Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 204 Editor's Choice: 44
-
What happened to "It's all about the lying, not the sex"?
[Read the article: The Libby lobby's pardon campaign]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Can anyone point me to a single Republican Representative who voted to impeach President Clinton, or a single Republican Senator who voted to convict him, who wrote a letter to the judge saying "I said in 1998 (or 99) that it was all about the lying, not the sex, and to be consistent with my views then, I urge you to sentence Mr. Libby to the most severe sentence within your power"?
Well, of course you can't. Because it was never about the lying. It was all about the sex, and the power. And when the lying is not about whether you had sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky, but about someone who in good faith worked in a responsible job for the CIA and whose husband was one of the few honest voices in this country about the mess this Administration has put this country in, then not only is it considered fair game to try to smear her, but it's also fair game to lie about it.
Anyone who thinks this man is a patriot is unfit for office under our Constitution. This is a man who puts real Americans in danger. Of course, the same can be said for Cheney, Wolfowitz, Abrams and Feith, can't it?
-
Cheadle was the safecracker
[Read the article: "Ocean's Thirteen"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bernie Mac was a blackjack dealer, the first person Danny Ocean contacts when he is paroled in Oceans Eleven. He also memorably talked the car dealer into lowering his price during the world's longest handshake.
It's of course entirely possible that conflicting schedules led to the small size of Mr. Mac's part here.
-
Let's Separate the Issues
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Talent-spotting in baseball is a far more difficult business, as pointed out a few days ago, than in any other sport. Thus, baseball tends to do a lot of stupid things. It recruits and pays a large number of players, and runs a significant minor league operation, none of which are done in football and barely done in basketball. It also pays ridiculous sums to high school kids who go in the first round of the draft, very few of whom pan out. It's an expensive operation, and a very unscientific operation.
What Guillen was saying about the effect on Latin players is eye-opening to me, and the conditions Willie Horton (who grew up in the Detroit projects and knows a lot about both poverty and racism) described were appalling and frankly are far more of a scandal than steroids.
What Sheffield said, on the other hand, doesn't really make sense. Let's follow this backwards. US players, black and white, go into the draft in large numbers at only two points in their lives: after high school graduation and after two years in college (once you start college, you can't be drafted for two years). So the player who would be given that two million dollar bonus (which is just for first round players; lower rounds get much smaller bonuses) has to have made a decision at some earlier point in life, like ninth grade or something, to give up the chance at the two million dollar payoff for a life of, what? Professional basketball or football? Only if he has the talent. Something else? Which of those things is going to net him two million dollars at 18 or 20? I don't get it.
-
Tom Tomorrow was So Close
[Read the article: "The Sopranos" prediction pool]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Tony does end up working at a home improvement store in Salt Lake City, only it's Henrickson's Home Plus, and Gandolfini is now a character on HBO's Big Love starting Monday.
-
The Eye of the Beholder
[Read the article: Hillary's hard-won experience]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I suspect my politics are as close to Hillary Clinton's as anyone on earth (other than her husband). Nonetheless, she has an annoying habit of substituting pablum for specifics.
Others have commented that there was substance in her interview; I didn't see any of it. What's her position on Iraq? "No one can know what the situation will be on January 20, 2009." Really? Let me make a wild guess: it's not going to be any better and all our troops will still be there. What you would today if you became president today and what you will do on January 20, 2009, are going to be about the same. You want my vote? Give me a little hint. You want to throw b.s. at me, I'm off looking for another candidate, thank you.
-
Anonymous is Right
[Read the article: What Ted Stevens, Bolivian cocaine and Halliburton have in common]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Scherer really should have done his homework on the difference between Native Corporations and tribes, and also understood that one reason Stevens and Young have been so solicitous of Native Corporations' need for revenue streams is that in the early days of ANCSA, the federal government completely screwed up the land allocation process, leaving the Native Corporations with no land at the time they received their cash, and huge expectations from their shareholders they could not fulfill without the land. Many of the fixes to ANCSA that have been enacted since were attempts to right this wrong without a direct grab on the Treasury. (And no, Native Corporations are not eligible to put casinos on their land, and anyway, who's going to visit a casino in a tiny town on the North Slope?)
That being said, there were a lot of bottom fisher types running around Alaska with joint venture contracts trying to sign up Native Corporations to engage in this kind of government contracting. My recollection is that whenever I would mark them up and make them more fair to the Native Corporation, the other party would suddenly decide to go deal with someone more malleable.