ustxtxb_obs_2010_12_10_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES SINCE 1954 11 gi p AP OBSERVER 1111.0011E A Well-Fed Mob MAYBE THE REASON TEA PARTY MEMBERS GOT ANGRY is because they grew tired of liberals referring to them as ignorant and stupid. Notice all the liberal code words in the article: “well fed” equals fat, the racist word “white.” The lack of liberal imagination is as frightening as some of the Tea Party ideas. Dennis Schneider ROUND ROCK IT’S NOT THE LACK OF LIBERAL IMAGINATION, IT’S THE lack of a pair in the entire House or Senate. Keith Bischof SUGAR LAND The Little Herb MARIJUANA, A THREAT TO SOCIETY? PLEASE! \(“A almost wholly unregulated tobacco industry. Not necessarily tobacco, but the extreme and egregious additives meant to addict smokers. Big tobacco kills 400,000 Americans and 5 million people around the world annually. It costs us hundreds of millions of dollars annually in Medicare and Medicaid. Soft drinks, junk food and the big pharmaceuticals kill people every day, and those are legal. Robert Ruiz SAN ANTONIO THIS IS THE KIND OF THING THAT THE WORLD KNOWS AS “Texas justice.” Remember Tulia? Nothing unusual. Michael Brown AUSTIN President Perry THERE IS NO WAY. Gov . RICK PERRY CAN HARDLY FORM Jeff Miller AUSTIN I COULD MAKE A COMMENT ABOUT ALL THE TEXANS WHO can’t form a complete sentence who keep voting Gov. Goodhair in, but I won’t. I don’t think Perry would feel awkward at all running for president after spending 18 months bashing Washington. Certainly he would not be the first politician campaigning as an outsider wanting to become an insider. How hypocritical can you get? Angel Rivera HOUSTON GONNA HAPPEN, GET READY. SO FAR AS NOT FORMING a complete sentence, we already have that in the White House. Bugs the H out of me that the guy can’t say three words without an aah or err. And he has a teleprompter! Alan Hebzynski SAN BENITO IT’S ALL PART OF PERRY’S PLAN FOR TEXAS SECESSION. If he runs for the presidency, then the rest of the country will want to kick Texas out of the union, making secession much easier. Robert Rister -LA GRANGE Tinkering with Death WE CAN’T AFFORD THE DEATH PENALTY, PERIOD to the rabble-rousing anti-death penalty position of the Observer past? What was Justice Jackson’s dictum about tinkering with the machinery of death? Don’t do it. Why? Because reform leads to permanence. You need to find a different approach: science has never uprooted state executions. Patrick Timmons SAN FRANCISCO Sound Off VOLUME 102, NO. 22 FOUNDING EDITOR Ronnie Dugger EDITOR Bob Moser MANAGING EDITOR Chris Tomlinson SENIOR EDITORS Dave Mann, Michael May WEB EDITOR Jen Reel INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER Melissa del Bosque STAFF WRITERS Abby Rapoport, Forrest Wilder ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Julia Austin CIRCULATION MANAGER Candace Carpenter OFFICE MANAGER Lorraine Blancarte ART DIRECTION EmDash LLC COPY EDITOR Rusty Todd POETRY EDITOR Naomi Shihab Nye INTERNS Brooke Breitling, Cameron Ingram CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Laura Burke, Emily DePrang, Lou Dubose, James K. Galbraith, Steven G. Kellman, Joe R. Lansdale, Robert Leleux, James E. McWilliams, Char Miller, Bill Minutaglio, Ruth Pennebaker, Josh Rosenblatt, Kevin Sieff, Brad Tyer, Andrew Wheat CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Jana Birchum, Alan Pogue, Matt Wright-Steel CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Michael Krone, Alex Eben Meyer, Ben Sargent TEXAS DEMOCRACY FOUNDATION BOARD Lisa Blue Baron, Carlton Carl, Melissa Jones, Susan Longley, Jim Marston, Mary Nell Mathis, Gilberto Ocanas, Jesse Oliver, Bernard Rapoport, Geoffrey Rips, Geronimo Rodriguez, Sharron Rush, Kelly White, Ronnie OUR MISSION We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of humankind as the foundation of democracy. We will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. The Tea Party is a cult of victimhood; it’s the only consistent plank in their platform ideas they proffer are fundamentally unserious. Constitutional libertarianism? Hah! They talk a good game and the more enlightened ones try to avoid social issues, but the movement has essentially been co-opted by those who are for less government except in respect to non-Judeo-Christian religions, civil matrimony between consenting adults and our daughters’ medical decisions. Greg Joslyn POUND RIDGE, N.Y. DECEMBER 10, 2010 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 11