The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Snap Judgments

5.14.07 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 5)

Mr. Henry fails to mention the ubiquity of "diamond lanes," commonly called high occupancy vehicle lanes. The ostensible purpose of the lanes is to encourage car pooling. The result is the same as Carter's even-odd day gasoline sales. In that case people went from an average of half a tank of gas in their cars to filling up at every opportunity, thus placing an inordinate demand on supply. Similarly, the incentive for car pooling assumes that the cost in time and money for finding people in your neighborhood who are going to work in relatively close proximity and have the same work schedule has proven to be, shall we say, less than successful. The result is a reduction in highway capacity of from 20-40%, increased travel time, increased pollution and increased law enforcement. Does anybody here know how to play this game?
-- Roy Lofquist

REQUESTING QUIET
Re: Paul Beston's Rail Quiet:

I think there's a mandate out there waiting to be exercised, for Quiet Please franchised hotels, restaurants, libraries, lounges and airlines. The last time I went to a public library, there were four children playing video games on the library computers and they were shouting at each other although they were sitting side by side. Borders is quieter than that library as nobody seems to bring their children there.

I taught my kids "seen and not heard" when they were young and they are capable of amusing themselves without making a sound, now that they are adults. The trick is teaching people that they're not living in the World of One. There are ways to do this.

There's nothing that will teach a blabberjabber with a cell phone how conspicuous he is like a three year old in the next seat loudly repeating everything he says. "Mommy, that man said his boss is a *&^%head!" in piercing childlike tones is an encouragement to get up and move or tune up his language that nobody can resist.
-- Kate Shaw
Toronto, Ontario

MELAMINE ALERT
Re: Doug Bandow's Assessing the Chinese Threat:

Amazing. Doug Bandow writes an entire article about our economic relationship with China without even a passing reference to the Chinese economy's poisoning of Americans. China's food exports to us are rejected for adulteration, harmful additives, etc. more than all other countries combined -- and our watchguards at the border are only checking one per-cent of those imports! Melamine, anyone? That Chinese additive poisoning and killing U.S. pets, now sneaking into the human food supply, is being treated as just an unfortunate mistake. However, it seems worth notice that melamine will give an increased protein measurement to a product without the protein being there. This saves the manufacturer money, folks. China sent the melamine-adulterated food products to the U.S. marked "industrial use only" -- even though they were shipped to food manufacturers. Nothing suspicious there. The melamine has begun infiltrating our human food supply. The FDA announces that human food is totally safe -- even as they send a warning to their own staff (involved in checking for melamine) to wear gloves and face masks because melamine is an extremely potent carcinogen. Our own government is downplaying the larger and continuing overall additive and adulteration threat because there's just too darn much money and there are too many U.S. businesses involved. Clever people, those Chinese.
-- Lawrence Chisholm
West Virginia

Doug Bandow: "First, China is no longer communist in the traditional sense."

No, but if you don't think the way the authoritarian government wants you to think, the leadership tells someone to fire a rifle bullet into your brain. And then the profit-loving government charges your family for the funeral AND the bullet.

So yes, let's not automatically assume China is an enemy or even Communist. But it's far from a democratic place. And it's the democracies that have proven to be our best friends. Even if we have to force them to accept Democracy.
-- Lloyd Daub
Greenfield, Wisconsin

NO RADICAL SHIFT
Re: Christopher Orlet's An About-Face on Guns:

What your story and the New York Times article that inspired it both left out is the fact that this "about-face" on the meaning of the Second Amendment is not legal scholars taking a new direction -- as implied in both articles -- but rather legal scholars returning to the long-held, traditional position on this issue. The idea of the Second Amendment being a "collective" right, applying only to the National Guard, is a fairly recent development.

Judges and scholars only began espousing this position in the mid 20th century as a way around an amendment which interfered with their mistrust of an armed populace. Indeed, the shift began with concerns about freed blacks being able to exercise a right to arms as expressed in the Dred Scott decision and later in Cruickshank.

An honest reading of Miller v. US, the case that is often used as the basis of the collective right argument, reveals that such an interpretation can only be found by using the most outrageous of mental contortions and dishonesty.

If the ACLU and so-called "liberal" jurists were to apply the same liberal interpretation to the Second Amendment that they apply to the rest of the Bill of Rights, every citizen would be required to own and carry arms and we'd be able to keep unregistered Howitzers in the back yard.
-- Jeff Knox
Director of Operations
The Firearms Coalition

Letter to the Editor

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