today's LsTTE: Let's see if they get published

letter #1:
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In a December 20, 2004 letter to the editor, writer John Ferrara is concerned that pro-Kerry and anti-Bush bumper stickers are teaching bad values to our children. Although I have no such stickers on my vehicle, I would suggest to Mr. Ferrara that we are in worse danger of teaching bad values to our children when they learn that Mr. Bush specifically asked his White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to legally justify torture. Gonzales and his team wrote such a memo in August of 2002, and he has been rewarded by Mr. Bush with a nomination to be our next Attorney General.

Thanks to Bush and Gonzales, our country now tortures people who have not only not been found guilty through due process, but in most cases do not even have access to due process at all. Cruel and unusual punishment of the guilty is explicitly barred by the 8th amendment, but apparently it is just fine in the eyes of Bush and Gonzales for anyone we capture, regardless of their guilt or innocence.

Our nation is now an international torture criminal. Future generations of Americans may well wonder why the “bad values” of our current citizenry extend to pretending this is not the case, and allowing the torture of prisoners, sanctioned by Mr. Bush, to continue.

Finally, since Mr. Bush is not equivalent to “America”, opposing him is not “hating America”. I call it “thinking”.
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In response to this:

Sore losers teach the wrong values
Liberal sore losers, please remove your Kerry and anti-Bush bumper stickers. They are negative, distracting, offensive in some cases, and anti-American when they say Bush "is not your president."
Bush won fair and square, and he is the president and commander in chief. You are teaching bad values to your children. If you have a problem, then get involved instead of just hating America.
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Letter #2:

In a December 20, 2004 letter to the editor, writer Robert Corson suggests that if the Christian “God . . . offends you, move to another part of the world”.

One of the greatest things about this country, perhaps THE greatest thing, is that every citizen has the right to tell a proselytizer for any religion to go take a hike. We are under no legal obligation to worship any particular god, follow any particular doctrine, or believe any particular creed.

One can only imagine the howling that would come from the very people who would promote the tyranny of the majority in religion if a mass conversion suddenly occurred in this nation, and another religion (let’s say Islam for the sake of argument) became the majority religion. The first amendment would look pretty good to those people then, wouldn’t it? No doubt they would launch legal and libertarian maneuvers to keep the Koran out of schools, prohibit Ramadan from becoming a federal holiday, etc. Or to ask a less fanciful question, which part of our “Judeo-Christian” heritage will get to determine what hangs on our school walls? Roman Catholics? Southern Baptists? Unitarians? Protestants and Catholics have two different versions of the Ten Commandments, for example: whose gets displayed, and by what right?

As to crowing about “In God we trust” being a national motto (officially enshrined only 48 years ago, at the height of the Red Scare), I would point out that pre-World War II Germany’s motto was “God is with us”. They also enjoyed “upsurges in patriotism” from time to time.

I am a church-going Christian myself, and somehow I’m sure that the institution of Christianity in the U.S. will survive the onslaught of the mighty forces of the atheists and agnostics and civil libertarians. In this country, it is their right, and everyone’s right, to question religion creeping into our civil structure. And if Mr. Corson doesn’t like that, then he too is welcome to look to other parts of the world as his home. There are several wonderful theocracies. Let’s try not to become one of them.

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In response to this:

If you're offended, then move abroad
I am tired of liberals and their political and governmental leaders worrying about whether we might occasionally offend someone who has come here from another culture.
Since 9/11 there has been an upsurge in patriotism by the majority of Americans. The dust from the attacks had barely settled when the politically correct crowd began complaining that our patriotism might offend others.
I am not against immigration since like all of us accept native Americans are immigrants or their descendants. I have enormous respect for anyone who has the courage to move to new country with a new language and culture. However, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and some who were born here must understand. Americans have our own language, culture, history and lifestyle.
Our society has been developed over the centuries through struggles and victories by men and women who have sought freedom. We speak English, not Russian, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become a part of culture. you need to learn our language.
"In God we trust" is our national motto. This is not a Christian right-wing slogan. This country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. It is appropriate to display it on school walls. If God, Uncle Sam, the stars and stripes or the Pledge of Allegiance offends you, move to another part of the world because they are part of our culture.
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Letter #3:

In Dale McFeatters’s column on December 20, 2004, he noted that during Bill Clinton’s term, “when calm and civility threatened to break out, the Clintons always seemed ready with a fresh scandal.”

This is a good opportunity to remind ourselves that every “scandal” that was used to flog Clinton while he was in office, including the LAX haircut, trashing the White House, stealing from Air Force One, the travel office flap, murdering Vince Foster, fathering a child with a black prostitute, running drugs out of a Mena airport (!), Whitewater, FBI filegate, etc. etc. ad naseum infinitum, ALL of them were completely unsubstantiated. They were investigated through the legal process and the Clintons were found not guilty of wrongdoing in all of them. The only real legal issue Clinton had was the fact that he gave a misleading deposition in a civil lawsuit that was later dismissed by the presiding judge for lacking substance. And it was only Starr’s wild, illegal, runaway investigation that even put him in that position, where Clinton’s sex life was under legal investigation.

The number of Clinton government officials that were convicted of crimes committed for conduct while they were in office is ONE. The chief of staff of the secretary of agriculture was convicted in a case that involved football tickets. The Clinton administration, the most heavily investigated administration in modern times, was also one of the very cleanest. The corresponding number for the Reagan administration is 30 . . . and would have been much, much higher, including cabinet members and the Vice President/President himself, if George HW Bush hadn’t have pardoned all of his Iran-Contra co-conspirators (in effect, pardoning himself) on Christmas Eve, 1992.

What a farce. The GOP paid a lot of good money to make the Clinton administration “scandal-ridden”. There are things not to like about Clinton’s policies, but the “scandals” that plagued him were to a huge degree created out of whole cloth by a small group of people, feeding a gullible and in some cases actively complicit press. That the New York Times has never apologized or retracted its incredibly irresponsible reporting on Whitewater, just for one, is a sad indictment of that once great paper. That the same group of scandalmongers is still at it is hardly surprising.
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In response to a RW columnist complaining that RW hate radio doesn't have anyone left to attack, since the golden days of Clinton.

Let's see if the paper has the cohones to publish any of them.

The responders are a scary bunch. This country is, for now, being run by those with very limited intelligence. The worst part of that scenario is, they are treating us like we are all fools. That part of this farce really pisses me off.

They're the Jerry Springer crowd( no offense to Jerry himself).They are the kind of people I grew up with and still live amongst. All my tolerance of these people vaporized years ago.

Thank you for letting me vent. Keep us updated about whether your letters are published. A hopeful note is, in this very conservative town in a REDDDD state, I have read in our local paper some very moving letters from local progressives and liberals.