Vacancy on the Supreme Court
While President Bush intends to “choose a nominee in a timely manner” to replace Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, I hope he will also do so in a responsible manner, conscious of the health of America’s women.
O’Connor’s resignation could shift the delicate balance of the Supreme Court that has long upheld a woman’s right to privacy and access to abortion. Doctors in the Four Corners region and around the country are deeply concerned about what this could mean for our patients. Many physicians remember seeing women suffer and die when abortion was illegal, and today we see how restrictions are harming women. Further restrictions on abortion would jeopardize women’s health and interfere with doctors’ ability to care for our patients.
We need a Supreme Court that supports our ability to care for America’s women, instead of standing in our way. President Bush can fulfill his obligation by nominating a justice who takes science and medicine seriously – and would not put politics ahead of public health.
Richard Grossman, M.D., Durango
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Re: “O’Connor honored nation’s liberties,” July 4 editorial.
On a few occasions, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor did honor the nation’s liberties. Unfortunately, she was more often one of the accomplices busily editing the Constitution and dismantling the liberty it guarantees.
She certainly wasn’t “protecting individual rights” when she inflicted racial discrimination on the University of Michigan, violating both the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Civil Rights law of 1964. She wasn’t “protecting individual rights” when she was imposing the myth of a “wall between church and state” on the schools. There is no such “wall” in the Constitution. All it says is that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
This country was established to assure people of their inalienable rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. O’Connor voted to deny life to a whole class of human being: the unborn.
If the constitutionally guaranteed liberty is to survive, this country cannot afford a clone of O’Connor on the Supreme Court. She wasn’t a reliable defender of liberty; she was an unprincipled, politically correct weather vane.
K.A. Skala, Denver
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Reading your July 4 editorial, I think Sandra Day O’Connor’s perfect replacement would be Hillary Rodham Clinton. Then Bush would save the Republicans from worrying about her in the next presidential election.
Tom Nichol, Estes Park
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Hold on to your hats, folks. Sandra Day O’Connor’s dissenting opinion in the recent eminent-domain ruling may be the last gasp for the middle class. It seems all that is now necessary for the government to take your property is a couple of city council members to get elected with rich backers.
I suggest we all pay close attention to the U.S. Senate over the weeks to come. The Supreme Court nominee that President Bush sends up for approval could be there for the rest of their life. If this president chooses to strut, as he is known to do, it is likely the court will be impacting your family’s constitutional rights for generations. One can only hope Bush takes some advice for a change and starts living up to his claim to be a “uniter.”
Stephen Bielfeldt, Lakewood
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We have an exceptional judiciary in Colorado. It would be fitting if the senators from this great state would appeal to the president to include our moderate judges for consideration for the seat vacated by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
Given the recent showdown over the president’s nominations for the federal bench, a dark-horse or compromise candidate might just have a fighting chance.
Matthew J. Casebolt, Denver
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Tom Minnery, vice president of Focus on the Family, said, “We have an opportunity to appoint a person who will interpret the Constitution as it was written rather than as the legal theories the law schools dictate.”
Did Minnery run for public office? Such a statement would assume that Minnery is the one making any judicial appointments.
Unless the Constitution has been altered by their right-wing demonics, the president makes any such appointment, followed by congressional approval.
When did Minnery’s voice become more important than mine or that of anyone else residing in Colorado? My voice may not be as quoted or as well known in the press, but as an American, my only true salvation left is my voice and I intend to use it long and loud.
Jeanne Zierk Moore, Denver
Response to Diane Carman column on Castle Rock case
Re: “Castle Rock ruling needs a response,” July 5 Diane Carman column.
The job of a columnist is to have an opinion. And, a good columnist first considers both sides of any story. This is something Diane Carman failed to do in her column about the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on a case involving the Castle Rock police.
If Carman had considered both sides of the story, she would have found what every other Denver Post reporter found – a less exciting version backed by police reports and taped phone calls.
Here’s what she failed to mention: Jessica Gonzales’ retraining order hadn’t been violated; Gonzales agreed that there had been no violation of her restraining order; and there was no cause to seek cross-jurisdictional assistance.
Regardless of these three things, the Castle Rock Police Department still met and talked to Gonzales several times throughout the evening and dedicated 50 percent of its police force to search for her estranged husband and children. These aren’t just opinions; these are facts backed by open records.
The murders by Simon Gonzales were a terrible tragedy, and changes to domestic violence laws may, or may not, be in order. However, the media needs to close its own loopholes, which allow one-sided reporting that trivializes the truth in search of a good soapbox.
Carrie McCausland, Castle Rock
The writer is a senior communications specialist for the Town of Castle Rock.
Protecting and respecting the U.S. flag and free speech
Re: “Flag-burning amendment would torch principles,” July 3 Fred Brown column.
Even though I am disgusted by those who burn our flag in protest, I completely agree with Fred Brown’s thoughtful column. I would add several more reasons it is a bad idea to criminalize such conduct.
First, prosecutorial discretion in determining what is a flag, what is burning, and the intent. Who wants an overzealous prosecutor looking through our garbage to see whether we had burned a flag – how about a cigarette burn on a 4th of July napkin with a flag? Too often have such super-patriot laws been used to persecute and harass innocent minorities and dissidents.
Second, where will we get the additional resources to investigate, prosecute, convict and imprison violators? We can’t keep drugs off the street!
Third, why should we ignore equally reprehensible disrespect for our country and flag? Why are people still flying the Confederate Battle Flag? The South lost and unconditionally surrendered. Hundreds of thousands of U.S. Army soldiers died keeping our country together and defeating the notion that a state could secede and had the right to enslave humans. Include the prohibition of displaying the Confederate Battle Flag (even as a part of a state’s flag) in the flag-burning amendment and let’s see how many Southern Republicans work to defeat it.
Guy Kelley, Fort Collins
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Re: “Burning issue needn’t be,” July 4 David Harsanyi column.
The hubris with which David Harsanyi so casually extols the “moral and universal superiority of the United States” lies at the very heart of the problem our enemies have with America. Indeed, our enemies view our flag as embodying wanton arrogance and excessive pride.
That’s the problem with symbols – their meanings cannot be controlled. To some, like our Founding Fathers, the flag represents the original 13 colonies, grouped in a new union, stars on a filed of blue, a new constellation. To others, like Frank Evans, a retired Navy commander, it represents the “purity of purpose … and the heights of pure democracy.” And yet to others, this same symbol represents arrogance and oppression.
While admitting flag burning is a form of dissent, Harsanyi elsewhere describes it as anti-American buffoonery, performed by obscene degenerates, assaulting our sensibilities. Have we come to this? Dissent is now obscene and degenerate?
To his credit, Harsanyi doesn’t think the flag requires the protection of a constitutional amendment, but he comes to this conclusion for the wrong reasons. If flag burning is dissent, it is de facto speech, and as such is protected by the Constitution. It is this speech which must be protected, not some colorful cloth object.
Your readers may want to note that the proper manner to dispose of a damaged or worn-out flag is to burn it. If burning a flag in dissent is outlawed, then what is illegal becomes the thoughts and intentions of the burner. Should this proposed amendment be passed, the flag will then represent – to this American, at least – a symbol of the thought police.
Ned Anson, Colorado Springs
Liberal media: A myth?
Re: “Another liberal column. Right?” July 3 George McClure column.
A liberal media doesn’t exist, according to George McClure. He mentions a few examples to prove his point. He implies that the mainstream media’s reporting of the Clinton/Lewinsky affair shows that the press was somehow fair and balanced. Yet he fails to explain that the press trivialized the entire shameful event as being about sex, and not about a president lying under oath, thus banking on the hope that the country would be less inclined to be judgmental.
Next, McClure cites the fact that Ward Churchill gets plenty of mention in the press, as if this proves anything. Where were the Colorado media before Churchill was exposed on Fox News? The media now portrays the Churchill debacle as a “free-speech issue.” Is bringing such disgrace upon the University of Colorado to be overlooked because a person can say whatever he feels? Of course Churchill has the right to speak freely – just as did Jane Fonda.
And the media has a right to take a position on defending his right to be an embarrassment to the taxpayers who pay much of Churchill’s salary. But neither has the right to call their position “fair and balanced.”
Denny Cannon, Littleton
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George McClure’s column hit a home run with me. It would be good for more Coloradans to read and listen between the lines a little more carefully before accepting, carte blanche, the rhetoric of left and right media hype.
Maybe it’s our culture that dictates that we, as the ultimate rooters for “our team,” need to rah-rah our side and boo the other side. Maybe we have a need to put the other guy down while convincing ourselves that our side has the right answer, darn it!
We, as a culture, have become so used to accepting screaming and finger-pointing as a way of life that we have all but forgotten what got us here 229 years after the Declaration of Independence. Issues such as the war in Iraq, the demand for energy, the emerging Chinese market and the control of our borders have become merely playing fields where both sides come to do battle and then go home, one side licking its wounds.
As a nation, we can no longer afford the luxury of never seeing to it that our national problems ever really get resolved, the rhetoric seemingly more important than the resolution. Our time is running out. Our budgets are busted. And still no resolutions on the horizon.
Can we really trust this two-party system? We can only look to ourselves for the answers, not the media.
Larry Disher, Wheat Ridge
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Note to George McClure: We conservatives will eagerly trade his bogeyman, Fox News, for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS/NPR, The New York and Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, The Denver Post, Newsweek, Time, USA Today … heck, we’ll even toss in the Rocky.
Oh, and we’ll also trade his laundry list of conservative commentators, people who make no secret of their biases and who offer only their opinions, for all the professional journalists who are supposed to be as objective in their reporting of news issues as they possibly can be.
Does McClure really not know the difference between what he does in a column and what an bona fide reporter is supposed to do?
J.M. Schell, Arvada
Log Cabin Republicans
Re: “Grand Old Party off course,” July 3 guest commentary.
Try as hard as they may, gay Republicans Patrick Guerriero and Daniel Merritt-LeSatz can’t hide their duplicity in their Party’s attempt to deny full rights for gays and lesbians.
At best, they are apologists for a political party that uses and abuses them, even as they try to sound moderate. At worst, they will bleed votes away from Democrats who put people first, not corporate profits and constitutional amendments to deny basic rights.
I would be ashamed to date my organization’s birth to an action of Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1978. Millions of people worldwide are suffering from HIV/AIDS due to President Reagan’s ignorance of science in the 1980s and his belief that this devastating disease was a gay man’s punishment for being gay.
Much of today’s right-wing hatred originated within the ranks of Reagan supporters. Frighteningly, Reagan’s GOP is less compassionate now than it was in the early 1980s. It’s too bad that these two gentlemen’s political ambitions are wasted in the Republican Party.
Tom Carllon, Lakewood
Suggestions for Denver Public Schools’ new chief
Re: “Mayor’s staff chief takes top job at DPS,” June 28 news story.
The choice of Michael Bennet as Denver Public Schools superintendent was a stroke of genius. Based upon my experience with the DPS school board, it’s an unexpected but welcome surprise.
As an occasional substitute teacher for DPS over the past 10 years, I hope he will take note of a few simple suggestions to ensure success. In my opinion – based upon my experience in DPS and other school districts – the most important issues for Bennet to succeed are:
1. Parental or family involvement. This is a serious problem within DPS. Without it, achievement goals will always be elusive.
2. Discipline and respect. These two concepts go hand-in-hand, and should also be a two-way street. Start at the early grades. It is an especially chronic problem at the middle-school level. Age and hormones are not an excuse.
3. Vocational education. Given the DPS dropout rate, the vocational programs within DPS are an embarrassment. They should be dramatically strengthened. Not only should DPS coordinate this effort with the private sector, but also with the community college system.
4. Leadership (or lack thereof). DPS, the public and especially the private sector communities at large have lacked the leadership to get involved in providing the mentoring and catalytic stimulus to sustain a turnaround in DPS. Hopefully, Bennet’s appointment will herald a new era of involvement in DPS by especially the private sector.
Steve Lustig, Greenwood Village
TO THE POINT: Short takes from readers
The chances of President Bush initiating measures to curb global warming are about as likely as the words “an actor with vast emotional range” being applied to Chuck Norris.
Jeff Wozer, Denver
Here in Denver, the cops handled the constant noise of illegal fireworks on the Fourth of July in their usual way – they did almost nothing. It’s unfortunate that inconsiderate people think it’s OK to annoy their neighbors with illegal noise. It’s worse that the cops do nothing about it.
Dale Reeves, Denver
I know I should not be surprised, especially since The Denver Post endorsed President Bush last fall, but shouldn’t the July 1 story “June deadly for troops in Iraq” have been on the front page and not Page 21A? I guess political “reality” takes a back seat to a story headlined “Forbidden fourteeners.”
Lori Baer, Lakewood
Conservative Republicans have long accused PBS and NPR of “liberal bias” and are now conducting and all-out campaign to eliminate them. If that goal is acheived, they can settle down to a good old-fashioned book burning.
Davida Knoff, Denver
Regarding the redesign of New York’s Freedom Tower: So, our architecture, urban design and streetscapes are to be dictated by terrorists. Who won?
Gretchen Terry Williams, Denver
First, our lame-duck governor decides to support the massive tax increases of pending Referenda C and D. The following month, he suddenly balks at the 28 percent tuition increase at CU. Come on, Billy – are you liberal, conservative or some newfound hybrid?
David Gouge, Lyons
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