Letters to the Editor
bearpaw1
Published Letters: 807 Editor's Choice: 11
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about "yankee"
[Read the article: Yankee Republicans, go home!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To Anonymous, who was puzzled about "Yankee Republicans":
To much of the world outside of the US, "Yankee" means any citizen of the US.
To people in much of the southern US, "Yankee" tends to mean anybody from the northern US.
To most other people in the US, "Yankee" means someone from "New England", which includes the northeast states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. (This is the context used in the article.)
If you hear someone in the US referring to "damn Yankees", it's either someone from "the South" referring to someone from "the North", or it's someone from New England referring to the New York Yankees baseball team.
Clear?
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"gun control folks"
[Read the article: Charles Krauthammer takes rank hypocrisy to new lows]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I saw several NRA-type responses to the VT tragedy before I saw any from gun control folks. Most of them, ironically, were of the preemptive "Oh no, more ammo for gun-control kooks" flavor. The rest were simplistic silliness about how fewer people would have died if there were lots of armed students.
(For the record and FWIW, I've owned guns in the past and have no desire to -- nor illusions about -- getting rid of them all. *And* I believe that some firearm regulations are good.)
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Repubs believed that government was the problem ...
[Read the article: Will Justice probe block Gonzales aide's testimony?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Repub leaders believed that government was the problem, not the solution. That is to say, the government got in the way of their being able to adequately cover their asses -- and the asses of their corporatist buddies. So they decided to do a hostile take-over of the government and -- viola -- problem solved.
Unfortunately, a few (tens of millions of) troublemakers had quaint ideas about what government was really for, and even quainter ideas about democracy and participatory government. So now the corrupt CEO and what's left of his staff are besieged by a majority of the new board of directors. But they're obviously hoping they can hang in there until an opportune moment to clean out their slush funds and take an extended vacation in Paraguay.
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unconstitutional?
[Read the article: Democrats bear responsibility for restoring habeas corpus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]darmsTX,
The suspension of habeas corpus is pretty clearly unconstitutional, but it has to be challenged through the court system, up through the Supreme Court. That takes time and it takes a case. It's much harder to do without a specific case (or cases), and legal access to the people in Gitmo has been intentionally limited. (And according to reports, even those limited client-lawyer relations have been intentionally sabotaged. It's damn near impossible to work with clients who have been led to believe that you're not on their side.)
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Lies
[Read the article: The administration's FISA falsehoods continue unabated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]shooter242: In other words, we don't know if Bush did anything wrong, but because we've framed him as a ... liar, he must have. Run away, run away.
I don't know why I'm bothering, but here goes:
The liar in this particular case is Mike McConnell, and Glenn Greenwald explains why the word fits. You'd have realized that if you'd actually read the article, instead of scanning the title for a keyword on which to hang your script.
As far as Bush's own dishonesty, it's clear to anyone who has been paying attention. Bush has, in fact, publicly admitted lying to Americans more than once, shrugging his dishonesty off as something only unpatriotic America-haters would care about.
Because after all, it's not as if he's lying about anything important, like a blowjob. Blood-stained hands are evidently easier to ignore than a semen-stained dress.
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genetic excuses
[Read the article: "What is wrong with women?"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]re: "Demonic Males":
I'm really fucking tired of "sociobiology" Just-So stories. I'll be marginally more impressed if someone ever comes up with a similar hand-waved scientific-sounding theory for why humans are so good at coming up with lame, simplistic explanations for why we treat each other like shit.
(I wonder if other primates are as prone to making large suppositions from limited knowledge as humans are, and what the evolutionary benefit of that trait is.)
Really, the most one can say for theories like this is that they might not be entirely wrong. Humans behave like humans, which is to say that we behave in all sorts of ways depending on all sorts of factors, of which genetics is one, though its relative importance is unclear. Well, one could speculate that it all traces back to genetics *eventually*, as genetics probably has at least some influence on our susceptibility to various factors, including social ones. But heck, from genetics you could trace it another step back to chemistry, and then back to fundamental constants, and then ...
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CIA Director
[Read the article: Right-wing noise machine: Plame not covert]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Paul Rosenberg's right. Plus, this statement from Michael Hayden, the Director of the CIA, would have left no doubt in anyone actually interested in the facts:
During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was under cover.
Her employment status with the CIA was classified information prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958.
At the time of the publication of Robert Novak's column on July 14, 2003, Ms. Wilson's CIA employment status was covert.
This was classified information.
If someone can ignore that in favor of their talking points, it's pretty clear that facts simply don't matter to them.
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These guys are so desperate ...
[Read the article: Fred Thompson, "tough guy" and "folksy cultural conservative"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]These guys are so desperate for a daddy figure that they'll swoon over someone who just makes a shallow pretense at the role. All it takes is a cheap cigar and even cheaper posturing.
It makes me wonder about what their actual fathers were like.