Letters To The Editor
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Clinton, a fall guy for all seasons
Imagine, a so-called president of the United States sitting in the Oval Office while those Chinese commies are murdering thousands in Tiananmen Square, Beijing … What!?
You say George Bush was president when that massacre happened? Wow! Were we fortunate to have someone as adept as Bush making our foreign policy before, during and after that terrible event. We had that able secretary of state, James Baker, giving his sage advice. I’ll bet those guys set those commies straight.
They did what? Nothing? Well, it must have happened just before they left office, right? You say it happened in June, 1989? Surely they did something during the three and a half years remaining in their term of office. They did nothing?
June, 1989 - that is even before Bush invaded Pananma. Who let Manuel Noriega get out of hand?
June, 1989 - that’s even before Bush had to rescue the emir of Kuwait and end the threat from Saddam Hussein. It sure is nice to know Saddam was defeated once and for all.
Please tell me that Clinton inherited a tranquil, idyllic, Yugoslavia. You say Bush imposed the arms embargo and declared Yugoslavia an impossible mess?
Then it must have been Clinton who sent our troops to Somalia. Bush did that, too?
Surely we can blame everything bad that happened during Bush’s four years on the terrible president who preceded him. You finally got it right!
Boy, that Clinton! Roy M. Wakefield St. John, Wash.
Founders did intend Christian nation
As I read the letter by Richard T. Morton (“Commissioners take it on faith, period,” Nov. 11), I thought it necessary to clear up a little confusion he has with what our Constitution states, and to present the facts as found in historical documents.
Morton wrongly assumes that the Constitution declares a separation of church and state. There is no such statement in the Constitution. This term came from a personal letter from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association, to calm their fears that the government was about to choose a single Christian denomination as a state denomination, as had been the case in England.
Jefferson borrowed the term from a famous Baptist minister who said, “… the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall…” It sounds to me like the church needed to be protected from the state in its ever growing propensity to grab power from the people, not the state needing protection from the church, as is commonly thought.
Morton might also like to check out what the final English version of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli says. It was approved by the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1997 and ratified by President John Adams on June 10, 1797. The U.S. copy of the Arabic version lacks the entire 11th article of the section he refers to. I still insist that this is a nation founded on Christianity, as our founding fathers have repeatedly said. Mike Matiska Spokane
Freedoms slip sliding away
Re: the recent cartoons of staff cartoonist Milt Priggee. He will only be satisfied when we are all in jail because the government has to control everything we do and all the things that make us unsafe.
I have a brain and I can use that brain to decide for myself if something is unsafe. I know there are people who do things normal law-abiding citizens wouldn’t, like not wearing seat belts, crossing the street carelessly or not wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle.
Maybe we should outlaw the use of diaper pins because you could poke yourself. How about banning chocolate cake, because we all know it could lead to obesity and that could lead to heart disease that could kill us? What if we outlawed chocolate cake that could lead to black markets? I guess we might as well live in Russia or Red China because our Constitution does not mean anything to us any more.
What happened to our America? Where are the kind of people who made the freedoms we take for granted? Maybe they are home reading this and deciding not to vote on any more laws that would restrict any more of our freedoms.
It’s time to say that if you can’t govern yourself, go to a country that will decide everything for you. Marcie M. Coleman Spokane
Runny noses more newsy than scandal?
For years, I’ve wondered why The Spokesman-Review’s crack news gatherers so often end up printing such insignificant reports and stories from obscure and distant places. This is the case on numerous occasions when much more relevant, interesting and informative news stories are available and show up on television, radio and other print media.
Today, your crack news reporters have sniffed out a story emanating from an apparent survey finding that Clinton’s home base, Little Rock, has 29 percent more cases of the “sniffles” than among America’s “sickest cities.” You printed this story when right under your noses was another story from that runny nose city about a Little Rock auto repair shop cracking open the trunk of a vehicle they had stored in their wrecking yard for 10 years and discovering a cache of Whitewater documents, including a cashier’s check for $20,600 made out to Bill Clinton, coincidentally from Madison Guarantee and Loan - a declared target in the Whitewater Investigation.
Apparently, the special prosecutor intends to subpoena these documents to ascertain their potential relevance to his investigation into the Madison Guarantee and Loan aspect of the Whitewater Investigation.
This is typical of your paper’s propensity to selectively manage your news output congruent with your usual pro Clinton protectionism approach. Turning up your journalistic nose on this Whitewater-related story and running with the runny nose story strongly smells of just that rationale. Ken Van Buskirk Spokane
OTHER TOPICS
Doctors’ indifference prolongs pain
I read with interest the letter from the migraine sufferer, “Don’t get sick on a Sunday.” Then I read Dr. Craig Olson’s weak defense of the treatment this man received at his minor emergency clinic.
As a person who has frequent severe migraines, I end up at an emergency room about once a year, when I simply cannot bear any more excruciating pain. It seems to me that this pain is more urgent than a bladder infection and could be attended to more quickly than depression. Except, of course, if the depressed person is suicidal.
I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect relief from the kind of pain where I pray to die. I’ve had to wait for treatment, too, and I think it’s because doctors and nurses become insensitive to pain that doesn’t show and eludes medical testing.
Perhaps these good men and women would become more compassionate if they had to endure this pain just once. Dianne L. Cook Spokane
You should get what you pay for
As a member for 11 years of the Best of Broadway series, I read with interest staff writer Jim Kershner’s review of my favorite of favorites, “West Side Story.”
I was sorry to hear about the substitutions of the cast, but thought it would all be straightened out by the Oct. 30 performance, but no such luck. Eight or 10 substitutions were announced before the show.
I heard it was a superb show. The dancing could not have been better, the set and scenes were lovely, but something was off.
Why did Spokane get the shaft on this production? “Les Mis,’ “How to Succeed in Business,” etc., all had their best people perform.
We paid for the best in the touring company and we should have been able to see it. Patricia L. Head Spokane
S-R resorted to tabloid journalism
The Spokesman-Review should feel ashamed over its unwarranted invasion of privacy into Dr. Mark Frazier’s personal tragedies.
What needless heartache has been inflicted on innocent family members because of The Spokesman-Review’s support of tabloid journalism?
The article’s detailed chronology of Frazier’s personal life was appalling. How would the editorial board feel about such scrutiny and then publication of the personal affairs of its members?
In future stories, would The Spokesman-Review remember a few principles of common decency and professional journalism? Lynn A. Watts Spokane