Opinion

Dear Editor,

Dear Editor

In troubled times, it is too often easy to put pejorative labels on those who disagree with you. In recent speeches Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney have labeled those questioning the war in Iraq as appeasers and House Republican Leader John Boehner has said Democrats who question the administration's methods of interrogating and prosecuting terrorists are "more concerned about protecting terrorists than protecting the American people."  Boehner's comments were so distasteful that even President Bush said he wouldn't have said them the same way.

I've addressed three statewide propositions in previous columns. This week's column is a roundup of how I'm voting (and why) on the remaining propositions.

City Leaders Need to Stop Digging

Today your Mushroom City Memoirs columnist, Gale Hammond, fills you in on all you need to know about … er, excuse me … we just returned from an "adventure at sea" (a.k.a. "cruise"), and I must learn to talk like a normal person again. After keeping company with "Snowball Scotty" and "Bruce," our naturalist, for the past week, I am desperately trying to check my enthusiasm.

Our national motto, "e pluribus unum" is Latin for "from many one." It spoke of the unity of sovereign states into one nation. It also spoke of the melding of many cultures into one American culture. That culture, conceived in the 1600s, and born in 1776, grew to become the most creative, most productive, most benevolent, most liberating and most sustainable culture in human history!

Over three-quarters of a century. That's how long my wife and I have lived. Now, only a few years before 80, we have experienced many, many of life's strange twists. But, I believe a circumstance this past August was, perhaps, the strangest of all. But, let me set the stage.

Problems with Proposition 90, that have devastating impacts on

Dear Editor,