Letters Tuesday Editor is cross posted every week at Daily Kos.
This is the first time I have ever seen a federal judge respond to criticism of judges in a letter to the editor. Only the all out assault on one entire branch of our government could bring the normally quiet federal bench out in response. The mere existence of this letter, to those that follow judges in public discourse (speeches to Bar Associations, and almost nothing else without extraordinary circumstances), is huge news. To anybody in Texas, this is worthy of letters of support. The link is at the end of the piece.
He praised James Dobson's Family Policy Council. Dobson in Sioux Falls last year stated that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is "the most dangerous man in America." Does that sound like a rational statement? Outlandish statements by Dobson, Pat Robertson and others encourage deranged people to act violently against judges and relatives of judges.
The professor stated: "All they ask is to have men and women on the bench who will defer to the democratic process rather than arbitrarily imposing their own ideas on the rest of us." He assumes judges act arbitrarily. If so, the solution is to go to a higher court. We have three co-equal branches of government. Our founding fathers knew what they were doing. No branch of government blindly "defers" to the other. Our judiciary is intended to protect the constitutional rights of citizens, not blindly endorse unconstitutional actions taken by Congress, the president or a state legislature.
Judges should, of course, respect our elected officials and do our best to not infringe on their prerogatives. Members of Congress should treat the judiciary in the same manner.
Charles B. Kornmann
United States District Judge Aberdeen
South Bend (Indiana) Tribune
The very idea that Republicans are trying to encourage an investigation into charges against DeLay, when the facts are that they were only trying to do so with a stacked committee, is simply ridiculous. Given my present schedule (work, Daily Pulse, 3 yo and newborn with colic) I really don't have the time to respond. But if somebody else wants to write, or ghost it for me since I live in Indiana, very cool.
And why is it that Democrats are trying to avoid an actual investigation into the charges against DeLay, while Republicans such as Chocola are encouraging it?
Here's a hint: there's nothing there! If anyone is doing any diverting and deflecting it is the Democrats. Apparently, they'll do whatever they can to keep the attention off of the fact that they have no real plans for a better America; they only have criticism and empty allegations.
Trevor Foughty
Mishawaka
South Bend (Indiana) Tribune
This is a really well written letter. He writes about Nixon, compares him to Bush, then calls Nixon corrupt, leading the reader to the obvious conclusion without sounding too strident.
The Republicans responded true to form, especially the ones who ended up in jail for their criminal activities: He's a traitor. He wasn't loyal to the president. He was a disgruntled employee who didn't get the job he wanted.
It's the same stuff they say about everyone who exposes the flaws and lies of George W. Bush. ...
Rick Leers
Niles
The Clarion Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi)
The contrast between how both sides see the media is astounding. With Fox, MSNBC, and now CNN acting as mouthpieces for the RNC, and with the big 3 acting like little lap dogs, the bad guys still see a "liberal media." This letter is an example. It is also a great example of how they make the facts fit the fantasy, such as blaming 9/11 for the deficit instead of Bush's massive tax cuts. Of course, when the premise for the letter begins "if one were to pore over a copy of The Washington Times" you know where he's coming from, though how you can start with that and still talk about a "liberal media" clearly demonstrates to me blind inhalation of Republican paranoia gas.
Bush has reason for his real 'truths'
If one were to pore over a copy of The Washington Times from last week, he or she would know that al Qaida's second-in-command, Al-Zawahiri, admitted to traveling under a false name to Iraq in 1999, to a terrorist training camp. ...
And what about the weapons of mass destruction?
Lest we forget, the United Nations imposed decade-long sanctions for these non-existent WMDs, because these fantasy weapons had somehow killed thousands of Kurds and Iranians.
And the comment about tax cuts "vaulting us into the greatest federal deficit in our history?" I remember two airplanes vaulting innocent people into two financial buildings which also were filled with innocent people. Perhaps that caused a dip in the market. ...
I feel the reason that Bush keeps "lobbing propaganda" is a good one: because the media keep regurgitating Democratic talking points as fact, and they sometimes deceive even the masters of rhetoric -- attorneys.
Matt Hodge
Brandon
The Clarion Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi)
I did not cut anything from this letter. It is nice to see a response to people using "liberal" as a word connoting evil. This nation started with liberals, and every advance in freedom it has experienced, including those permitting people to use "liberal" as an epithet, have come from the hearts and hands of liberals.
Protecting individual rights neither 'disgusting' nor liberal
As someone who was raised by a stout Republican family, I know that most Republicans are staunch supporters of the death penalty while at the same time they are against abortion. Is this not also a double standard?
What are Republicans, with their views of the death penalty and abortion, telling these future generations -- "You can be born but your days of freedom (or life) are numbered?" I would prefer that if a child were to be born, that it be born under the most optimal of circumstances where the child will at least feel loved.
As for deviant behaviors, that is not a liberal or Republican viewpoint but rather a cultural one. What one person may see as deviant, others may view as normal. Cultural relevance has been around forever.
Mr. Barron is right in stating that everyone alive has rights, and that includes the homosexual community, and those women who choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy for whatever reason.
With these rights guaranteed to American citizens comes the freedom to practice religion of choice, lifestyle of choice, and political affiliation of choice -- just to name a few.
As long as each is practiced within the boundaries of the laws of society, which may or may not go against religious morals, it is the individual's choice. Otherwise, we go against every tenet that this country was founded upon.
Patricia Beech
Columbia
Aberdeen (Texas) News
If every cell is a life, where does the insanity stop? What about, as this writer points out, cancer cells carrying our own genetic information? What about sickle cells, damaged pieces of our own body? At some point either science will prevail, or a dark cloud of Luddite orthodoxy will fall over the entire nation.
If Gloria Duenwald isn't too busy passing judgment and dictating morality to other people, maybe she could step down from her conservative bandwagon and explain to me how specific cells within a possibly malignant stem cell tumor are "innocent" life.
Some friends of mine have a son who is afflicted with juvenile diabetes and, like Ruth Wood, I hope every day that they find a cure. I also hope that no one ever has to watch a loved one waste away in a hospital bed, like I did, ravaged by a disease that may have been cured simply by using stem cells from their own brain.
Kyle Stuchl
Atchison (Kansas) Daily Globe
When I do the letters to the editor, I realize there is nothing wrong with Kansas, or at least large parts of it.
Bush and company (cohorts) are nothing more than aggressive, greedy people who live on taxpayer funds and conniving business practices. My funds are down $5,000 this year. Will they come back? I lose interest, etc. on this now. The tragedy is that news organizations, managed by intelligent people, support whatever is said by the government. Is it fear, irresponsibility, or financial interest? How can one print "Died for his country" when the truth is "Died for Bush's and advisors' lies."
They lied to veterans, mothers, soldiers and our representatives and lied to you and me.
W.E. Bewley
Atchison
Austin (Texas) American-Statesman
You just had to know Dean would be a big issue. My question is whether people really care about him (since when does the average Joe give a damn about a party chairman), or if this is Astroturf. I did not have time to find out. Has anybody else seen these letters in their papers?
In the first quarter of this year, Republicans raised almost twice as much money as the Democrats. Keep up the good work, Dean.
CYNDI SMART-CORSER
Austin
Republicans love Dean
Why are people complaining about Howard Dean? I have been listening to my liberal friends, and they have been saying -- and they truly believe -- what Dean has been saying about the Republicans.
I believe Dean truly represents the views of his Democratic Party. Go Dean, we love you. I'm a Republican who wants fervently to see that Dean stays as the Democratic Party chairman.
DAVE JIMENEZ
Austin
Austin (Texas) American-Statesman
Amnesty International fights back. Perhaps the use of the word "gulag" was unfortunate, but I am not sure what else to call a network of prisons housing unidentified prisoners, without charges, and often for torture and occasional death.
If you want to get technical, the Russian term "gulag" referred to the government institution in charge of the camp system and later referred to the concentration camps themselves.
There are plenty of independent sources attesting to American torture camps, so the American-Statesman's denial is reprehensible. I expect more out of an Austin newspaper than a repeat of the government's lies. This paper should be taking up the call for justice and demanding that human rights groups have full access to these facilities and an independent commission be formed to investigate. This is merely one of many symptoms of the corruption that has taken over this great country of ours. God save America.
PAUL ALOTTO
Austin
Reputation not 'tattered'
As a member of Amnesty International's Freedom Writers Network, I must take issue with the American-Statesman for its characterization of Amnesty International's "already tattered reputation" in reference to the group's comparison of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay to a gulag. Amnesty International has support and recognition among democratic governments for its nonpartisan defense of human rights.
Each month, three documented cases of human rights abuses are sent to Freedom Writers such as myself and, subsequently, thousands of letters are sent to the offending countries, often resulting in the release of the accused from jail. No country escapes scrutiny.
In March 2005, the United States was the subject of one of these action letters because of allegations of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay. For one month, the United States, beacon of democracy and protector of human rights, descended to the dishonorable level of the other two violating countries cited: China and Laos.
ROBERT C. GIBBONS
Austin
Herald Standard (Uniontown, Pennsylvania)
Why is this a crisis? Why must everybody acknowledge YOUR particular ideation of a supreme being for an event to have meaning? Apparently, your granddaughter got all the way through high school without him, or perhaps she prayed silently before every test. Why is that not enough? Why must I, too, hear her prayers? As for what Jesus would say, I absolutely disagree with this conclusion. Remember the one about Jesus and praying in a closet? He would truly not recognize today's "Christians". I really don't think he would be upset about the lack of public prayer. Neither could anybody else who actually read his words. Is there anybody out there from Uniontown or its environs? Follow the link and respond.
There was no invocation and no benediction.
One by one the speakers addressed the graduates; not once was God mentioned.
Finally the valedictorian brought God into the picture. ...
As I was leaving the gym while inside the glass-enclosed hallway, in my mind I could see Jesus looking from the outside saying, "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do."
Men are fools and make many man made laws. But in the end all shall know.
This is still God's world.
Arnold W. Friend
Bobtown
Berkshire (Massachusetts) Eagle
Wow. This letter so captures not only the Bush Administration's fraud, but the media's complicity and cowardice. Also, follow the link for the whole thing, including a wonderful verbal picture of Red Skelton, and now George Bush, wetting their pants in fear of their own lies.
... But this counterattack fused with new revelations that showed Newsweek didn't have it wrong after all. The Department of Defense acknowledged that there were indeed well-documented insults to the Quran and Muslim religious sensitivities in Guantanamo and elsewhere.
For a day or two, there were editorials and even talks of congressional investigations about Bagram, Guantanamo and hundreds of other cases that have been revealed. However, another word must have gone out to the major media and congressmen. Silence reigns. Neither the Bush people nor its weak critics have uttered a peep for several days.
As Red Skelton used to say: "I scared myself." One of Skelton's roles was that of a little kid who would tell a lie, then embellish it to the point where he would burst out crying. His mother then asked him what was wrong. He, still excited and trembling, proclaimed: "I scared myself." Listening to the radio, I pictured Skelton as standing there in short pants having wet himself.
The Bush administration fought back against the Gulag charge, but then found that this created some media interest. It may have decided that it didn't like this discussion either. Any comparison at all to Stalin's gulags would remind everyone of what was in fact going on and how long it had been going on.
And if one thinks of the U.S. as being a new empire, with client states of today and recent history (Chile's Pinochet, et al), along with hidden gulags throughout the world, the comparisons could only get worse.
Better to drop the subject entirely.
And so it has come to pass.
BRIAN SHANNON
Williamstown, June 7, 2005
Berkshire (Massachusetts) Eagle
First Red Skelton wetting his pants. Now Jack from Lord of the Flies. There are some clever people out there writing these letters.
Would it be too far over the edge for me to ask, "Mr. Kinnaman, do you count Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, or even George W. Bush among those fine upstanding Republican friends you refer to?" I ask, because it appears to me that those individuals are the Republicans most often taken to task. ...
By the nature of our "need," it is axiomatic that our guardian(s) be someone larger and stronger than ourselves. One downside, which appears to be where America is currently couched, is embodied in William Golding's story, "The Lord Of The Flies." Golding's vicious character, "Jack," becomes the protector because of his savage personality and his ability to tell people what they want to hear. Sound familiar? It should. But, had Golding revealed that Jack was a member of the Republican Party, he would have added nothing of substance about this ruthless killer. What is to be gleaned from Golding's story is that most of the boys fell in line and even revered this monster. It happens. The previously listed group of power-people in Washington, D.C. provide an example. But, why? ...
We have irrevocably separated into at least two distinct self-righteous war parties; 1) Republicans; 2) Democrats. The lamb of the multitudes can never lay down with that lion, except as feed.
As the late comedian Jonathan Winters used to quip at the end of a hilarious foray into someone's personal traits, "Just folks. All good folks."
ROBERT W. ALLARDYCE
Pittsfield, June 4, 2005
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