Letters to the Editor
Baldie McEagle
Published Letters: 992 Editor's Choice: 3
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Optimism
[Read the article: Stop your sobbing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]McGarret50, I sympathize with your attempts to rationalize your advantaged position in the world: "The environment is best taken care of where people are wealthy. Poor countries abuse it the most."
Very nicely put, and perfectly true. Perhaps we could schedule a few more invasions of poor countries on that basis.
But I don't think anyone has commented that we should not be optimistic. Rather, we'd like to ground our optimism in reality and hold it back until we are sure there is cause. Denial, blindness, and dishonesty are not cause for optimism.
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"Targets"
[Read the article: What FISA capitulations are Democrats planning next?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I suspect that Glenn is referring to the purely legalistic sense of the word "target." I have no idea whether this might be true or not, but if the FISA language uses the term "target," then as far as the substance of FISA, we have little choice but to speak in terms of targets.
Whether the term is sufficient to capture the realities of email-sniffing would then be a different question. I suspect that the gap is itself a topic worthy of scrutiny.
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On the topic of religions
[Read the article: Joe Klein's defense of warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Government really is a state religion as practiced in DC. Nothing else can explain the waking slumber that has fallen across the land. It's really easy to make arguments in this religion, when all you need to say to make your point is:
God is Great
God is Good
Glorify Him!
Which is essentially Klein's argument:
The King is Good
The King is Great
Glorify Him!
All these people need to do to collect their paychecks is to repeat a variation on this sermon every Sunday. It's no wonder they are so lazy, so little is demanded of them. Try producing a counterargument to either of these. Good luck.
And, needless to say, it's when God and King are interchangeable or inseparable (as in "God and Country"), that you can be sure you have a state religion.
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the new "Left"
[Read the article: John Edwards' dark leftist America]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If O'Reilly wants to help redefine "Left" as what the rest of us call "normal," that's fine by me. It's about time.
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@scooter
[Read the article: The Beltway Establishment's contempt for the rule of law]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This sentiment echoes another one upthread asking why the entire NSA operation isn't made public. I have to ask... what value do you see in making our adversaries or competitors gifts of what they want most to know? Is there some virtue in giving away advantage? Would you prefer the country to be deaf, dumb, and blind? Why?
Why do you insist on asking the wrong questions, every time? How do you get from (a) everyone in the world and every US citizen knowing everything the NSA knows to (b) the country being "deaf, dumb, and blind"?
Why do you so fear the citizens of this great country knowing what their own government is doing in their names? Why does a little transparency make you shit your pants? I personally would favor near-total transparency, for reasons you can't possibly comprehend.
Namely, that if this country weren't hell-bent on imperial domination, we wouldn't have any enemies worth giving half a shit about.
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Well ...
[Read the article: Live-blogging the Mukasey confirmation hearing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe we can't get an AG who will renounce the practice of eating people. At least we will have an AG who hasn't made up his mind about it. Or he won't do it himself even if he allows others to do it. It's progress of sorts.
You just have to learn to think that way, when the people-eating aliens have invaded Earth and taken over the entire government.
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Word usage
[Read the article: Obama to Clinton: Bring it on]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's "shoe-in," not "shoo-in." Jeez. ;)
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@Tim
[Read the article: Obama to Clinton: Bring it on]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Amazing. I guess I saw it spelled "shoe-in" growing up and assumed that was correct, even though I never see that spelling anymore. Thanks for checking.
This one is spelled wrongly so often that it’s likely it will eventually end up that way. The correct form is shoo-in, usually with a hyphen. It has been known in that spelling and with the meaning of a certain winner from the 1930s. It came from horse racing, where a shoo-in was the winner of a rigged race.
In turn that seems to have come from the verb shoo, meaning to drive a person or an animal in a given direction by making noises or gestures, which in turn comes from the noise people often make when they do it.
The shift to the horse racing sense seems to have occurred sometime in the early 1900s. C E Smith made it clear how it came about in his Racing Maxims and Methods of Pittsburgh Phil in 1908: “There were many times presumably that ‘Tod’ would win through such manipulations, being ‘shooed in’, as it were”.
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So let me get this straight
[Read the article: The Weekly Standard mentality and the Senate Intelligence Committee]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If the police come to me, in a "time of war" (on Drugs), and ask me to break into the house next door (where some college students live) and look for/plant some weed, because some damn leftist judge probably won't give them a warrant, it's my simple patriotic duty to do this?
Funny how, despite the intense pressure applied over past decades to raise drug possession to the status of a crime against the state, things haven't quite come to this on the local level. It's only happening on the federal level. There is no such understanding in any other area, among law enforcement, the judiciary, or otherwise.
It's almost as though the telecoms were actively volunteering for this patriotic duty before the NSA went to them.
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Murray
[Read the article: The false Beltway script never changes]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Murray used to work for the WSJ. Is it any surprise she's got her head firmly up her ass?