The American Spectator

DRINK UP!
Re: Jacob Grier’s Sweet 21:

One should not be surprised by Mr. Bloomberg’s overbearing actions to ban smoking in bars and restaurants and to mandate posting nutritional information in restaurants. He believes himself indispensable and smarter than the rest of us. Witness his conspiring with certain members of the City Council to undo the term limits law that New York City voters had put in place, so that he might run for an unprecedented third term. Hugo Chavez has nothing on him when it comes to their contempt for the people in their disgusting lust for power. Individuals like Bloomberg and Chavez who don’t think the rules apply to them are dangerous.  
— Paul DeSisto
Cedar Grove, New Jersey

Thank you for your honest discussion around contemporary prohibition. I’ll be honest, as I first started into your article I figured I would end up e-mailing with admonishment because of the common conservative reaction to support the War on Drugs. 

Freedom means freedom to do the wrong thing. Maybe more people need to remember that.
— Charles Campbell
Austin, Texas

Prohibition ended 75 years ago today. Those persons who have lost loved ones to drunk drivers are not celebrating today.
— Michael Skaggs
Murray, Kentucky

THE BIG FIX
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Back to the Wilderness:

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. certainly knows Chicago, “The City That Works.” I am not so sure you’ll be able to get a parking ticket “fixed” in the Oval Office, but Chicagoans are betting that insiders from Bridgeport (Daley’s 11th Ward) will soon be taking over federal contracts now granted to Bechtel, Haliburton, Boeing, Blackwater et al.
— Jack Hughes
(2nd Ward)
Chicago, Illinois

SHOCK AND PSHAW:
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Lying at State:

I read this piece on Mrs. Clinton with no little amusement. The author is clearly shocked — SHOCKED! — that such a prevaricator should become Secretary of State.

But please consider: for nearly a quarter of a century now, essentially all of our public discourse has been based on lies — from Waco to warming, from Kosovo to carbon, from chads to churches, from gays to Guantanamo. Kennan famously wrote about Soviet society as completely dependent on continuing lies; we here now have Pravda and Izvestia without (yet) any Stalin.

So Mrs. Clinton is absolutely perfect as our public representative abroad.
— Craig Goodrich
Las Vegas, Nevada

REFERENCES THAT STING
Re: Larry Thornberry’s Major Major Steps Down:

Mr. Thornberry opens his fine essay with a reference to Catch-22 and goes to demonstrate the brilliance that W., Karl Rove, et al. displayed in putting up Mel Martinez for the open Senate seat from Florida. A more fitting novel cum movie might have been Jimmy Breslin’s The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.
— Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York  

RIGHT IN TUNE
Re: Paul Chesser’s The Other Side of Genocide:

The Left for years now has trivialized genocide by citing the ‘genocide of poverty’ or the ‘genocide of loss of culture.’ I would submit to you that the reason the Left says naught about Cambodia is thus; a substantial reduction in population and a return to a sustainable non-invasive agrarian life style is precisely the goal the Left has for all the nations of the earth. The fact that this happened ‘over seas and far, far away’ to the already ‘over-populated Other’ only makes it easier to dismiss.
— Don