Sept. 29 Letters to the Editor, Part, 3

Religious freedom at stake

The year 1960 I remember well. Wary voters considering John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate, exclaimed, “Oh, my God. The whole clan is Catholic. Old Joe is as tight as glue with powerful prelates of the church. Can we vote for a Catholic?”

Next came Barack Obama, whose Kenyan grandmother gave a statement that she was present at the hospital in Kenya when Obama was born there. She’s now deceased so she is not available to testify.

As a young man, Obama came to the U.S. for a college education as a foreign student. He becomes a member of Congress and wins the Nobel Prize — for what? And even though he was not a citizen — not close to being a natural-born citizen as necessary to become president — he spends eight years in the White House. He was a total fraud on every front.

Now we have two congresswomen, both of the Muslim faith, who obviously adhere to strict Sharia law, running for the presidency. They have said, “God wants Americans to all be Democrats.”

Of course, their talk is about the Muslim God, Allah, who calls for killing Americans, destroying all of us. No one is saying, “Oh, God. They are Muslims.”

Neither is a legal citizen, not even natural born. Talk about chutzpah.

But, hey, it worked for Obama. So why not give it a try?

Our constitutional right to freedom of religion is at stake. Think about it.

Flora Teachman

Kamiah

Read amendment

Editing introduced an error into a previous version of this letter.

Since the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is constantly in the news, I thought it would be helpful to submit to the Lewiston Tribune readers the full text of the amendment — all 27 words:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

So what’s up with the linkage between “A well regulated Militia,” “security of a free State,” and “the right of the people”?

Does “keep and bear” mean the same thing as “buy, own, carry, and, eventually, sell and trade”? These are a couple of questions that come to my mind when I read the Second Amendment. If we the people wish to grant ourselves the right “to manufacture, sell, purchase, and carry in the public space all firearms” then we should amend the Constitution to accurately reflect this wish. Otherwise, we can let this vexsome issue continue to roil the political waters, feed the flames of the culture wars and leave behind a body count that is apparently not yet high enough to shock us to our senses.

Tymothy Park

Moscow

Time is running out

A few months ago, Congressman Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, gave a speech in Boise regarding the lower Snake River dams. At the time, he said he didn’t have answers, but he did have some questions. The truth is, most of his questions were answered a long time ago.

Half of the barge traffic has already switched to rail and the rest could be moved to rail cheaper than maintaining the navigation system. Whitewater recreation will replace flat water cruise ships. Irrigation pumping stations are easily and cheaply relocated. ...

Power from the lower Snake River dams is surplus energy that gets sold, mostly to California, for about half what it costs to produce. The dams are economic failures. All of that is known.

Bonneville Power Administration’s customers are the ones who subsidize the dams, and that leads to a bigger, broader and simpler question: Would BPA customers rather pay $40 per megawatt hour for their energy or would they rather pay $25?

We all know the answer to that one as well. ...

BPA cannot lower rates while it is losing hundreds of millions of dollars each year supporting high-cost surplus assets like the lower Snake River dams. In other words, BPA can shutter high cost assets in an effort to survive or the assets will be shuttered after BPA has failed to survive. Soft landing or hard landing, the status quo for both BPA and the lower Snake River dams will end in nine years. ...

Anthony Jones

Boise