The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Tough Sledding

2.27.07 @ 12:01AM

HEADED DOWNHILL
Re: Doug Bandow's Solving the Safe Sledding Crisis:

This would actually be funny if this kind of nonsense did not go on inside of Washington.
-- Anthony Mastroserio
Skillman, New Jersey

Here in Kanukistan we already have someone agitating for a law demanding that everyone who sleds be forced to wear a helmet. TWO children were killed in Eastern Kanukistan in the past three years -- hence the need for a new law.

Unfortunately a kid who was hot-dogging on a snowboard died this weekend. Even more unfortunately, despite the Marching Mommies' Press Release stating that he would have lived if only he'd been wearing a helmet, the coroner in fact stated that the child died of a brain aneurysm and a helmet would not have done him a bit of good.

But hey, when your country is going down for the third time, why not focus on those things that really matter?
-- Kate Shaw
Behind the Lines in Kanukistan
Toronto, Ontario

Sledding safety? Is this a real problem? Is this an article from The Onion? Why, if anyone would have tried to tell me I could not go sledding down North 4th and G St. hill in Tacoma, Washington without a helmet or other prescribed safety thingies I'd have pelted them with snowballs filled with rocks! I had the fastest Radio Flyer sled on "the hill" taking me from top of G St. to Carr St. (about 11 blocks), the rails of my sled shooting blue sparks like a 4th of July sparkler. No siree bob! But am I really getting the point of Mr. Bandow's article or just blinded by the headline "Solving the Sledding Crisis"? I mutter.
-- Clasina J. Segura
New Iberia, Louisiana

LOVE it, but PLEASE do not give anyone in government any ideas on how to spend my money, they do good enough on their own. The bad part of this is as I am reading it I am thinking, "Yep, this sounds like something government would do." But just wait a few years and if Gore is correct there will be global warming and we can be like Tahiti. What a joke.
-- Elaine Kyle

Very cute, and unfortunately, very believable. I wouldn't put it past the control freaks on either side of the aisle to come up with bigger and "better" ways of getting into every aspect of our lives along these lines. I remember talk about how dangerous sleds are back when I was a kid, and I'm 53.

BTW, any lack of snow due to global warm... err, climate change won't stop the danger. Check out sand tobogganing. No helmets and not even a fluffy parka for protection. The horror!
-- Karl F. Auerbach
Eden, Utah

What? April Fool's Day columns so soon? The stunningly scary thing is that this is so believable!
-- Scott Martin
Madison, Wisconsin

ORGANIZED PLUNDER?
Re: Philip Klein's Union Blues:

Those companies and people weak enough to be intimidated into unionizing deserve what they get. The unions can organize all the want but the end result will be the organ these aphids suck their sustenance from will whither and die.

I may be in a bad mood this morning so Mr. Klein will understand when my first impulse was to itch slap his coworkers who could so easily be cowed into wearing a shirt. If this were me I would put up a mirror to their faces and recite "mirror, mirror in your face who is too weak to defend their dignity in this place".
-- Diamon Sforza
Bartlett, Illinois

As one who spent many years in business negotiating with unions I can say with a high degree of certainty that they are the most corrupt, venal and useless organizations in existence in the 21st century. By and large they exist, not to represent workers, but to support their leaders in their quest for riches and power. If the government ever prosecuted unions using the RICO statute, unions would disappear faster than the Mafia.

It seems to me a poor way for democrats to end the "culture of corruption" by splaying their figurative thighs and inviting the rapist to lie between them. But there are only two groups from whom Democrats get money: unions and Hollywood. They can ill afford to allow either to wither and die. And so, as they always have, democrats place politics before the rights and welfare of the represented.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Nancy Pelosi, Television, Business, Islam, Global Warming, Hollywood, Law, Military, Iraq, NATO, North Korea, Oil, Unions