Letters to the editor

OPINION:

Ramos and Compean

A major point should be added to your excellent Editorial (“Pardon Ramos and Compean,” Thursday) demanding a pardon for U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean regarding the underlying obstruction of justice and misleading the jury charges against prosecutor U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton (a longtime member of President Bush’s Hispanic political family). The recent indictment and guilty plea of the reported victim, professional drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, was based on another drug-smuggling event that occurred just after the attempted arrest by Ramon and Compean but before their trial. This was also during the immunity conferred on Aldrete-Davila by Mr. Sutton, which included Mr. Aldrete-Davila’s laughable promise to stop smuggling drugs.

Given the immediate repeat drug offense and breach of his solemn promises under the immunity agreement, Aldrete-Davila’s “credibility” against Ramos and Compean would have been so unthinkably ridiculous that Mr. Sutton could not have proceeded with the trial, and the charges would have been dropped. Did Mr. Sutton, therefore, suppress and delay the arrest and formal charging of Aldrete-Davila until after the trial and first appeal of Ramos and Compean so there would be no formal, evidentiary record and, thus, he could hide the truth from the jury and otherwise obstruct justice during and after their trial? The only differences between this and the recent travesty at Duke University in North Carolina are that the Duke students had resources to fight effectively in court and the media, and their criminally/ethically irresponsible prosecutor did not have a friend in the White House. Good for you for remembering these men and their families.

WILLIAM J. O’BRIEN II

Falls Church

Judging a book by its cover

I was pleased by the several compliments W. James Antle III paid to my book, “Reclaiming Conservatism” in his review (“Recharting conservatism,” Op-Ed, Tuesday). I wonder, however, about his complaint that my “support for federally guaranteed legal abortion” is inconsistent with my belief that it is appropriate for same-sex marriage decisions to be made at the state level. My book does not, in fact, endorse either of those positions. In the first case, my book merely comments on former Judge Robert H. Bork’s view that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution (actually, all of our rights continue to exist unless we have delegated them to the government) and about Sen. John McCain’s view of same-sex marriage. I regret that your reviewer read it so carelessly, though he did say some nice things about the book, and ascribes to me things I did not say.

MICKEY EDWARDS

Lecturer

Princeton University

Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Princeton, N.J.

Not honest about ethanol

We used to have people in authority who were honest, thinking and discerning. Now we have leaders who seem not only to be dishonest but not to be able to correlate the facts.

Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer appears either to be blind to the ethanol facts or to be dishonest (“Ethanol as cause of food crisis ’flat-out wrong,’” Page 1, Saturday). The following are reported as well-documented facts: 1) Expensive oil is creating more demand for alternatives. 2) U.S. farmers are devoting more land to corn at the expense of other crops because of government subsidies and the use of corn for ethanol. 3) Corn is more scarce as food and prices are being driven up. 4) We are forecasting even higher concentrations of ethanol in gasoline.

Seems to me that if our leaders don’t acknowledge and remedy these reported facts, we are headed for disaster.

H. L. PHILLIPS

Fort Washington

Israel and the Palestinians

Mark Steyn’s understated reminder (“And many more to come,” Commentary, Monday) kindly doesn’t remind us of the abject failures of courage and perspective that led not only to the Holocaust, but to the preventable loss: World War II itself.

“’As it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us,’” Mr. Steyn quotes from Eric Hoffer while profoundly knowing, I am certain, of these words’ thundering reverberations of Pastor Martin Niemoller’s eternal warning about dalliance in the propagandistically masked face of evil: “Then they came for me.”

The likes of columnists Richard Cohen of The Washington Post and Matthew Parris of the Times of London (treated gently) are replete in the face of the insidious and invidious influence of the kleptocratic oil money that trickles through the universities and culture of European and U.S. media. Mr. Steyn only subtly raises anti-Semitism, and wisely so. The enemy here is a deeper lack of courage and yearning for truth and the seduction of relativistic morality.

Efraim Karsh’s article “1948, Israel, and the Palestinians The True Story” (see Commentarymagazine.com) draws upon recently declassified documents from the British Mandate period. It deserves vast European and U.S. media study and reporting. Will that happen before “many more to come “?

NELSON KIEFF

Fairfax Va.

What is road rage?

I am confused by both the tone and construct of Tom Knott’s recent article on the survey reporting that our area is No. 5 in the country in terms of road rage (“D.C. drivers rage on, but it could be worse,” Metropolitan, Thursday). What is road rage? Is talking on a cell phone or putting on makeup road rage? I don’t think so. It might be dangerous and might be very poor driving discipline, but surely it is not “rage.”

The article mixes up behavior that is inappropriate, inconsiderate and possibly dangerous, and behavior that is aggressive, unpredictable and clearly dangerous to the driver and others.

Road rage might be defined as where drivers change lanes quickly, accelerate and decelerate often, prohibit merges, do not use turn signals and exceed the speed limit by enough to be classified as reckless driving. The article was not really about road rage, but about inconsiderate drivers. Where I might see significant cases of the latter, I do not see that many of the former. Why don’t we call it what it is?

DAVID SMITH

Clifton, Md.