhaps Sarkozy, whose father is an immigrant from Hungary, and is not 100% ethnic French, has some sense of what it means to be an ethnic outsider in a country which officially denies the existance of ethnic distinctions between French citizens but in reality makes them, often in a very overt and exclusionary manner.

I do not feel truly qualified to endore Sarkozy over Royale but I do feel that this article is a bit unfair as it is not at all clear that Royale is any less, and potentially more, right-wing on the ethnic issues which face the Fifth Republic today.

Sincerely yours,

Arthur C. Hurwitz

Dear Editor:

The reason why the D.C. Press corps do not feel that they have done anything wrong, or that they are at all responsible for misleading public opinion into the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq is because they do not seem themselves as an independent force in the politics of American live. Rather, they think of themselves as presenting the objective opinion of "both sides" with a disinterest in the ultimate policy outcome. The notion of their responsibilities is the puedo-mantra of Fox News, "We Report, You Decide."

Furthermore, in their own lives, the real, consequensal results of a given policy decision, such as invading Iraq, are entirely irrelevant. Either way, they will be doing the job in the same way, they will be living on the same privileged high standard of living, and making their meaningless and often wrong policy pronouncements.

As long as politics in the United States is treated as a game, reported on by journalists who believe that there is only objective rather than absolute truth, this same scenario will be repeated again and again, to the detriment of our country and the world.

Sincerely yours,

Arthur C. Hurwitz

Dear Editor:

I don't mind that mainstream science is criticized or that the notion of evolution is questioned. My principal objection to this museum and the school of thought which it represents is how they come to their conclusions about creation. That their their underlying assumption is merely faith without any sort of rational basis to it: that the bible is the word of God and its accounts of the origins of the world are literally true and authoritative as an unundermindable given.

The theory of evolution may have some questionable elements to it and these questionable elements may or may not be understood better in the future via further research and possibly may be disproven. Nevertheless, the notion that the world was created in six days and is a mere 6.000 years old is a scientific non-starter. The notion that man lived with the dinosaurs is rediculous. There is no objective evidence to back up this museum's beliefs, which is exactly what their hypothesis is.

Interestingly enought, it should be noted for the record that nowhere in the Bible are dinosaurs mentioned, although quite a few other animals are catalogued. What I understand is that this museum is trying to find a way to align its beliefs with the fossil record which is another way of saying that since they assume that their belief in the biblical account of creation is literally true, they will engage in any and all sorts of dishonest intellectural mechanations to support this very faith-based vies.

That is not science at all. That is lunacy.

Sincerely yours,

Arthur C. Hurwitz