LETTERS

He does support life

Re Mary Paal’s recent letter: She began with a reference to Paul Greenberg’s column “Witness,” and said that it gave his perspective on the 2013 March for Life at the state Capitol.

The editorial note at the beginning of “Witness” says it was based on the text of Greenberg’s message at the march. The column gave his perspective about life itself. His words were similar to a message that he gave when he received the Human Life Foundation’s Great Defender of Life award in 2011.

In the column, Greenberg explained why he had changed from being pro-choice to pro-life: “The trick is to speak of fetuses, not unborn children. So long as the victims are a faceless abstraction, anything can be done to them.

“Just don’t look too closely at those sonograms. The way I studied the first pictures of my first grandson. And was awestruck. We are indeed strangely and wondrously made.”

He said that the death toll of babies aborted in America has reached about 50 million since January 22, 1973: “It is a fact, and facts are stubborn things. Some even carry moral imperatives. And so I changed my mind, and changed sides. For a still small voice kept asking: Whose side are you on? Life or death? And it answered: Choose life.”

Greenberg truly supports life.

MARY LARMOYEUX PerryvilleGetting over a hurdle

After reading Lolo Jones’ comments about the smell in Fayetteville and not having to worry about wearing deodorant, here is something for her to think about. Has she ever smelled the odor of burnt skin? Maybe what she was really smelling was her own track burns from falling to the track after hitting hurdles in the Olympics and other important races. Just saying. JUNIOR PENNEY DeQueenUntoward prepositions

Both the lead editorial and John Brummett’s columns on a recent day referred incorrectly to the state’s landgrant college. It is the University of Arkansas. There is no “at” or “in” in the name of the institution, like UALR has (University of Arkansas at Little Rock).

Of course, there are bigger issues in the world, but it would add credibility to both writers if they would correctly identify the institution which they are criticizing. After all, how much trust can I have in the content of the piece if you cannot even get the name right?

Somewhere, an editor failed these writers.

STEPHEN DAWSON Little Rock Extremely humiliating

I was in another city last week, and the New York Times was furnished with the hotel room. There, on the front page, was a disparaging articleabout the recent laws passed by the Arkansas Legislature, which were characterized as unconstitutional and extreme. I guess similar articles appeared across America.

Our Legislature seems to be on the extreme side of American politics and is proving to be an embarrassment to the state as evidenced by such nationwide publicity. I doubt that industries will wish to move headquarters here as a result of this extremism.

It took decades for people to forget about the extremism of Orval Faubus and to take Arkansas seriously as a place to bring jobs. It seems as if the Legislature has placed us back in that position.

I am also concerned about what I have read will be likely hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees defending unconstitutional laws. Politicians say they don’t like big government and government spending, then they go and pass laws that require wasted money to pay lawyers, and get into everyone’s business, even tattoo art.

It will be a relief when these guys go back to the woods and spend their time hunting instead of legislating.

JIM PFEIFER Little RockAttacks are offensive

I am so tired of the negative remarks, editorials and statements about President Barack Obama that appear in your editorial pages. However, you reached a new low in publishing the cartoon portraying President Obama as a drug addict holding a giant syringe. How despicable.

Maybe you don’t want to print it, but the House of Representatives initiates all spending bills, not the president. Which president engaged our country in two wars without funding? Where were the cartoons then?

Your attacks on President Obama and the office he holds are truly offensive.

GRACE WATT SpringdaleWhat Constitution is

The editorial opposing Gov. Mike Beebe’s veto of the abortion ban, which I guess was written by Paul Greenberg, chastises the governor because his views come “disturbingly close to asserting that the Constitution is whatever a majority of the Supreme Court says it is at a given time.” Quite so; that is exactly what the Constitution is.

In 1798, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions in response to the failure of the national judiciary to declare the Alien and Sedition Acts unconstitutional. The resolutions asserted the right of individual state legislatures to constitutional review, declared the sedition acts unconstitutional and nullifiedthem. A few years later the Supreme Court responded in Marbury v. Madison. “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department,” wrote Chief Justice John Marshall, “to say what the law is.” A couple of centuries later, when President Richard Nixon tried to push an executive claim to constitutional review, the Supreme Court reminded him that only the courts exercise review. Judicial review is the cornerstone of the notion of rule of law. Without rule of law, there is only tyranny or anarchy.

Whether or not we agree with Roe v. Wade, if we accept the necessity of rule of law for a democracy, then it stands until the Supreme Court-not the Arkansas Legislature and not even the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette-says otherwise.

Pity our legislators seemingly failed American history. They’ve just wasted taxpayer money for two months.

STEWART DIPPEL ClarksvilleThe depth of hypocrisy

What a wonderful cartoon you recently ran on the editorial page from Michael Ramirez. He factually and simply explained with easily understood pictures the vast depth of hypocrisy in this administration’s Chicken Little scare campaign about the sequester.

I believe it is not evil Republicans or the undertaxed rich who have caused the problem, but massive government overspending, much on unconstitutional grounds. Small wonder that the same crowd seems to be the one screaming racism over any attempt to make our elections more honest.

Only a return to constitutional government will give our children a chance of enjoying the fruits of American culture, rather than sinking into the morass of Euro-socialism, with its declining lifestyle and diminishing freedom.

KARL T. KIMBALL Little Rock