Letters to the Editor
Asher Steinberg
Published Letters: 224 Editor's Choice: 12
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Good For Rush
[Read the article: Limbaugh off the hook for voter fraud ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Does anyone really think that party-switchers necessarily believe in the tenets of their new party? In Pennsylvania you'll have thousands of voters switching just because (a) there's no Republican race and they want to vote, (b) they really like Obama, which doesn't mean that they believe in the tenets of his party (whatever that even means, the Democratic Party has no clearly defined tenets, unless you go to the party platform, but everyone in the party differs from what the platform says on one point or another), or (c) they like Hillary, but again, don't necessarily believe in the tenets of the party. I think it's a stupid and utterly unenforceable law. There are pro-life, tax-cutting, Iraq hawk Democrats in the Congress right now. Are they breaking the law by registering as Democrats? Or are the tenets of the party so abstract and vague that virtually anyone could say he believes in them?
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Good Post, But The Relevance Of The Views Of "Huge Majorities Of Manhattanites" Escapes Me
[Read the article: Michael Mukasey's tearful lies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What's the last time Manhattan supported anything a Republican President did? It's not as if they have any special claim on the truth just because their city was the one that got attacked. After all, the next terrorist attack could happen anywhere.
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I Don't Think She Lied
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's tough week]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think she has delusions of grandeur and concocted this false memory. Do you really think she's stupid enough to knowingly tell a made-up story that could easily be checked up on? I think she believed that she was ducking from sniper fire.
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Re: Glenn
[Read the article: Michael Mukasey's tearful lies]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The whole point of highlighting the fact that Mukasey worked as Chief Judge just a mile away from the WTC (as the NY Sun article I quoted did) is to suggest that he has some special moral authority, or is speaking from a particularly informed personal place, in demanding these things. But the vast, vast majority of people who lived and worked near the 9/11 attacks see it exactly the opposite way.
Okay (so long as you're not arguing that what the 'vast, vast majority' of Manhattanites thinks is especially probative), but don't you think you're too bright to be picking on the NY Sun for a living? Media outlets like the Sun, or Fox News, or to a lesser extent MSNBC, just exist to confirm the simplistic views of certain segments of the market. Trenchant analysis isn't their line. And it seems particularly pointless given that the people who read you don't read the NY Sun or watch much Fox, so I don't know who it is that you think you're going to help. Most of your readership, judging by the comments at least, agrees with you on pretty much everything but prostitution.
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Re: Uncle Fester
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's tough week]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Back in the pre-internets days only a few reporters might catch the falsehood/inconsistency and then the story would have to compete with a ton of others to see the light of day. So the odds were in favor of the dissembling politican. Now anyone can assemble footage, put it on YouTube and get a few hundred thousand hits. Not wanting to be left behind, the media then feels compelled to discuss the story.
I don't think a lot politicians have caught up to this fact yet.
What's changed from the pre-internet days? This video that she got caught on is from the mid-90s, is it not? Before the widespread use of the Internet, she would've been caught too. I don't believe that some kid assembled this footage and put it on YouTube; one of the networks dug it up. Besides, Hillary's only been a politician since 2000 and we had the Internet then. I remember Gore getting caught in all kinds of silly lies that election.
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I'm An Obama Hater, But I Don't Think This Matters
[Read the article: Why John Edwards hasn't endorsed Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is the first time I've heard that Obama came off as a jerk in a personal interaction and Hillary came off as solicitous and respectful. Well, I take that back, there have been a few other reports that Obama's a bit arrogant, but for the most part you hear that he's a good negotiator. Hillary, not so much.
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I'm Pro-Puritanism
[Read the article: Is the Internet eroding America's Puritanism -- or making it worse?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But I still can't believe that David Brooks said that about multiple sex partners and spiritual suicide. Everything he says is so boring, so pragmatic, so CW. That comes as a real shock to me. In what context?
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The Book Sounds Terrible
[Read the article: "Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But please do a post on the Yoo memo soon.
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Ooh! The Conservative Pundit Isn't Tough-Looking!
[Read the article: Book news and media campaign coverage]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Come on Glenn. You can do better.
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"We have to acknowledge that we cannot completely stop globalization."
[Read the article: The Obama difference]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why in the world would we even want to? It's comments like these that make me want to vote for McCain.
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So, Where Is...
[Read the article: Why doesn't the 9/11 Commission know about Mukasey's 9/11 story?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn's response to the "it really happened and the commission knew but didn't tell the public" hypothesis?
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?
[Read the article: Less sex, more intellectual intimacy?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What's wrong with pushing your religious views on others? That's like saying, why push your anti-racist, anti-patriarchal views on others? Why can't you just let people be bigots? If you believe that there's an ethical way to lead your life, it seems only natural that you'd want to encourage others to live ethically.
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But Glenn, Your Polls Don't Address What Cokie Said
[Read the article: Cokie Roberts speaks out on the war on behalf of the American people]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you had a poll that asked whether Americans would rather win or lose, then we could see if Cokie's right or not. What you have is people saying they want to leave, but maybe those people think we (a) already have won, have succeeded in accomplishing what we set out to do, or (b) have come as close to "winning" as we'll ever come. All Cokie said is that Americans "prefer to win." I think that's probably true; they just feel that we already have. Where I think you differ from Cokie is in what "winning" would entail.