The American Spectator

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Left in the Cold

1.21.04 @ 12:01AM

YANKEE DOODLE
Re: Lawrence Henry's Cold Day:

One point Lawrence Henry doesn't dwell on enough is WHY? Lucky for him, Bud's missing school was covered by his Dad's working out of the home. But why did Massachusetts crumble to the weather like Washington, D.C. on a three-inch snow day? I'm embarrassed. The "Hearty Yankee" theme is replaced by total wussification.

The most common explanation was that Dick and Jane might freeze their keisters off waiting for the bus. That might be true, but the -10 degrees that morning was preceded by -3 and -6 the two previous mornings. If anything, we all figured out after two days of practice. So, who made the decision? Bus companies? Teachers? Certainly not the working parents that had to take the day off to watch their kids.

Meanwhile, a local radio station and sports bar ran a contest that afternoon where Patriots playoff tickets would be awarded to the man and woman who could stand outside the longest only in a bathing suit. The EMT's on hand had to call it off after 15 minutes, worrying that someone might seriously hurt themselves. Now that's the New England spirit. The powers that be that started the 4-day-weekend school cancellations should be ashamed of themselves. They probably rooted for the Colts anyway -- their call was very Peyton Manning-like.
-- William H. Stewart
Boston, Massachusetts

BORK AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
Re; Tracy Robinson's Bork's Law:

Must point out to the author of this piece -- the Honorable Robert H. Bork is not alone in his hermeneutic for interpretation of Constitutional Law. But Robert H. Bork rightly reflects the views of such founding fathers as James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, James Wilson, and later Justice Joseph Story -- and I dare claim many others residing in and active in our government and judiciary prior to FDR's reconstruction of the Supreme Court 1937-41. This was prior to the fraud of Everson v. Board of Education, 1947, when fellow travelers of the Soviet Communist system (ACLU attorney Leo Pfeffer, and Jurist Felix Frankfurter) worked with the Ku Klux Klansman Hugo Black, and a majority of jurists appointed by FDR to change the Constitution by changing the Court. Fraud was instituted as legal precedent and America lost sight of our Constitution. Can it be restored? I do not know -- but not without a struggle.

My position is gleaned from Robert Bork's works The Tempting of America andSlouching Toward Gomorrah and Philip Hamburger's Separation of Church and State; John Eidsmoe's The Christian Legal Advisor and Christianity and the Constitution; David Barton's Original Intent; Bernard Bailyn's Debate on the Constitution; Joseph Story's A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States and similar works.
-- unsigned

LOSING IT
Re: Shawn Macomber's Rumbles in the Granite State and David Hogberg's A Night at the Caucus:

Sitting up here in the cold north and just starting to thaw out, I must say I derived great pleasure by the trouncing of Dean in Iowa. It is a bright spot in an otherwise bleak winter. Sadly, I was unable to watch his descent into the absurd due to having to work nights to pay my Dean imposed state taxes (after all, I am retired from IBM and one of those "rich" people he likes to target, that is I make more than $10,000/yr.)

Is Dean finished or is this merely a bump in the road for him? As Shawn McComber pointed out, the key was how Dean handled defeat, especially a bad one like this. Dr. Dean is done, tout fini. It isn't the fact he lost the primary, it is the way he handled the loss. He has shown the nation what a lot of us thinking Vermonters have known for a long time up here. Dean is a very irrational person when things don't go his way. Just think of this person as having his fingers on the buttons of the biggest nuclear arsenal on earth or with the ability to affect the economy with a single mismove or statement. Imagine him in sensitive talks with another head of state and losing it. I think the Democrats in Iowa thought about that too and they sent Dean a message. That message is, "Get lost."
-- Pete Chagnon
Vermont

I have a feeling that Dean's scream may become his equivalent of Muskie's tears. If he can't control himself when he hits a bump on the road to the White House, how can he possibly control himself when he hits his first crisis as President?
-- Elizabeth Knott

After viewing several days of the ongoing circus and the clowns I pray more than ever than George Bush is reelected in November. The hate and vicious rhetoric that has been the sole platform of the democratic candidates is beyond understanding. John Edwards has been much more civil. Dean acts like he has gone over the edge and does not seem to be able to control his emotions. Kerry cannot be himself -- he has to rely solely on his past record in Vietnam. Yes, he is to be commended for his service record but that does not make him a better candidate for running the country. Clark is clueless. If Clark were ever to occupy the White House he would have to rely on his benefactors -- the Clintons -- to tell him what to do. Maybe that is the whole plan there. It just seems to me that they are more interested in occupying the White House than how they get there. It's too bad they couldn't run a clean, fact focusing caucus instead of the hate word-mongering and lies that show their true colors.
-- Jane
Connecticut

ROTTEN TO THE CORE
Re: Neil Hrab's An Apple a Day:

Neil Hrab's "An Apple a Day" brought back a lot of sad memories for me. Fifteen years ago I was a young agricultural economist working for a consulting firm when the Alar '"scandal" hit. A juice manufacturer hired our firm and I was assigned to do an economic impact study of the apple portion of the domestic fruit industry. It was an ugly scene.

Alar was an expensive product, and as Hrab pointed out, made apples look nice, and was used only by those farmers intending to put apples into the table fruit market. But the Natural Resources Defense Council's report, and the subsequent media coverage, cited again and again that children drank so much apple juice they could get multiples and factors of more exposure to this "dangerous" uhhhhh… "pesticide." (I actually saw it called that most of the time. For a while I even kept track of those media outlets that made, and then bothered to correct, this error. Few ever did.)

Letter to the Editor

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