Desperate times call for rational measures

Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said she was going to save the world by preventing new drilling for oil by U.S. companies, but our friends and enemies are gleefully and greedily drilling for more oil all around the world to sell to us.

We need a comprehensive, rational energy plan to avoid stagnation of our economy or a recession or even a depression, and to avoid our economy and security becoming even more dependent on our enemies. We won’t get such a plan as long as Pelosi is speaker.

Democrats, Independents and Republicans need to unite and replace Democrats with Republicans temporarily so we get a new speaker and an energy plan. We need to unite for ourselves, our children and grandchildren and vote Republicans into Congress. Then we can go back to partisan politics in 2010.

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John Naughton

Silver Spring

Iran should be held responsible

Iran again refused to comply with the international community on its nuclear program.

It claims to have 6,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium and has promised to share nuclear technology with others, risking that nuclear materials will get into the hands of terrorists.

Iran funds, trains and arms terrorist groups such as Hamas that have fired more than 8,000 rockets on Israeli civilians since 2005, when Israel gave up Gaza in hopes of peace.

Iran violates the human rights of its citizens and recently hanged 29 people.

The Iranian president has called for Israel to be wiped off the map and denies the Holocaust. He calls Israel a stinking corpse that is on its way to annihilation.

The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, refers to Israel as a “cancerous tumor of a state [that] should be removed from the region.”

Iran represents the worst that is in Islam: extreme, pernicious and aggressive.

Iran must be stopped before it envelopes the Middle East in a catastrophic conflagration.

Michael Kurtzig

Washington

U.N. court has no jurisdiction

The United Nations’ so-called “International Court of Justice” has “ruled” that four dozen Mexicans on U.S. death row should have new hearings to determine whether a 1963 treaty was violated during their arrests.

This “ruling” is yet another example of why countries do not and should not take the “International Court of Justice” seriously and why the U.S. balks at paying its full U.N. “dues.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that it is up to Congress to impose on the states the terms of this treaty requiring consular consultation for foreigners arrested for U.S. crimes. Until then, it is up to foreigners arrested for U.S. crimes to know and assert their consular consultation opportunities.

The “International Court of Justice” does not have legal jurisdiction over U.S. courts and has no power to order any branch of the U.S. government or state governments around.

Dino Drudi

Washington