Letters to the Editor
jebldmm
Published Letters: 933 Editor's Choice: 164
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You can't legislate everything
[Read the article: "No" means nothing once sex has started]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, I can imagine extreme circumstances where a person may be in the process of having sex and change their mind. What I can't imagine is sitting on a jury and convicting a man of rape because he was in the middle of having consensual sex and the woman changed her mind. Sex isn't like buying a pair of shoes. People tend to get pretty involved when it's happening, making funny sounds and thrashing about and losing a bit of common sense. Where do we draw the line? How can we know if the woman made herself clear enough that the man heard her through the fog of passion? Where do we draw the line? If a woman remembers that she forgot to take her birth control pill just before a man comes, and asks him to pull out, and he doesn't... is that rape? It certainly is wrong, but would we really want to convict a man of rape for this kind of thing? Sometimes things are "wrong", without being criminal offenses. I think that if a woman actually started to fight and the man hurt her, he might be charged with assault. But we have to draw the line somewhere, and "Yes" means "Yes", just as much as "No" means "No".
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Abusive Relationships
[Read the article: Kerry: I won't let them Swift-boat me again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Once again, I see people falling into the "If I were only a better wife, he wouldn't hit me anymore" trap. There is no possible way for any human being to never say anything that can be taken out of context and used against them. It's impossible. Look at Dean. Dean ran an extremely clean campaign. They took a noise he made in a loud crowd, isolated it so that it sounded crazy, and circulated it to make him sound like a nutcase. People standing next to him said that he was speaking appropriately for the occasion - but how could anybody withstand the kind of attacks the Republicans like to use? They have teams of people sitting around reviewing tapes to find anything they can use against Democrats. If Republicans dedicated half the energy they dedicate to finding Democratic vulnerabiliites to fighting terrorism, OBL would be rotting in a grave right now and Iraq would be ... well, better than it is now. Unfortunately, to Republican, attacking Democrats is a lot more important than attacking terrorists. The only solution is what Kerry is doing - every time they hit us, we point out the lies. Eventually people (at least ones with open minds) will begin to see the pattern. Blaming the victim isn't going to win us any elections - it just convinces more people that the Republican lies are true.
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Kerry should apologize when bush does
[Read the article: Breakdown in Iraq, breakdown back home]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Kerry should apologize for botching a joke when bush apologizes for deploying troops without adequate boty armour, without adequate supplies and equipment, and without an adequate plan for getting them home again. Damn, I hate this game. The republican machine is once again distorting reality so that an obscure comment is being made to seem more important than all of their screw-ups. This little episode is why I suspect that Democrats won't control the House or the Senate next week - when one party controls the media, or the media allow their priorities to be set by one party, there is no accountability, just games.
I hope very much that Kerry doesn't apologize, like some Democrats probably want him to. It would make this go away - but at the cost of cementing in the minds of the public that he actually did insult the troops. It's harder to stand and speak the truth, but it pays off in the long run.
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It's amazing how quickly they respond
[Read the article: Kerry's words, Bush's war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Republicans had numerous people ready with comments and mass e-mailings, including right wing talking points for their media outlets and extensive comments from Tony Snow, within hours of Kerry's comment. They couldn't have responded faster if they had had an attack ready and waiting for some kind of provocation. Actually, it's pretty clear that they did have an attack ready and waiting. It's too bad they don't dedicate this kind of forethought to planning wars.