LETTERS: The Californian, Nov. 13, 2008

By Readers of The Californian | Thursday, November 13, 2008 12:22 AM PST ∞

College students need to look past profs' views

While Duane Jeffers (Letters, Oct. 3) is weeping for this country, I have for quite a while been shedding tears over the state of our so-called institutions of higher learning. To be sure, I attended them successfully many years ago, and cannot believe the amount of influence current professors have decided to exert over the political psyche of their students. That never happened in my day. The students and the school administrations would not have allowed it. Moreover, the faculty was of a different caliber with a different background; quite typically they had participated in the business world first, and then combined their education and their professional experience to bring the best of both worlds to the classroom. Nowadays, too many instructors use their bully pulpit to chant the liberal mantra, unopposed, classroom after classroom, when the sum of their real-world experience comes to a stop at the curb in front of the school.

From the tenor of Duane Jeffers' letter, I'm afraid he's a lost cause. For those students not so far gone, here's a tip on how to tell whether you're being unduly influenced: When the instructor refers to a Democratic candidate's political advisers as his "political advisers" but labels the Republican counterparts as a "cabal," you know you're being led down the garden path away from reality.

Kenneth Ebmeier

Pala

There's more to NFL than the Chargers

The Californian is very biased in its reporting of the news. The so-called "sports reporters" are so biased they are unable to report the truth. The sports editors only want to devote their space to the Chargers and they disregard other teams. The Broncos are the leaders, ahead of the Chargers, yet The Californian does not print anything positive about the Broncos.

Do not devote all your energies to the Chargers and leave the other AFL teams behind.

Randolf Aragon

Murrieta

Court will overrule popular vote

The United States of America is not a democracy. It is a nation of laws, a republic that accepts the principles of democracy in defining law and of electing persons entitled to make it. All laws must, however, be measured not by simple majority vote of the people, but by how the laws conform to the broad principles of the Constitution.

Most recently, a majority of people in California voted to ban same-sex marriage. Will that vote ultimately succeed in becoming law? No, because the California Supreme Court has already ruled same-sex marriage to be a fundamental right that cannot be taken away by the initiative process. Fundamental rights include equal treatment and dignity under law. Denying same-sex couples the right to define their relationship in the same manner as heterosexuals denies them that equal dignity. It's as simple as that.

When the final Supreme Court order is issued, thousands of ministers will decry it as a gross usurpation of power, as they did when the ban against interracial marriage was overturned; as they did when the civil rights laws were passed; as they did when the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated and passed into law anyway; as they did when the birth control pill was approved; as they did when Roe v. Wade was decided; as they did when discrimination in housing was banned, etc.

Hopefully, the Supreme Court will expedite its hearing on this issue and put it to rest.

Gerald Summers

Temecula

Palin pleased plenty of conservatives

Why The Californian wasted space to print the subject by Paul Moeller of Carlsbad is a mystery to me ("Paper's McCain endorsement sounded lame," Oct. 28). It was a partisan, slanted opinion piece with no factual justification. He talks about cherry-picking a few nuggets of facts and proceeds to do the same thing. He calls the ticket two "flawed" candidates! Naturally, picking on Gov. Sarah Palin in strict accordance with the Democrat handbook. He pans Palin with the same old canards we heard from much of the media and dares say she is inexperienced, when by any measure she has more quality experience than Barack Obama and Joe Biden put together. And contrary to his statement, all of the conservatives I know ---- and I know a bunch ---- are happy with McCain's choice.

Has he listened to conservatives such as Bill Kristol, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity? He would hear enthusiastic approval if he did. I applaud The Californian, a generally liberal paper, for the courage and insight of its endorsement. Mr. Moeller's piece was just sour grapes.

Paul Puma

Temecula

Learn more about group at meeting

Blackwater U.S.A. is the world's most notorious, private mercenary army in the world, and it's funded by our tax dollars. Now we have a privately owned Blackwater-like military company, Procinctu, just one-quarter mile from our northern Menifee border.

Like Blackwater, John Choate's company acquires contracts from the Department of Defense, which facilitates these privately run war machines to become more efficient in training and security detail here and abroad. To them, "war is business and business is good." The privatization of the war machine is deadly because enterprises such as Blackwater and local, home-grown Procinctu depend on the adversity of war and conflict to survive. With each drummed-up bloody encounter with another country, corporate profits escalate. Who else benefits?

Ray Lutz helped oust Blackwater-West from Potrero in San Diego. At the Citizens for Democracy meeting, he will address the private military companies and explain his established citizens oversight panels program that encourages residents to oversee their governing boards, thus creating a more open, transparent government.

Citizens for Democracy meets at 6:30 p.m. Nov 19 at the Senior Center in Old Town Temecula, 41845 Sixth St.

Ann Weston

Menifee