Pro-choice agency tries to stifle choice for others

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards attacked a Bush administration proposal to help doctors avoid coerced abortions. The rule ensures that physicians, nurses and other medical personnel don’t face discrimination if they refuse to participate in abortions, but Richards called it a “sell-out of women’s health” and a “massive betrayal of women and families.”

What is at stake is the federal funding PP receives — some $4 billion over the last few decades. Richards complained that the rule would also require family planning agencies like PP “to certify that we will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control.”

So these “pro-choice” fanatics don’t want to give others a choice, but want to force everyone to participate in their barbaric killing of the preborn.

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François L. Quinson

Gaithersburg

Networks are groupies for Obama candidacy

Re: “Dim Bulb,” July 21

Any doubts about how the broadcast networks are in the tank for Barack Obama were removed when all three anchors reduced themselves to Obama groupies by following him in his first-ever tour of the major war fronts he has opposed funding during his short career in the Senate.

I predict Obama will get at least 10 times more coverage than any other presidential candidate has gotten during their tours and be compared to JFK.

But I am certain the network groupies will not notice a few uncomfortable comparisons between the two, such as JFK’s approval of the Bay of Pigs invasion to deliver Cuba from the totalitarian Fidel Castro, while Obama opposed toppling Saddam Hussein.

The CIA recently confessed JFK also ordered illegal wiretaps, including Martin Luther King’s calls to his mistresses. Obama’s recent FISA vote suggests he understands the benefits of being able to listen in on your enemies.

The Soviets were so emboldened by JFK’s naiveté in his summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev that they placed nukes in Cuba, built a wall around Berlin and funded the invasion of South Vietnam.

JFK’s secret deal to withdraw U.S. nukes from Turkey and not attack Cuba in order to get the Soviets to withdraw is only now being revealed.

I suspect the Iranians are looking at a similar deal after they annihilate Israel, given Obama’s longtime coziness with Weathermen who still regret that they did not kill enough Americans.

The Camelot chorus has been effective in burying the truth about JFK, who had great speechwriters but zero depth.

We may see the sequel in Obama, who delivers stirring calls to action as he spends millions on focus groups to find out his next position on the important issues of the day.

Jack Adams

Washington

Democrats actually reduced number of judicial vacancies

Re: “A modest proposal for judicial nominees,” July 18

Quin Hillyer’s column includes a major scoop: West Virginia left the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, as he claims it includes only four states: Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. If anyone can figure out when or how this occurred, please let me — and the court — know. Or perhaps Mr. Hillyer is mired in an antebellum mind-set and never accepted the fact that West Virginia is no longer part of Virginia.

Mr. Hillyer also omits the context. The Senate has confirmed over 300 Bush judges, and the vacancy rate is 4.7 percent. As Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., explained: “Since the years in which Republicans pocket filibustered more than 60 of President [Bill] Clinton’s moderate and qualified judicial nominees, and judicial vacancies topped 100, we have cut judicial vacancies by more than half and reduced Circuit Court vacancies by almost three-fourths, to nine throughout the entire country from a high point of 32.”

Glenn Sugameli

Senior judicial counsel,

Earthjustice

McCain’s ‘muddle’ strategy not working in Afghanistan

In 2003, Sen. John McCain told the Council on Foreign Relations that he was more concerned with the war in Iraq, and that we could “muddle through in Afghanistan” without a large number of forces.

But Afghanistan is not a war of choice. We should never have outsourced it to President Hamid Karzai and a bunch of warlords.

Such poor judgment is costing us dearly: The Taliban has recaptured a large chunk of Afghanistan, al Qaeda is back at pre-9/11 strength, and Osama bin Laden is still free and plotting against America.

Unlike Sen. Barack Obama’s, McCain’s strategy for launching a war in Iraq and staying there indefinitely is actually a policy of retreat in the war on terror.

It has made us less secure and allowed extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan to regain their strength.

Afeite Dadja

Germantown

Personhood involves much more than independence

Re: “Government should not substitute church doctrine for abortion policy,” From Readers, July 18

If the definition of a person is one who does not have a “parasitic dependence” on another, then every minor child and every severely disabled adult is eligible to be put to death on the basis of their “parasitic dependence.” That’s Mr. Bruce Gilson’s reasoning taken to its logical conclusion.

The Declaration of Independence affirms every person’s inalienable, God-given right to “life,” and then to “liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Neither the Declaration nor the U.S. Constitution defines a person as “one who does not have a parasitic dependence on others.”

Angela McIntosh

Frederick