Smoking and cellphones
Now that restaurants no longer have a smoking area, I think they should use that area for people with cellphones. It is very annoying to sit next to people carrying on inane conversations on their phones. And it’s bad enough when adults do it, but we were recently seated next to a family with a 9-year-old girl who was on her phone talking to her friends.
Donna J. Johnson, Arvada
Goodwill to immigrants
Re: “Let goodwill drive the discussion,” July 6 guest commentary.
We are grateful to Catholic Archbishop Charles J. Chaput and Bishop Michael J. Sheridan for their articulate call to higher ground in the immigration debate among Colorado legislators.
Goodwill, as the bishops suggest, can indeed help us all avoid enforcement at the expense of real reform.
Immigration, refugee and asylum policies express who we are as a nation, influence the nation’s future character, and affect the lives of millions of people. Our debate must take into account the complexity of issues, the diversity of interests, and the relative justice of laws at the same time that it counters appeals rooted in hostility, racism, prejudice, indifference and simplistic solutions.
Let decency and the common good prevail, for all who have the inalienable human right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Bishop Allan Bjornberg, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Denver
This letter was signed by 12 additional church officials, represented by the Colorado Council of Churches and the Interfaith Alliance.
Flag-burning legislation
Re: “Senate’s vote on banning flag burning,” July 5 Open Forum.
The readers supporting flag burning suffer from faulty logic. Every dictionary I checked said “speech” means “the faculty of uttering articulate sounds or words,” “expression of thought in words” or similar. That has been understood since time immemorial. There are no words expressed in burning the flag: that could mean anything from a burial of a worn- out old flag to – you name it.
If an inarticulate act of your choice could constitute constitutionally protected speech, then any act would be constitutionally permissible. Since the Constitution overrides mere law, nothing could be prohibited. If you think your neighbor is a punk and the world would be better off without him, you could claim a constitutionally protected right to murder him.
And you would be considered out of your mind.
K.A. Skala, Denver
Mallard Fillmore
Letter-writer Javid Djalili (July 6 Open Forum) takes Bruce Tinsley to task for his Mallard Fillmore cartoon denigrating the United Nations. Djalili doesn’t give the cartoonist enough credit. He should keep in mind that Tinsley is an American conservative. As such, he has three jokes (U.N., teachers, liberals). As a conservative, he struggles to emulate his intellectual ideals such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. A conservative cartoonist is like a pig trying to fly: You aren’t disappointed when he doesn’t do well – you just have to give him points for even trying to overcome his insurmountable limitations.
Sam Domenico, Golden
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