There are a number of well educated, exceptional good writers who submit letters to the editor. Recent editions have featured two of them: Rene Castillo from San Antonio and Ben Castillo from Harlingen. Sometimes we fail to let them know that they are read and enjoyed.
Thank you both.
Norma Christian
Raymondville
Republicans
spur comment
Those who know how to govern are about to become investigated by those who do not. Kevin McCarthy gave away the store. The Judiciary Committee, I believe, is on one of the shelves in the store, the one that is briefed with raw intelligence. Some reporters and former Justice Department officials fear that that intel will be shared by Jim Jordan outside of the committee he chairs. If and when that happens, more people will be endangered, more sources and methods revealed to the wrong people, and to foreign actors. Another norm violated.
People like Eric Swalwell and Brad Raffensperger and their families continue to receive death threats. New info could reach the internet to germinate more violent rhetoric and death threats. Election officials and poll workers left their jobs due to such threats and their jobs were immediately filled by election deniers and other Trump supporters.
The goals of the new House majority appear impervious to tending, for instance, to immigration reform, a subject pounded so loud in Texas that it had to be exported to cities in other states at the expense of humanitarian considerations. No solutions offered, only exploitation of immigrants for political gain.
Will they take up voting rights? Forget it, unless it is the rights of White Republican Christians. Abortion? Pretty well handled by the Supreme Court, but some White nationalist Christians believe more “tightening of the laws” is needed. What to do?
Personal attacks on FBI people, not so much the institution itself. Violent rhetoric accompanied by careful cherry-picking of all the videos, twitters, emails, calls handed to the committee from the Jan. 6 select committee to fashion a favorable slant to the insurrectionists.
What fascinates me concerns what masters the GOP have been for years at co-opting language. Someone coined the phrase “weaponizing” the Justice Department when Trump hired Bill Barr to be his own private attorney general running his own Justice Department. The Republicans have seized upon this language to name a committee directed at tearing down the FBI. Psychological projection. They are masters at that, too.
What policies, plans for the country’s future, global heating, education, armed 6-year-olds who shoot teachers in front of full classroom of students, what central values, principles, inform the new GOP governance?
Fasten your seatbelts.
Shirley Rickett
Alamo
Exemplary
smoking ban
It’s unbelievable that Mexico is far ahead of the USA in public health by enacting a strict ban on public smoking. The USA, not Mexico, boasts of the first man to walk on the moon in 1969 and the 2021 Mars helicopter landing.
Is public smoking more harmful in Mexico than in America? Are the Mexican public health policymakers and politicians vaccinated from Big Tobacco’s deadly pesos?
Humanity must hope that no Mexican tobacco addict will seek U.S. asylum just to smoke freely. Thank you, Mexico.
Mike Sawyer
Denver, Colo.
