More good LttE
To the Editor:
Re the June 18 letter from Gov. Jeb Bush about Terri Schiavo's death and your editorial the same day ("Politics and Terri Schiavo"):
Governor Bush says "all innocent human life is precious." I have to assume that he is able to sleep easy in the certain knowledge that he knows which lives are innocent enough to be considered precious and which lives may be dispensed with at will.
Frankie Glass
Burbank, Calif., June 18, 2005
Indeed, I think Jeb and George W. Bushs' applications of the death penalty make them negligent and immoral people. I should check the statistics (such as comparing the false-positive rate in the Illinois system with the shoddy system in Texas), but I believe with high probability that GWB put at least one innocent man to death.
To the Editor:
Gov. Jeb Bush (letter, June 18) seems unaware that end-of-life decisions are routinely made in private discussions between family, advisers (like clergy members) and doctors. These decisions are most often made without the benefit of a clear, written advance medical directive.
Politicians with clear agendas and former medical professionals who have no expertise in neurological matters are usually not involved. This should not change.
David R. Neiblum, M.D.
West Chester, Pa., June 18, 2005
To the Editor:
After years of carping about liberal "moral relativism," the right has now succeeded in creating a dangerous new factual relativism in our press today, as Stacy Schiff illustrates ("The Interactive Truth," column, June 15).
In the name of "balance," news reporting has been replaced by an endless string of pundits and career commentators who bicker back and forth with no regard for the facts.
Whatever happened to doing the investigative legwork to tell us whether what either side is saying is true? Is it any wonder that the theory of evolution is under siege, or that many Americans still believe in a link between Iraq and 9/11, when facts and evidence can be dismissed as matters of opinion?
David Silverstone
New York, June 15, 2005
To the Editor:
Re "Prosecutorial Racial Bias in Texas" (editorial, June 14):
When the Supreme Court threw out Thomas Miller-El's death sentence (on the grounds that blacks were systematically excluded from serving as jurors in his case), the court paved the way for it, or a future court, to examine a more substantive question: whether any death penalty trial can ever be a fair one.
No defendant in a capital case in the United States - black, white or other - is afforded a fair trial under our current system. Each is tried by a jury from which the state has excluded anyone who says he or she opposes the idea of a fellow human's being put to death.
When do you suppose the court will acknowledge that barring potential jurors on such grounds is no different from excluding them on the basis of race, religion or gender?
Frank McNeirney
National Coordinator, Catholics
Against Capital Punishment
Bethesda, Md., June 14, 2005
Re the June 18 letter from Gov. Jeb Bush about Terri Schiavo's death and your editorial the same day ("Politics and Terri Schiavo"):
Governor Bush says "all innocent human life is precious." I have to assume that he is able to sleep easy in the certain knowledge that he knows which lives are innocent enough to be considered precious and which lives may be dispensed with at will.
Frankie Glass
Burbank, Calif., June 18, 2005
Indeed, I think Jeb and George W. Bushs' applications of the death penalty make them negligent and immoral people. I should check the statistics (such as comparing the false-positive rate in the Illinois system with the shoddy system in Texas), but I believe with high probability that GWB put at least one innocent man to death.
To the Editor:
Gov. Jeb Bush (letter, June 18) seems unaware that end-of-life decisions are routinely made in private discussions between family, advisers (like clergy members) and doctors. These decisions are most often made without the benefit of a clear, written advance medical directive.
Politicians with clear agendas and former medical professionals who have no expertise in neurological matters are usually not involved. This should not change.
David R. Neiblum, M.D.
West Chester, Pa., June 18, 2005
To the Editor:
After years of carping about liberal "moral relativism," the right has now succeeded in creating a dangerous new factual relativism in our press today, as Stacy Schiff illustrates ("The Interactive Truth," column, June 15).
In the name of "balance," news reporting has been replaced by an endless string of pundits and career commentators who bicker back and forth with no regard for the facts.
Whatever happened to doing the investigative legwork to tell us whether what either side is saying is true? Is it any wonder that the theory of evolution is under siege, or that many Americans still believe in a link between Iraq and 9/11, when facts and evidence can be dismissed as matters of opinion?
David Silverstone
New York, June 15, 2005
To the Editor:
Re "Prosecutorial Racial Bias in Texas" (editorial, June 14):
When the Supreme Court threw out Thomas Miller-El's death sentence (on the grounds that blacks were systematically excluded from serving as jurors in his case), the court paved the way for it, or a future court, to examine a more substantive question: whether any death penalty trial can ever be a fair one.
No defendant in a capital case in the United States - black, white or other - is afforded a fair trial under our current system. Each is tried by a jury from which the state has excluded anyone who says he or she opposes the idea of a fellow human's being put to death.
When do you suppose the court will acknowledge that barring potential jurors on such grounds is no different from excluding them on the basis of race, religion or gender?
Frank McNeirney
National Coordinator, Catholics
Against Capital Punishment
Bethesda, Md., June 14, 2005
posted by ArcadesProjector at
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