The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Other People's Money

6.9.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 5)

WORTH A LOOK
Re: Christopher Orlet's Disaster Spring:

Actually, there already is a powerful documentary on the genocide in Darfur. It is entitled "The Devil Came on Horseback." It was written by Brian Steidle, an unarmed military observer and retired Marine. It has been shown on cable channels (History or Discovery) and is available for sale as a DVD and a book. Here's a link to a review of the film.

Mr. Orlet is entirely correct, though, it should be shown once a week on the broadcast networks, if for no other reason than to graphically demonstrate how corrupt and impotent the United Nations is as a "peacekeeping" force.
-- Patrick Slamon

LIMOUSINE BORDERS
Re: Ben Lerner's Green Borders:

Ben Lerner does us all a service by pointing out how the Sierra Club and the Defenders of Wildlife are much more interested in defending the standard limousine liberal agenda, including open borders, than in defending wildlife. When we lived in San Diego in the eighties the California Coastal Commission kept taxpayers from building houses or roads where coastal California gnatcatchers, Least Bell's vireos, or kangaroo rats lived in the brush. But they fought attempts to clear out the illegal aliens' squatter camps on the land thus left vacant.
-- D.M. Duggan

OBJECTION
Re: Tom Wasney's letter (under "Coal Country") in Reader Mail's Cap-and-Tirade:

Mr. Wasney says that Lieberman-Warner isn't aimed at coal, just CO2. Generally, he's right.

But there's a "but." Given coal's significance in CO2 emissions and other air pollution, it's become environmentally fashionable to demonize coal, much like it was with nuclear power decades ago, but now using climate change as the platform. "Replace coal" is a polite slogan from its opponents. More energized opposition says, "Stop coal." Earthjustice says its goal is to make coal "an unacceptable energy source."

Calling coal the new battleground of global warming, the Los Angeles Times reported in an April 14 story how committed the opposition to new plants has become. "Every time a new coal-fired power plant is proposed anywhere in the United States, a lawyer from the Sierra Club or an allied environmental group is assigned to stop it, by any bureaucratic or legal means necessary."

Within the last year in Kansas, the state rejected an air-quality permit for two 700-MW coal-fired power plants because of CO2 emissions. This is the first instance of such denial based on CO2, not yet federally regulated, from these types of plants. The Sierra Club was instrumental in getting the permits denied.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me that coal, whether at existing power plants or proposed new plants, is in the cross-hairs of anyone who buys into an Al-Gore-fear-based perspective on climate change. And that includes Lieberman-Warner, I believe.
-- C. Kenna Amos
Princeton, West Virginia

DOUBLE TROUBLE
Re: Clinton W. Taylor's Dunderhead Diplomat:

Bill Richardson's passport as well as Jimmy Carter's should be revoked, and both should be prosecuted for treason. It is the President's job to conduct foreign policy, not the cranky and bitter politicians of old.

Let's start hammering these "obstacle jerks" to legitimate progress. We have one elected government in this country...not two. The other needs to be jailed.
-- Gene Hauber
Meshoppen, Pennsylvania

POWER OUTRAGE
Re: Willam Tucker's A Qualified "Yes" To Cap-and-Trade:

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Foreign Policy, Trade, Health Care, John McCain, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Mainstream Media, Business, Islam, Abortion, Environment, Global Warming, Constitution, Law, Supreme Court, Military, United Nations, NATO, Energy, Oil