Not 'sour grapes'
Ellen Sauerbrey is taking the flak for all of us who feel it's about time to expose and clean up fraudulent election practices.
If not now, when?
When will there be another candidate with the resources, support and will to uncover irregularities and violations in the electoral process? Call it "sour grapes" if you like, but the courage and resolve shown by Mrs. Sauerbrey to ensure fair elections is a classic example of true citizenship.
If the Board of Election Supervisors are so pure and law-abiding, then why have they set up so many roadblocks to prevent access to public records that any candidate or citizen has the right to examine?
Did these weeks of delay allow time to alter illegalities? Why did Parris Glendening's lawyers block opening of the records, why did the board vote to deny access to them (against the advice of Maryland's deputy attorney general) and why did a judge further deny Ms. Sauerbrey permission to exercise her legal right?
What is there to cover up? Does anyone honestly believe these same tactics would have been used against Glendening?
Ellen Sauerbrey inspires loyalty; Parris Glendening has to buy it. Ellen Sauerbrey is a valuable resource for Maryland leadership; Parris Glendening is just another political hack.
We had the opportunity to elect a really fine governor . . . and we blew it!
Gene Michaels
Baltimore
Limited benefits
Why term limits? Why not instead an informed electorate?
If they want to "throw the bums out," they should at least have an educated reason why.
Just imagine what havoc a flock of "lame ducks" could cause. Being no longer in need of their constituents' votes, they could vote their greed to their hearts' content before flying off to greener pastures, for which they have laid the groundwork by their crafty lame-duck votes.
Term limits are not the answer. If we can't keep them honest, perhaps we can at least keep them hoping we aren't wise to them yet.
Why make their tenure so obviously definite? The votes on GATT are a case in point.
Would they be so eager to sell their constituents "down the river" by this "hurry up" vote before all the lame ducks are gone? I think not.
So, why have term limits, since this is all they'll accomplish?
lanche K. Coda
Baltimore
Hard to swallow
The Nov. 29 article about homeopathic medical remedies did not explain one reason why some find homeopathy hard to swallow.
To say, as the article did, that homeopathy uses "minute amounts" of the active ingredients is putting it mildly. Homeopathic practitioners often use extreme dilutions of what they call the "mother tincture." In some preparations, the dilution is so severe that no one molecule of the labeled ingredient is present.
Not only are these extreme dilutions claimed to be effective, but practitioners and believers make the bizarre claim that the most dilute remedies are the most potent.
Their belief that water, or another diluting agent, has a kind of "memory" of substances that have been diluted out of the solution (or nearly so) is a quaint 18th-century notion that has not passed muster. Modern experiments claiming to verify the theory, including oft-cited French studies, have been shown to use shoddy procedures.
If water indeed has the kind of "memory" homeopathy claims, every glass we drink would be a potpourri of cures and curses.
For example, pure drinking water that was once sea water would still carry the influence of long-gone fish excretions, oil spills and salts. In truth, if the molecules are gone, so are their effects.
This means that when you buy one of the more dilute homeopathic remedies, no matter what substance is mentioned on the label, you may be paying for nothing more than pure water or a sugar pill.
Some kinds of alternative medical care deserve study and our patronage. But homeopathy asks us to take proven principles of physical science and pour them down the drain.
Larry D. Rosen
Baltimore
Panjandrums of partisan politics
Sen. Bob Dole, disdaining debate and negotiation, masterminded the relentless and unprecedented procedural filibustering that massacred President Clinton's efforts to tackle the nation's problems, consigning Congress to a state of paralysis.
Rep. Newt Gingrich brands Clinton the "enemy of normal Americans" and poses the "I will cooperate but not compromise" conundrum. His blueprint for welfare reform envisions orphanages; he targets Head Start, the Job Corps and Medicaid as programs to be abolished.
Sen. Jesse Helms raises the specter of assassination and warns the president of the United State to bring a bodyguard if he dares set foot in North Carolina. Helms, who can't keep a civil tongue in his head, is slated for the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
DTC
The GOP intends to hack away at the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, undermine civil rights and abortion rights, do a hatchet job on social programs, jettison the prevention provisions of the crime bill and reverse the ban on assault weapons.
It would also bestow a $500 per child tax credit on families with incomes of $250,000 and cut in half capital gains taxes for the wealthy.
If the middle class is under any illusion that their interests will be safeguarded, they are in for a rude awakening. The GOP is geared to ward a government of, by and for the rich, and the rest of the nation be damned.
"Normal Americans" cheer Robert Reich's combative call to encompass corporate welfare in any welfare reform, to put an end to billion-dollar losses in tax loopholes for big business.
"Normal Americans" urge President Clinton to brandish his veto as forcefully and as often as necessary, and we urge Congressional Democrats not to hesitate to employ the GOP's own killer filibuster tactics to thwart GOP subversion of American democracy.
Rea Knisbacher
Baltimore
We don't need state-sponsored prayer
Advocates of a constitutional amendment to allow prayer in public schools overlook the fact that every student already enjoys the right to pray silently in school whenever he or she pleases and in a manner learned in the home, church, synagogue, or mosque.
The Supreme Court's rulings held unconstitutional only prayers sponsored, prescribed, regulated or managed by some level of government. Religious leaders know full well that there is and can be no "one size fits all" prayer, that children's values are developed mainly in the home and from TV, and that a dollop of state-sponsored prayer has never been shown to be a positive influence on children in any country.
It is curious that people who want to shrink government and "get government off people's backs" want to expand the power of government into the sacred area of religion.
School prayer advocates must have a low opinion of individual consciences, families and religious institutions since they seem to want government to prop them up.
In our wonderfully diverse and pluralistic country it is strange that anyone would want any level of government to decide when, where or how children will engage in religious expression.
Claims that public schools are unfriendly to religion are paranoid nonsense. Our elected school boards, administrators and teachers are a cross-section of our population.
Annual Gallup polls show strong public support for our schools, and a smaller percentage of our children attend private schools now than 30 years ago.
Our Bill of Rights has not been amended in 200 years. It would be most unwise to do so now.
Edd Doerr
Silver Spring
The writer is executive director of Americans for Religious Liberty.