In response to Thomas Schaller's recent column about violence from the right wing ("Violence on the right: more evidence," Jan. 25). I would like to make a couple points. First, Mr. Schaller clearly has an axe to grind over the political right in this country, using selective examples of violence from people with mental issues who also took a political stance. No intellectual person would condone such actions as a means of political discourse in our nation — on the right or the left.

But Mr. Schaller plays up the violence from the right while trivializing the violence that has come from the left — including eco-terrorists such as the man who held hostages at the Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring.

All of this is capped off with a glaring shred of faulty information used to illustrate the point. He says that a t-shirt found inside a bag with a bomb planted at the Martin Luther King Rally in Spokane, Wash., was for a "Rally For Life" anti-abortion event. In fact, news reports state that it was an American Cancer Society's "Relay for Life" shirt. Not quite the same thing.

The Baltimore Sun even posted the pictures on the Sun's web page with the shirt clearly showing "Relay for life" yet the Sun's caption still says it was for an anti-abortion event.

Decrying violence from both sides is a worthwhile undertaking, but Mr. Schaller's stretch, with the Baltimore Sun's photographic corroboration, show his and the paper's willingness to pin violence on a group people who actually feel that taking a life is wrong. By the way, those same people rallied by the thousands in Washington on Monday — peacefully.

Aaron Jones, Arbutus