Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

You said on the Brian Lehrer show that Hillary has worked for 35 years on behalf of Hillary Clinton. That is a lie and another example of your psychotic hatred of Hillary. The fact is that Hillary was the head of the Children`s Defense Fund; in Arkansas she was on a task force that helped raise educational standards for children and was not afraid of taking on the challenge of providing health insurance to everyone as first lady.

What has Obama done except demonstrate his out-of-control ambition? He was a community organizer but that was in the black community. What he has done for whites?

In your puff piece on Obama you quote an excerpt from a speech given by Obama describing his religious conversion and praising the reverend Jeremiah Wright the minister of the Trinity United Church of Christ, the church which Obama attends. What you neglected to mention is that the Trinity United Church of Christ is a militant black church and Wright ( who is a friend of Louis Farrakhan) is so controverisal that Obama had to disinvite him when he announced for president.

The fact is that Obama, unlike Colin Powell, is not an assimilated black. Although raised by white grand parents as an adult he has strongly identified with the black community as first as an organizer and then state Senator. Furthermore his wife Michelle  appears to have a chip on her shoulder when it comes to whites.

Americans are not going to vote for someone because that might appeal to people of color and Muslims around the world. Americans vote for someone that they can relate to and feel comfortable with and that is not Barack Obama.

Trusting Government With Torture

A reader writes:

Your discussion about torture is at once thought provoking and troubling. For this conservative it used to be a "slam dunk" for me. People like Khaled Sheik Mohammed got what they deserved and I couldn’t care one wit. The "Jack Bauer" method of Intel was good enough for me. But torture policy in the hands of a faceless government bureaucrats without accountability gives me real pause. Especially incompetent bureaucracies! (Has the CIA got anything right in the last 15 years?) Your post about the death of innocent people under our government authority questioning seems no better on the face of it than those poor souls disappearing in the subterranean haunts of Tehran.

Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus and many other civil liberties during the crises of the Civil War but his greatness was, I think, in the fact that he realized it was an "abnormal", reluctant and extraordinary condition to be righted when the emergency, i.e., the war was over.  Cheney/Bush seem to think this is a perpetual state, a ceaseless war.

When do the extraordinary measures to extract Intel from suspects, like water boarding, end? If ever? How is it justified and/or different then the torture chambers in Falluja run by Al Qaeda? And no I don’t see a moral equivalency between us and the monstrous jihadists stated but one created when horrific means are used by our government even for the best of intentions.

Or are we to become a nightmare terror society as portrayed in the Movie "Brazil" with bombs going off everywhere among placid numb people, while innocent suspects are snatched from the streets, sometimes because of a misspelling of your name on a form? When does it just become one evil pursuing another evil?

I guess you’ve got a point; can Hillary or Rudy recognize extraordinary measures for extraordinary times that need the most careful rigorous control in their application if they are not to warp and twist our free society into something unrecognizable?

Why The GOP Is All But Begging For Clinton

A reader writes:

Sure, there are all the obvious reasons. But I think what it comes down to is this. The one thing the GOP can’t abide is being knocked out of its comfort zone. And they know HRC doesn’t have a prayer down South. With the possible exception of Romney (Mormonism), any of the main GOP guys will effortlessly sweep the South vs her. And FLA will probably come fairly easily too. That basically leaves OH as everywhere else will likely stay about the same as in 2004 (though McCain could put a state like MI or PENN into play).

Throw Obama into the mix and that dynamic changes. He’d present them w/ some curveballs down South they’d probably rather not deal with. And with Edwards, it’d be similar.