THE RAVINGS of John Dendahl illustrate why he was demoted by his own party. He says that “the Left refuses to expel” those who suggest “America had it coming on Sept. 11, 2001.” Give me a break.
Is “the Left” some organization that can expel people? Did anyone ever say “America had it coming”? I never heard anyone say it. However, it is true that the CIA trained Osama bin Laden and unleashed him on the Soviets. Then, when the Soviets left Afghanistan, the U.S. abandoned the Afghans, providing fertile ground for the growth of the Taliban.
One thing leads to another. Is it traitorous to say so? Sept. 11 was one tragic day in a sequence of tragic U.S. policy decisions.
George Bush’s victory was the slimmest by a sitting president since 1916. Bush ran a fear-mongering and smearing campaign just as he did against John McCain four years ago. He fooled a lot of honest people into hating and fearing John Kerry. He has nothing for which to be proud.
Bush has never done “the people’s work.” He is child of privilege, the “folksiest” of the Bush Dynasty but not one of us folks who work for a living. The rich will get richer during the next four years and the poor will die in Iraq.
B.W. THOMPSON
Albuquerque
I want to let my congressman know I don’t want them wasting another dime of taxpayer money on this tinfoil-hattery.
Chayal Boded
UNM community member
Every American must believe he or she has a reason to vote and that his or her vote will be counted. That issue should unite Left and Right. To say the various problems that have already been documented ultimately don’t change the results and therefore don’t really matter is unacceptable.
Some people may have gone too far in challenging this elections results. However, it may be worse to completely dismiss every complaint as “tin-foil hattery.”
In fact, there were too few voting machines in the urban areas that went for Kerry — does anyone have any idea how many people were turned away from the polls across the country? Or why more machines weren’t available when we all knew turnout would be a record? Is it acceptable to you that many people stood in the rain and cold for hours before voting?
Before the election, Republicans talked loudly about Democratic Party dirty tricks they were sure were in the works. After, some outside the Republican Party are worried it went the other way. All of us need to work together to make this process more reliable AND verifiable. The election of 2004 may not have shaken confidences the way 2000 did, but it did not put all concerns to rest.
On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, defied the law by refusing to give up her seat to a white man aboard a Montgomery, Ala., city bus. Parks was arrested, sparking a year-long boycott of the buses by blacks.
Based on online lookups, the #1 Word of the Year for 2004 was
Blog – noun [short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer
A Merriam-Webster spokesman said it was not possible to say how many times blog had been looked up on its Web sites but that from July onward, the word received tens of thousands of hits per month.
Blog will be a new entry in the 2005 version of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.
The prospect of one religious outlook dominating secular policy in America deeply worried the founders of our Constitution. While most founders professed religious faith, they understood that the tyranny of one religion over all others constituted a pernicious form of oppression, as anyone familiar with the religious brutalities of European history would attest. That’s why the Constitution’s First Amendment has what is known as the “establishment clause,” which forbids an official, or unofficial, state religion in America.
Nowhere in the Constitution are the words “separation of church and state” found. They are unnecessary. The establishment clause states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
When one religious point of view has political dominance in lawmaking circles, it threatens the free exercise of all other religions and spiritual points of view. The founders wanted nothing to do with such a theocratic setup, in which one religion or coalition of religious persuasions made laws favorable only to that point of view.
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams