Scared and lazy? Yep
Just as I was recovering from a debilitating personality disorder caused by Hillary calling me a deplorable a couple of years ago, here is Howell Medders calling me scared and lazy. Darn right, I am scared. Just look at mob rule in Portland, Ore. Eric Holder said when they go low, we will kick them. And there is the Queen of Scaredness telling her followers to harass Republicans in restaurants and gather a crowd at gas stations to harass them. Then Hillary fuels the fire by saying she cannot be civil to those who oppose her views.
What a country! Where is civility? It won't come soon. Democrat Congressman Nadler of New York is already talking about impeaching President Trump and Justice Kavanaugh--and they haven't even won the House yet. Someone needs to tell Mr. Nadler that no one is going to be removed from office as long as the Senate remains Republican.
Scared? Yes. Lazy? Yes (at my age I am entitled). Yes, Mr. Medders pegged me right. I am scared and lazy. And I sure hope no one heeds Mr. Medders' suggestion that taxes be raised.
RUSS BAILEY
Little Rock
Hill stuck in the past
French Hill must be confused. The AETN broadcast debate on Oct. 9 was supposed to be between Hill, Clarke Tucker and Joe Ryne Swafford, who appeared dazed.
But Hill kept mentioning former President Obama, as though the topic was 2008, not 2018. At one point Hill revised history when he referred to a wet blanket Obama supposedly left behind, a strained metaphor.
Had this been 2008 or 2010, the former president might have reminded Hill that George W. Bush left an economic disaster in his wake. Weak regulations had allowed major banks, "too large to fail," to collapse our economy. A huge infusion of money kept many banks afloat, and the U.S. and world from falling off the economic cliff.
Hill returned from the past when he took credit for last year's tax break, but not its current and impending consequences. Some economists call the break a sugar high. Others call it the largest theft of wealth stolen from the middle class, a heist on behalf of the extremely rich Hill helped pull off.
Thanks to Hill, the middle class received chump change and an exaggerated narrative of how well the economy is banging away. While more folks may be working, gnawing at their heels are inflation and a panicking Wall Street because of a potential economic tsunami heading our way.
Millions of working Americans with 401(k)s are suffering large losses while groceries, fuel, cars, houses and loans are costing consumers more than their tax breaks added to their wallets.
No wonder Hill wants us to look at the past. If he can keep our attention there through November, he'll return to the swamp he desires to toss to his favorites all the gifts their dark donations will have earned.
BOB REYNOLDS
Conway
Coordinated outrage
Suddenly it is the common tar brush of the GOP: "mob rule." I cannot offer an exhaustive count of those lately employing the phrase, but it is clearly the majority's cynically deployed tactical label. One imagines a private caucus to coordinate their remarks. They want citizens and voters to fear, not just despise, those who oppose Judge Kavanaugh.
In a single interview, Senator Cotton wishes us to see a likeness of the Kavanaugh resistance to Stalinist show trials (communist) and to the McCarthy hearings (virulently and dementedly anti-communist). Surely the senator, or those paraphrasing his remarks, knows that both comparisons are absurd, hysterically overstated. No one in Washington has been disappeared or shot over this court nomination, and even the judge, whose reputation has certainly suffered some dents, has not been blacklisted with the devastating effects visited upon Joseph McCarthy's targets.
It is vitally important for the majority party to admit that dissent is an inalienable right of the American people, and that the abridgment of this right will not stand the people's objection, just as it cannot stand constitutional examination. The judge's life has left its record, which has not even now been deeply explored, and the American people are within their rights to question that record.
With conscious encouragement by "conservative" forces, civil rights and anti-war protesters were once subject to hate and fear, but the nation is certainly better for their efforts. The same can be said of abolitionists and supporters of suffrage. There must always be freedom to protest.
Karl Kimball's letter offers a pun alluding to the confrontation of Jeff Flake in the Senate elevator, but it seems to me a hysterical shriek to characterize two or three women in an elevator door as "an outraged victim mob." Like Republican senators' indignation, this is too studied, too shrill, and too much.
SHEARLE FURNISH
Little Rock
Separation of powers
Last year, Arkansas legislators voted to place Issue 1 on the 2018 general election ballot. In my view, this proposed constitutional amendment poses a major threat to the fundamental principle of separation of powers.
It would create an exception in Amendment 80 to the Arkansas Constitution--giving legislators the authority to pass laws establishing, changing, and eliminating court rules. Currently, the Arkansas Supreme Court has the constitutional authority to create the rules of pleading, practice, and procedure.
Retired Supreme Court Justice Annabelle Imber Tuck recently said, "[Issue 1] gives the Legislature more power, with ultimate authority ... to control how justice is administered in Arkansas courts."
In order to maintain the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers, I oppose Issue 1. I believe the judiciary--not the Legislature--should be crafting the rules that govern how cases are resolved in the state's judicial system.
VICTOR ROJAS
De Queen
Editorial on 10/16/2018