Disgraceful justices

In my letters to the editor, I rarely make comments regarding the U.S. Supreme Court. When I was going through law school, we were taught to respect the court as the highest court in the land. We were also taught that the court must be apolitical and render its decisions on the law, not based on the justices’ particular political bent.

That seemed to work pretty well until Donald Trump was able to pack the court with a bunch of ultra-right justices, who seem to feel they can do whatever they want. When they overturned Roe v. Wade it didn’t bother me on a personal level, since I don’t personally believe in abortion, in general. What did bother me is that these justices apparently have decided they aren’t bound by the principal of stare decisis, which is an important part of the law and something which was arrived at over generations by attorneys and judges which right-wing justices are not fit to ignore.

Let’s add on top of that ... they are delaying a decision on Trump’s absurd immunity claim, which is clearly intended to delay Trump’s criminal trials until after the election. You couldn’t be more partisan than that.

The Democrats talk about gaining seats in the House and Senate to keep their agenda going but, more importantly ..., they need to pick up enough seats to impeach these disgraceful justices who Trump put on the court so the court can be returned to its previous apolitical stature.

Danny J. Radakovich

Lewiston

Don’t like the change

Well, you’ve done it again: changed the format to the E-edition.

I have taken this newspaper for 48 years and I’m canceling my subscription at the end of the month. I hated your last change and this new one is just stupid.

Why change something that’s not broke? Young people don’t read newspapers and old people don’t like change. You’ve really screwed up this time.

Randy Banks

Elk City

Retain Lori McCann

Let me describe to you someone I know: daughter of a longtime football coach; her mother a great teacher of my children; a mother in her own right; a highly thought-of teacher herself; described by a longtime political icon as a terrific legislator in the Idaho Legislature; a great secretary; one hell of a cattle truck driver; a good listener; a wonderful friend; and more common sense than most people you know.

I could go on, but I beseech you to vote to retain Lori McCann as our representative in the Idaho Legislature. We cannot afford to lose her and I do not say that lightly.

Steve Rice

Lewiston

Learn about open primary

Lucky Brandt’s letter (Moscow-Pullman Daily News, April 10; Lewiston Tribune, April 14) is interesting to say the least.

Comparing our sacred right/responsibility, the vote, to a football team is ludicrous. The purpose of a primary is to allow the voters to pick the candidates they feel will best represent them at the state and national level, regardless of the candidate’s political party.

If the Open Primary Initiative passes, it will allow approximately 270,000 independent registered voters the ability to vote in the primary and help select the candidates in the general election. Because the Idaho Republican Party has a closed primary, many voters who do not identify with a particular party or don’t care to share their political leanings cannot vote.

To quote former Republican Gov. Butch Otter, “The right to vote is one of the most precious rights that Americans have. Every registered voter should have the right to weigh in on choosing our leaders. Independents, including a lot of military veterans, have been excluded from having their say because of the closed GOP primary.”

I urge everyone to educate themselves about the Open Primary Initiative and feel confident many of you will agree with it.

Kathy Weber

Moscow

What if AI gets off leash?

I woke up this morning with a weird question dancing in my head. What happens when one of the many new artificial intelligence programs gets “off the leash” and starts hacking all the server farms and databases on Earth? I know, there is nothing new about that question. It’s been around in some form for nearly a century.

What was new to me is the realization that these AI programs seem to be as neurotic and delusional as the people who created them. (Maybe even more so.) In other words: A global hack by AI would likely mean systems failure, and chaos on an epic scale. AI might start rewriting code just because it could, without a real purpose, or much of a plan.

If anything resembling that were to happen, we could be thrown back into the stone age in a day. Maybe if academia was a little more concerned with that kind of scenario, instead of their make-believe issues (climate; diversity, equity and inclusion; critical race theory; tansgenderism; etc.), we’d be better off in the long run.

If AI does turn on its masters, perhaps it would take down the universities first. We can only hope.

J.C. Passmore Jr.

Elk City

Scully’s fantasy world

Richard Scully’s vision (Tribune, March 27) of a post-dam Lewiston-Clarkston Valley reads like the script of a Peter Pan movie. In Scully’s fairyland, people will recreate for free, salmon and steelhead will swim year-round in our beautiful river and the elves will work overtime to remove all the riprap walls currently holding our river in its channel.

Scully, like Peter Pan, will always refuse to grow up and recognize the beauty of the real world he already lives in. His ego will never allow him to be happy in a world where dams provide a quality lifestyle for most of the population. In his mind, the world will always be ugly until it is perfectly transformed to meet his childish expectations.

People like Richard Scully need to let the rest of us know when, in history, the world was perfect. How much sacrifice must the rest of the world suffer to create the fantasy world they can be content to live in?

In short, it is time to grow up, Mr. Scully. The rest of the world owes you nothing and it will not stop revolving just to satisfy your childish whims.

Dick Sherwin

Lewiston

Speech as entertainment

In the cabin-fevered throes of February I’m looking to lighten things up a bit. I could wash windows, but I’m due for a laugh. I can’t do it often because I laugh myself incontinent, but reading Donald Trump’s speech transcripts out loud is hilarious.

I don’t do the voice impression, but reading the words out loud is jabberwocky, gibberish gold. His sentence structure is as foreign as it gets, his paragraphs zip around from self-praise to fearmongering and back again. Sometimes I do a Trump speech takeover because his use of third person is so Ted Bundy. I improv a threat, a bit of name-calling, but it’s hard to get more petulant than verbatim.

Listening to myself read the words that come out of another’s mouth reveals everything. Out-loud readings of even the most seasoned speakers can reveal logical problems and grammatical errors, but Trump elevates himself somehow. It’s like stumbling through a foreign language. Nothing to do but have fun with it.

This personal form of comedic entertainment doesn’t work with Joe Biden’s speech transcripts. His stutter pauses don’t transfer to the written word and it’s hard to get a belly laugh out of sensible. I get creative, move the sentences and paragraphs around, but somehow a coherent list of ways to lift and empower working Americans, farmers, veterans, families, are so sensible they are interchangeable. Which makes me happy in its own way because sensible is soothing.

Main vein me on this stuff; I’ll read it all day.

Janet Marugg

Clarkston