Nobody makes you read a columnist you don’t like
To the editor:
I must take issue with Robert Smith's Wednesday letter to the editor ("Who Is Doug Elfman?"). I take particular issue with Mr. Smith's statement that the editors "make us read his (Mr. Elfman's) 'entertainment' columns so we are exposed to his radical, far-left views."
I have subscribed to the Review-Journal for many, many years, and I have yet to feel compelled to read anything I don't care to read. I agree that many of the editorials are distasteful, especially to more liberal-minded readers, and I generally ignore them in favor of hard news.
I suggest to Mr. Smith that his stand is counter-productive. In a democratic society, it is a given that people are going to be exposed to views with which they disagree, and in a democratic society people are free to disagree, engage in discussion about or totally ignore those views.
I suggest that Mr. Smith lighten up and do what I do: Don't read Mr. Elfman's column.
Victor R. Kieser
LAS VEGAS
The cost of freedom
To the editor:
This is in response to the clueless, biased hit piece by columnist Doug Elfman, "Patriotism served with fear, loathing on the side," in Monday's Review-Journal. It is too bad that this column could not have been written by a fair and balanced journalist who understands what "freedom" means.
This was nothing but a typical left-wing description of a very patriotic and moving presentation, the "Freedom Concert," which was put on by Sean Hannity for a scholarship fund benefiting the kids of wounded and slain U.S. soldiers. In Mr. Elfman's description of the audience (implying that we were nothing but a bunch of out-of-touch, old fogies), he apparently missed the number of attendees standing when Mark Levin asked "how many in the audience are in the military, or are retired military, or in law enforcement?" If Mr. Elfman had not been out in the lobby purchasing a whipped-cream-topped Kool-Aid, he would have noticed that the majority of the audience was standing.
It is obvious that Mr. Elfman does not have a clue of what "freedom" means (see his last line). This audience understood what freedom is -- and its cost.
Warren Willis Sr.
LAS VEGAS
Staying the course
To the editor:
In response to Thomas Mitchell's Sunday column, "Today's words are tomorrow's history": Beautifully said! In these times of uncertainty and so many failures in Iraq, it takes one like Mr. Mitchell to say what he did in his column.
I know I am in the minority when I say that I still believe President Bush did the right thing in ousting Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, it all blew up in our faces. We're still there after five years, it's turned into a civil war, Iran seems to be getting in its licks by supplying and training insurgents, and getting the Iraqis standing up for themselves has been slow in coming. We do have to remember our country had growing pains when we first started out.
Yes, President Bush has made some bad calls, but at least he didn't sit on his hands after 9/11 and tried to do something for this country. One can argue that we were snookered by Saddam, making us think he had WMDs, and that due to bad intelligence, we were set up.
We took hit after hit during the Clinton administration -- the USS Cole, the American embassies in Africa -- until all this culminated with attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on that fateful day. No wonder al-Qaida attacked us on our soil. They figured we weren't going to do anything about it.
Last week on PBS, I watched a program about a tour of the carrier USS Nimitz. So many of the young sailors said they didn't know what they were doing there, patrolling the waters as backup to our troops in Iraq. It is so sad that they are too young to be aware of the lesson we learned in World War II, letting Hitler swallow up Europe until it was almost too late.
Osama bin Laden threw down the gauntlet on 9/11 by letting us know how much he hates our way of life, the freedom we enjoy. Hence, this war on terrorism is probably going to last a long time, because they are hell-bent on destroying us, economically or through terrorist tactics.
I am torn between whether we should stay in Iraq a little longer and pull out gradually, hoping they can stand alone, or leave tomorrow in view of all the government corruption we've heard about.
We've paid a big price in lives -- troops and civilians. Let us hope Iraq is not another Vietnam -- the minute we left, the North took over.
Ruth Marquez
HENDERSON
Democrats and energy
To the editor:
Like all other liberal Democrats, Rep. Shelley Berkley ignores the facts of the oil and gasoline shortages we face today, which are almost entirely due to her Nevada colleague, the hypocritical Sen. Harry Reid, and the environmentalists. They continue to oppose increasing our natural resource capabilities in Alaska, deep-water exploration and building more refineries.
They have cost the taxpayers millions and millions of dollars with their determined opposition to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility, and have put us at least 20 years behind all developing nations that are searching for oil and gas resources wherever they can drill a well -- even just a few miles off the Florida coast.
Rep. Berkley had a classic remark in the May 5 Las Vegas Sun, that "The Republican Congress and this president -- this oil and gas man president -- is fiddling like Nero when Rome burns." She refuses to realize that thanks to the environmentalists and a hypocritical senator from Nevada, they have kept this country dependent on foreign oil, that "they" have already succeeded in burning Rome, and we are left with nothing but a fiddle.
AL WENGERT
BOULDER CITY
Gimme, gimme, gimme
To the editor:
Less than 30 seconds into her "victory" speech in Indiana on Tuesday night, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton asked the crowd full of farmers, steel workers and homemakers for money.
I'm no politician, but it seems to me that when you've got $109 million in your personal checking account, and you're wearing a suit that costs more than most of your audience made last year, you might want to save the "gimme, gimme, gimme" section of your speech for the end.
No charge for the advice, senator. I feel your financial pain.
Paul Speirs
LAS VEGAS
Time to move out
To the editor:
The Governor's Mansion is the residence of the elected leader of the state of Nevada. The governor's wife is entitled to the title of first lady, and entitled to live in the mansion by virtue of her marital status.
When that marital status is on the brink of collapse she, not the governor, should move out of the mansion ("Governor not calling mansion his home," April 26 Review-Journal). Just because she maintains an office in the mansion does not give her the right to continue living there. The duties and functions of a first lady do not have the same importance or status as that of governor.
Andrea Kato
LAS VEGAS
Reality of divorce
To the editor:
I find it amusing that Dawn Gibbons has decided to remain first lady of Nevada even though her husband, Gov. Jim Gibbons, has filed for divorce ("First lady holds onto role," Tuesday Review-Journal). I don't remember seeing her name on the ballot.
The citizens of this state elected her husband, not her. If Jim Gibbons is no longer her husband, she is no longer first lady of Nevada.
Steve Cross
HENDERSON
