Letters to the Editor
Art Amolsch
Published Letters: 14
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Get endocrine baseline tests immediately
[Read the article: Breaking: Don't smoke!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Before another business day goes by, get a set of endocrine tests, especially your base thyroid level. If, as is likely, you begin to feel a little slow and start to gain weight, the thyroid baseline will help your physician.
I quit smoking in college more than 40 years ago (started at 16) and gained 55 pounds in one year. Others I know have had the
same experience, and it seems to get worse the longer one has smoked before quitting.
The baseline thyroid test can't hurt, and it could really help with the mental sluggishness and weight gain problems you may encounter. If you're lucky, you won't suffer from those problems, and you'll only be out the cost of the test.
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Doolittle's constituents reply
[Read the article: Doolittle: DOJ is using me to take heat off Gonzales]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Be sure to read the reader comments.
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On "defunding" the troops
[Read the article: The complete myth driving our Iraq "debate"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One puzzling historical precedent I have found totally missing from the whole "funding"-"defunding" discussion is the case of the so-called "Great White Fleet."
Recall: about one hundred years ago, President Theodore Roosevelt, a great believer is sea power, announced that he was going to assemble a squadron of American capital ships, paint the white, and send them around the world to announce that the U.S. had arrived as a major power.
Congress declined to appropriate the money for what a majority of members apparently believed was a boondoggle, but Roosevelt ordered the fleet to sail anyway. Somewhere along the route, the money ran out, leaving the fleet stranded.
Whereupon, Congress grudgingly appropriated the money to get the ships and the men back home.
The lesson here is that a willful commander-in-chief can force Congress to fund an adventure it has opposed from the start. I wouldn't think of comparing George W. Bush (favorably) to Teddy Roosevelt, but the historical lesson stands.
We're in this fix because the American people re-elected Bush, and the Constitution provides for a fixed term of four years. A vote of two-thirds of both houses could rid us of Bush and Cheney, but let's all agree that that's unlikely.
Perhaps Democrats who want to get us the hell out of Iraq ought to point this precedent out to the voters, telling them that if Bush spent the money to keep our troops in Iraq over Congress' specific instructions, Congress would, in fact, have to cough up the appropriations necessary to keep them from running out of food, fuel and ammunition.
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The blogger threat
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Columbia Journalism Review online discusses a new book, reviewed in the New York Times, about the blogosphere's threat to our political discussion.
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What about the women who are already succeeding?
[Read the article: She Should Run ... or should she?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why not start by attempting to distill the characteristics of the women who are succeeding at the highest level? Sen. Boxer, Sen. Feinstein, Sen. Hutchison, Sen. Lincoln, Sen. Stabenow, Sen. Mikulski, Sen. Clinton, Sen. Murray, Sen. Snowe, Sen. Landrieu, Sen. Collins, Sen. Cantwell, Sen. Murkowski, Sen. Dole, Sen. Klobuchar, Sen. McCaskill;
Gov. Granholm, Gov. Napolitano, Gov. Sebelius, Gov. Blanco, Gov. Rell, Gov. Gregoire, Gov. Palin, etc.
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How moveon.org got started
[Read the article: Limitless wrongness]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn's reference to Bill Clinton and oral sex prompts me to recall how moveon got started and got its name. It was created to demand that Congress censure Clinton and "move on."
Eight years later, the New York Times is writing about important and powerful it has become within the Democratic Party. In short, Moveon is the creating of the all-Monica-all-the-time Rightwing and press assault on Constitutional government. Hello there, Tom Delay.
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Hiatt and his Beltway colleagues
[Read the article: Telecom amnesty would forever foreclose investigation of vital issues]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just wait until the Washington Post finds out
that the feds have been wiretapping its reporters.
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Reid and telecom amnesty
[Read the article: More disruptions to the Cheney/Rockefeller plan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Believe it or not, I got an e-mail from Harry Reid on Friday in which he said he was determined to DEFEAT the telecom amnesty provision in the FISA bill. I almost threw up. This from the fellow who chose to bring the bill with amnesty up for a vote instead of the bill without amnesty. God, I hate it when politicians and the major news outlets treat me like I'm stupid.
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Pathetic "debate" journalists
[Read the article: TV news is too cool]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Not that it's important or anything, but these good-hair TV journalists haven't asked any questions about the Constitution as far as I've seen. And why are the questioners/moderators always TV personalities? Put David McCullough or Robert Dallek on one of these shows (because that's what they are), and see what happens. We should all live so long.
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Why did other publishers decline to publish McClellan's book?
[Read the article: Scott McClellan: The beatings continue]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here, the subject says it all.
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Retroactive immunity makes no legal sense to me
[Read the article: NYT circulates fear-mongering claims on FISA debate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If the telecommunications companies violated my existing rights, how can Congress retroactively immunize them for something they did to me when it was illegal?
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Entrapment
[Read the article: The baseless, and failed, "move to the center" cliche]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't know if a president can pardon a corporation, as opposed to an individual. But aside from that, since the premise for absolving the telecoms of civil liability is that they were only doing what the government encouraged them to, don't they have a strong, maybe impregnable, entrapment defense? If that's true, they are effectively immune from criminal prosecution, no matter how clever Olberman may think Obama is being about hiding the criminal prosecution ball until after the election.
I'm seriously rethinking my earlier conclusion that Obama was the most likely candidate to turn the executive branch upside down and shake it to see what falls out of the crevices. The sudden appearance of the damned flag pin on his lapel was and is very worrisome, and things aren't looking any better on real, substantive issues, either. I may just sit this one out for the first time since 1960. God this is depressing.