‘Chicken Little’ syndrome restricts bird flu discussion

Re: “Bird flu mutates during race against time to find vaccine,” July 21

Dr. Michael Greger has very unconventional views about the billion-to-one chance that bird flu will become a serious human health threat. And there’s a very good reason for his panic-inducing position.

Greger is a lifelong animal rights activist and a strict vegan. Judging from his advocacy work, his mission in life is to persuade as many people as possible that eating meat, poultry and dairy foods is dangerous and inadvisable.

It’s irresponsible to scream that the sky is falling when every public health authority on Earth is reassuring us that our food supply is safe, and when there has been no actual evidence that H5N1 bird flu poses a real pandemic threat. But irresponsible fearmongering is just another day at the office for the animal rights movement.

David Martosko

Research director,

Center for Consumer Freedom

Washington

Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae need some tough love

Re: “The Feds and Fannie: Making a beast that’s too big to fail,” July 25

Freddie Mac should lose its own home as a result of the mortgage problems it caused. The huge taxpayer-funded bailout is like offering free alcohol to a drunk who will never sober up and behave properly if there is free alcohol around. Tough love is in order.

Until recently, part of my job was to review the Federal Register, which reports proposed federal government actions and regulations. For years, Freddie Mac fought against proposed regulations that would let the public and regulators better see what it did with its money. Freddie Mac won and America lost.

I do know of two strange things Freddie Mac did, and there must be hundreds more that have been hidden from us. In one quarter, it gave away $225 million, mostly to the Freddie Mac Foundation, instead of properly using it for mortgage purposes.

Freddie Mac was also the named sponsor of a huge immigration/illegal-alien conference.

I and others personally saw them use race to determine who could attend and who could not.

And how does Freddie Mac say the amount spent on the conference is “confidential.” Freddie Mac deserves to be put on the street — not bailed out — and  Fannie Mae, its evil twin, deserves the same.

Jim McDonald

Alexandria

In Berlin, Obama was no JFK

Re: “Analysis: Obama treated like a president on tour,” July 26

As someone who was stationed in Berlin during the time it was hemmed in by the wall erected by the communists to preserve their utopia from being abandoned by those who wanted to escape to freedom, I couldn’t help but notice that “citizen of the world” Barack Obama omitted the most important part of JFK’s speech, given just a few months before communist sympathizer Lee Harvey Oswald killed him in Dallas:

“There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the communist world. Let them come to Berlin.

There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin.

And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Let them come to Berlin.”

This is in direct contradiction to Obama’s message of “come, let us reason” with those who have threatened to wipe entire nations from the surface of the Earth, as Iran has done with Israel, not to mention any Western country who does not submit to the laws of the Prophet. 

The Germans were united only after Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down  this wall.”

Jack Adams

Washington

FBI has no business investigating a state matter

Re: “Shoppers Food Warehouse paid Sen. Ulysses Currie at least $207K, affadavit data shows,” July 24

The FBI is apparently contemplating charging Maryland state Senator Ulysses Currie with mail and wire fraud and “deprivation of honest services” (whatever that is), because he failed to note his relationship with this client on his financial disclosure forms. But no one, including conservative commentators such as The Examiner’s editors, seems to be asking the  obvious question: Why is this an appropriate matter for the FBI to investigate? 

Isn’t this a disciplinary matter for the Maryland Senate?  Isn’t this a state issue rather than a federal one? African-American leaders who long have championed the expansion of federal power vis-à-vis state power also should be called to task for being silent in the face of that federal power being used against them. They especially need to rethink their support of aggressive federal intervention in everything in light of this power being turned against them.

They should be protesting this FBI investigation as an abuse of federal power and a usurpation of state prerogatives, and conservatives should be joining them in doing so. 

Dino Drudi

Washington