Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 107 Editor's Choice: 6
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Was Colbert Funny? I surely think so
[Read the article: Making Colbert go away]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I had about 25 deep belly laughs watching Steven Colbert at the WHC Dinner.
There were so many great lines, "rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg", "the glass is not half full, it is 2/3rds empty".
My friends and I were howling with laughter. It made it even funnier that most of the people in the room were stone-faced. I most wanted a split camera shot showing Bush all the time Colbert was eviscerating him, waiting for it to finally dawn on him that the fawning talk was really a put-down.
The satisfaction of seeing this president, who has spent his entire presidency - his entire life - avoiding the truth about himself - that he and this administration are a miserable failure - was almost too delicious to bear.
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Alberto Gonzales Mentioned on Randi Rhodes Show as Torturer
[Read the article: Torture teachers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I remember listening to a caller on the Randi Rhodes show who said he was attending the Air Force Academy as a cadet and they had a class there on how to 'resist' torture also.
The caller said that he took the class (it was in the '70's) and a certain Sgt. Alberto Gonzales was one of the people running things.
The cadet said that he especially remembered Gonzales because he was especially brutal in his actions running this class and seemed to get a particular pleasure out of torturing the students.
Randi thought this sounded a little extreme, but it turns out that Gonzales was in the Air Force as an enlisted man from, I think, '73 through '75, and he did work at the Air Force Academy.
He then chose to enter the Acedemy as a cadet himself, but quit in his fourth year so he would not need to actually serve in the military (thus, we can be sure, preparing himself to be part of this administration, presided over by Dimwit the Deserter and any number of people who are expert on all things military but who either deserted or never actually served in the military).
I'm not certain of any details on this, but the caller was adament and the whole matter had the ring of truth to it.
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Mr. Blackwell Could Well Pull Off Another Miracle
[Read the article: The votes don't add up]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1559: "Has American Democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005's referenda defeats?"
During a referendum election in the state of Ohio in 2005 the Columbus Dispatch published a poll of 5 items. The paper has had a historical record of coming within 1% of the correct votes in its polls. This election, it got one of the items within its historical record but missed badly on 4 of the items. On one referendum item it was off by an amazing 30%. Read the above-referenced article to find out the details.
What if Mr. Blackwell and the Republican running for Attorney General are polling well behind before the election but pull out an astonishing victory in this instance? Miracles have happened before in this land of Diebold. Who is to say that they won’t happen again.
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You can fool all of the people some of the time....
[Read the article: Sen. Webb, true conservative?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
That statement by Abraham Lincoln has been one of my mantras for the last 6 years. America usually has a sense of fairness and lawfulness that makes it a beacon of hope throughout the world. But we as a country have a dark side to us that when our individual security or sense of personal entitlement is abridged, we have this long history of acting in cowardly and despicable ways that are at odds with our self image of ourselves and with the world’s perception of us.
Most of the times, we come out of our national case of paranoic amnesia and do the right thing. The Alien & Sedition Act, Lincoln’s abrogation of Habeas Corpus, the Japanese Internment, McCarthy’s reign of terror in the early 50's. The list goes on and on. Each time America passed horrible laws in a flurry of fear and then finally came to its senses and did the right thing.
We just passed our own Alien & Sedition Act in 2006 with a whole bunch of Republicans and 12 Democratic Senators voting for it. Patriot Acts I and II are also examples of bad laws passed in a panic. Now we have time to reconsider.
"...you cannot fool all of the people all of the time". Certainly, many of the citizens most horrified by the recent excesses and who are now finally coming to their senses are the conservatives, people of religion and libertarians who have been reliable Republican votes in the last number of elections. Hopefully, add to that list the Democrats who have been too cowed by invective to vote their consciences in recent years.
Let’s hope that a coalition of the courageous can come together to strike the most odious aspects in the many laws passed recently in our beleaguered country.