Letters to the Editor
PreviouslyCRL
Published Letters: 218 Editor's Choice: 34
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Piling on
[Read the article: Four days after shooting, Cheney will talk -- to Fox]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Must be some form of convergence. Mary, 3 reddogs, and Brunswick, I was sitting at home this morning, reading the letters to the editor in the NY Times about our treatment of the prisoners on hunger strike at Guantanamo, and I just stopped and said to myself, "I'm so ashamed of my country." Outrage after outrage. Lie after lie. And the dismantling of so much that I consider to be the foundation of what makes our country and society worth defending. Somehow we must reclaim our country for oursleves as promised in the preamble to the Constitution. Our representatives are unresponsive or worse. Must there be a popular uprising before anything changes for the better? I am nearly 50 so I'm old enough to have some perspective on where we are today. The republic has seen dark days before, but I have not experienced personally nor have read of a time in history when the public and our representatives have been so complacent in the face of the diminution and destruction of our republic.
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False inference John
[Read the article: Cheney and his "witness"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Many of us do care. And as the whole incident gets stranger and stranger (some drinking before the hunt, discrepancies between different individual's stories, statements that the pattern and depth of the shot is more consistent with a closer range shot, waiting for the better part of a day to let the story out and to allow local law enforcement officers access to the VP), I think many of us are beginning to wonder about the true nature of this hunting accident.
Initially, I was in the camp that thought the incident was very unfortunate and that the VP had been recklessly careless, but now it seems we're being spun even more heavily than the initial blame-the-victim story. I, for one, would like to have a clear account of what really happened, and knowing the VP, the only way we'll get it is by piecing together as many strands of information as we can. I'm certainly not holding my breath for Cheney to suddenly become forthcoming.
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Stephen, we already have the Clinton example.
[Read the article: Noonan: This could be the end for Dick Cheney]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While I agree with Stephen that there are far more egregious wrongs committed by Cheney that make him worthy of resgining the vice-presidency, we already have had ample opportunity to decry the shallow and vindictive state of American politics. One need only consider the witch hunt that was the Clinton impeachment.
Can't get your opponent for anything of real substance? Then bring him down for lying about an unrelated sexual indiscretion that is accidentally discovered in the course of the investigation.
Granted, Clinton's impeachment was not driven by the ire of the American public, but then neither is Noonan's reasoning concerning a Cheney resignation.
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Another facet of Yoo's dangerous ideas
[Read the article: Parsing pain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yoo's views on torture are not the only aspect of his work in the Bush administration that make him a very dangerous and misguided person. I caught the interview with Yoo on NPR this morning and was disgusted and angered by what I heard. A significant part of the interview concerned Yoo's expansive view of presidential powers during war. When pressed about whether the president had any checks on his power during wartime, Yoo's only response was that Congress could keep the president in check via the power of the purse. There was absolutely no recognition on Yoo's part that Congress, as the representative of the people, is vested with the power to make the laws of the land and thereby to determine what is legal and illegal completely independently of whether such laws might or might not be enforceable by budgetary means.
Yoo delivered this pronouncement in a calm voice that belied the extreme nature of the view that he was expressing. He is a very dangerous man packaged in a bland exterior.
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No surprise at all
[Read the article: For Bush, a panic play -- in Afghanistan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Frankly, Bush and other members of his administration have made so many "surprise" visits to Iraq and Afghanistan, that I no longer find them much of a surprise. These PR stunts are like retelling the same joke; it doesn't take long for them to become predictable and stale. They look like acts of desperation from an administration that hasn't got any real accomplishments to point to.
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Response to nerdnam
[Read the article: Better off under Saddam? Former U.N. rights chief says so]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yours is an interesting insight. While I don't think that Saddam himself is likely to again become the ruler of Iraq, we have certainly created the conditions where a new strongman could rise to power and "unite" Iraq by force once we depart. However, the conditions that existed in Iraq post British colonialism and that exist today are so different that I think civil war with an eventual break up along ethnic lines seems more plausible.
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He still has to deal with the law
[Read the article: DeLay survives primary challenge]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As a Texas citizen who was negatively impacted by Tom Delay's redistricting shenanigans, I am very disappointed that he won in the primary. BUT while he may have won in the court of public opinion with Republicans (keep that pork comin') in his district, he still has to face the court of law regarding his misdeeds. I hope that in this other court there is sufficient evidence to hold him accountable, which will make the Republican court of public opinion look all the more undeserving of the public's trust.