Senate filibuster fight
Re: “Senate showdown – no need to go nuclear,” April 27 editorial.
The Post is right to argue for preserving Senate rules and advancing fair consideration of judicial nominees. But it is wrong to imply that doing both would require a compromise between the two poles of the current debate. The existing Senate rules already provide fair consideration of judicial nominees.
The proof is in the number your editorial cited. Of President Bush’s 215 nominees in his first term, 205 were confirmed. Ten were blocked. They got fair consideration, and they couldn’t pull five votes from the opposition.
If this fight was about fair consideration of judicial nominees, the Republican Senate majority would live by the same rules that protected them when they were in the minority.
Seth Henry, Longmont
Focus on Salazar
Re: “Salazar says he misspoke in calling Focus ‘anti-Christ,”‘ April 28 news story.
I do not necessarily agree with the tactics used by Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family any more than I necessarily agree with the rantings of Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado. Both individuals, however, have the right to freedom of speech, and to make their ideas known without being called names or slurs that reflect culturally charged expressions.
Sen. Ken Salazar should know this better than anyone else, being from a Latino family. I would have expected him to take the higher road and bid Dobson to rise to his level. Unfortunately he did not, and in the final measure resorted to the same tactics of name-calling that hate groups have employed for years.
Philip Atkinson, Westminster
“Anti-Christ” comments
Re: “Salazar skids off the high road,” April 29 editorial.
No, your editorial is wrong: Ken Salazar is not “off the high road” when he describes Focus on the Family as “the anti-Christ.” Anyone who lies in the name of Jesus Christ is an anti-Christ, and, based on the expensive lying and distorting ads and press releases of Dobson and his trained haters, I’d say Salazar’s description is just right. Dobson certainly feels free to use religion when he attacks Salazar and others and when he attempts to merge church and state into a single theocracy made in his own image. Why shouldn’t Salazar?
Stick to your guns, Ken. Don’t back down, don’t apologize to those who plot to destroy you and our beloved democracy.
Lloyd Worley, Greeley
Oil production, prices
Re: “Oil politics and conservation,” April 27 editorial.
I commend your editorial for its excellent insights into the complicated and often contradictory state of the Bush administration’s energy program.
However, one of the most important alternatives, domestic production of fuel for cars and light trucks, has been overlooked entirely. This is all the more amazing since the price of ethanol – a less polluting alternative to oil imports – now costs more than 30 cents less per gallon (based on Chicago fuel ethanol and unleaded wholesale prices) than gasoline. The administration’s proposed energy legislation does little to encourage wholesalers to make this fuel available to motorists. For those with late-model Suburbans, for example, a pump with E85 fuel would reduce the cost at the pump by 25 cents.
Robert McCullough, Portland, Ore.
