Mitt Romney’s faith and presidential candidacy
Re: “Faith & Romney,” July 17 news story.
I read with interest how evangelical Christians who preach of “Jesus’ love” are so against Mitt Romney because he is a Mormon, yet his position on many issues is like theirs. Freedom of religion is one of the mainstays of this country and it is intolerant and bigoted to not respect another’s beliefs. I would not vote for Romney because he is against research on stem cells that would be destroyed, is anti-choice and against gay unions. While I do not share his beliefs, I applaud his lasting marriage to the same woman, to their successful raising of five children and his freedom to believe as he wants.
Gayle Merves, Lone Tree
Instead of asking how Mitt Romney’s endless proclamations of faith and values square with his declaration that he would, as president, “double the size of Guantanamo,” The Denver Post has delivered a puff piece worthy of a campaign release. After viewing the misery brought to much of our nation and the world by the current occupant of the White House, you’d think by now most journalists would be skeptical of candidates who claim that their piety will guarantee wise and compassionate leadership.
Robert Ellis, Aurora
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If Mitt Romney becomes the Republican candidate for president, I won’t vote for him. It has nothing to do with his being Mormon, because that ought to be irrelevant. I simply don’t like his political views.
Nearly 50 years after candidate John Kennedy promised Houston Baptists that he wouldn’t take phone calls from the Pope, I can’t believe that Romney’s religious beliefs provoked a three-page article. How about three-page articles on the presidential candidates’ political views on the issues of the day? That would be worth The Post’s resources.
Conservative Christians state that their religious beliefs shouldn’t bar them from being considered for public office, and rightly so. So it’s hypocrisy for some of them to snub Romney because he’s allegedly heretical.
He’s not running for president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He’s not running to be head of Focus on the Family. He’s running for president of the United States. Judge him on his political views, past and present, not whether his religious beliefs meet criteria for religious orthodoxy.
Peter Gross, Denver
Tim Masters’ conviction
Re: “Sketchy evidence,” July 15 news story.
Your article about the conviction of Tim Masters was disturbing to this reader. He was convicted of the murder of Peggy Hettrick, and sentenced to life imprisonment, with no physical evidence tying him to the scene. Scarily, the main evidence against him (violent drawings, owning hunting knives, saving a newspaper article about the body) was as consistent with a poorly adjusted teenager who unluckily had a woman’s body left near his home as it is with someone who committed murder. It appears to me that Masters was charged, more than 10 years after the murder, because the police wanted to close the books on the case and he was the only suspect they had.
A complicated surgical procedural was performed on the victim. Yet, when a doctor (who lived about the same distance from the body as Masters did) was discovered to be a serial sex offender, the police and prosecutors took no interest in investigating whether he could have been involved in the murder and destroyed all evidence in the doctor’s case without viewing or testing it for any connection.
It is unfortunate that the prosecutors in the Masters case opposed saving or testing any evidence from the case that might contain DNA because no law required it. Police and prosecutors should remember that the goal of the justice system should be justice, not convictions. In a perfect world, prosecutors would always support DNA testing because innocent people should not be in prison and if the wrong person is in prison, then the actual perpetrator is still at large.
While DNA may one day exonerate Masters, it is unfortunate that science has to fix false convictions that our justice system creates.
Andrew Steinberg, Aurora
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Since when are citizens charged with proving their innocence, rather than prosecutors being required to prove guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt”? We will probably never know the truth, because of not only sloppy work, but intentionally selective and biased misuse of potential evidence by police, and the selling by prosecutors of asinine suppositions. Consequently there is no legitimate recourse but to free Tim Masters immediately.
Let us hope your article helps bring appropriate attention to this case and contributes to justice being served.
David King, Erie
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The Post describes Peggy Hettrick, murder victim, as “37, college dropout, barhopper and aspiring writer.” The officer who arrested Tim Masters, on the other hand, is a “deep-voiced, no-nonsense cop.”
Gosh, for a minute, I thought I was reading about a rape trial – in 1950! This is yellow journalism at its best. Lose the loaded labels, please.
Amy Boughner, Highlands Ranch
Federal labor legislation
Re: “Labor bill should be killed on return,” July 16 editorial.
Your editorial on the Employee Free Choice Act misses the point of the legislation entirely. Working people want unions and our country needs them, yet current labor law doesn’t give working people a real chance to form them.
More than half the people who don’t already have a union say they would join one tomorrow if given the chance. It’s no wonder. People who have unions earn 30 percent more than people who don’t and are much more likely to have health care and pensions.
But beyond being good for workers, unions are good for communities. Better wages and benefits through unions mean that more families can make it on their own, thus shifting the cost burden off the taxpayers’ backs.
Unions also raise professional standards by giving workers a say in decisions that affect the quality of the products they make and the services they deliver. Unions train more workers each year than any organization outside the U.S. military.
Then why is the rate of unionism so low? Because when workers decide to join together, employers respond with aggressive, and often illegal, anti-worker campaigns. Routinely, employers force workers to attend closed-door meetings, threaten to close the workplace and harass union supporters.
Working people want unions. Our communities – and our country – need them. We need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to restore workers’ freedom to form unions to bargain for a better life.
Tom Rutherford, Denver
Debating Colorado’s medical marijuana laws
Re: “The medical marijuana debate,” July 15 Perspective pro-con articles by Jessica Peck Corry and John Cooke.
Weld County Sheriff John Cooke should be commended for his recognition of the medical benefits of marijuana’s active ingredients.
This is a major step forward for the state’s law enforcement community. Equally noteworthy is Sheriff Cooke’s concern for the potential negative health effects of “smoked marijuana.” I lack professional medical training, but I agree that burning anything and then sucking down the fumes is probably not the best for your lungs.
Fortunately, the state medical marijuana amendment is silent about the methods of marijuana ingestion. You could just as well smoke it in your pipe or bake it into butter and brownies.
The downside is that many other competing drug laws equate a pound of pot brownies with a pound of pot itself – there is often no difference in legal penalties – even though the former may contain less than a tenth of an ounce of actual cultivated marijuana.
So while eating food prepared with marijuana is arguably less harmful to your health than smoking marijuana, it is far worse for your freedom. The end result of “smoked marijuana” as the dominant form of ingestion is but one side-effect of current drug policy.
Chris Maj, Denver
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There is one very significant omission in Sheriff John Cooke’s article where he argues that medicinal marijuana is the stalking horse for full legalization.
Nowhere does he mention any negative consequences stemming from Colorado’s medicinal marijuana amendments and initiatives. I couldn’t find anything in Cooke’s article of how the new medical marijuana policies have made his work more difficult, or that crime has spiked as a result, or that there has been a run on the emergency rooms, or anything else out of the ordinary. Cooke does not mention a single negative consequence of the law, and I suspect he would let us know in a hurry if there were any.
But there aren’t. Everything has proceeded in an orderly manner. What Cooke does display as he flails and wildly accuses drug policy organizations of nefarious designs, is an animus toward medical marijuana, and totally without providing anything to show why.
It takes more than just pounding the table; facts are required and Cooke hasn’t provided any. From his article, it can be inferred that medical marijuana regulation has been successfully implemented in Colorado.
Harry Fisher, Woodland Hills
TO THE POINT
In his July 10 column discussing home sizes, Ed Quillen refers to poor people as “economically challenged.” Homeless people might be considered “abode deficient.”
John L. Davis, Denver
President Bush recently stated at a press conference that we cannot afford to lose the war in Iraq.
Considering the loss of lives of our military, the pain, and the cost of this conflict, perhaps we cannot afford to win.
Howard Berger, Denver
Our president opened a bee’s nest in Iraq and does not know how to close it. Our soldiers are fighting a war that is not for America. It is time for them to come home. We can’t afford to keep this up any longer.
Evelyn Davis, Parker
Seeing how the health care systems work in countries like Canada, France and Great Britian makes me feel ashamed to be an American. We pride ourselves on being such a great country, but clearly we are not.
Electra Hunter, Morrison
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