Letters to the Editor

A new curriculum at Pepperdine

Wednesday’s “Inside Politics” reported that Kenneth W. Starr has been appointed dean of Pepperdine University’s School of Law.

Apparently law students at Pepperdine will learn from the top that it is all right to investigate consensual sex when no one complains, to tape friends’ conversations without permission, to force legal-age young peopletotestifyabouttheir friends’ consenting sexual lives, to make mothers testify against their daughters when no crime is committed, to force the Secret Service not to be secret, to subpoena records of books bought at bookstores about legal subjects, to secretly subpoena home phone records of innocent witnesses and force them to testify in front of grand juries about private conversations with friends, to write titillating reports you know will be used fully in the press, and to claim you are doing all this for the good of the nation, despite virtually all precedents protecting privacy and First Amendment rights.

They will also learn to build perjury cases by using stings and coercive techniques to generate defensive statements by someone protecting the privacy of a personal physical relationship where no one expressed harm.

Let’s hope they don’t use these lessons either as special prosecutors or even in traditional legal procedures.

And let’s hope they don’t decide to spend $60 million of federal funds over six years in proving someone has a private consenting relationship with no complaining party.

As one of the more than 100 Clinton staff and friends whose lives were interrupted by Mr. Starr, who insisted we testify in front of his grand jury investigating the president’s consensual relationship, I can say that his distorted view of the law is not one that should ever be disseminated to students as a model of what is right. And this is not a partisan issue. Republicans and Democrats alike detested how he violated personal privacy of physical relationships.

ROBERT S. WEINER

Accokeek, Md.

The Kerry schism

George Donadoni’s statements, while an interesting adventure in legalese, were totally in error (“Lest ye be judged,” Letters, Saturday). In his defense of human life, Archbishop Sean O’Malley is upholding the very values that should be beyond argument. That all life is sacred is a teaching of Christ and continues in his church. John Kerry is not following the teachings of the Catholic Church and is promoting sin. As a result of his actions, Mr. Kerry is in grave sin by its very definition. Archbishop O’Malley would be remiss in his duties of shepherding the church with the authority given him by Christ if he did not withhold the Eucharist from someone not in full communion with the church.

ISABELLE BUCHANAN

Kensington

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George Donadoni obviously labors under several misconceptions concerning the basis for Archbishop Sean O’Malley’s actions toward John Kerry. Perhaps a couple of illustrations will help him understand the situation.

After all, we may consider rape sinful or socially unacceptable, but the rapist probably doesn’t. If you cut me off in traffic, and I get angry, decide in the freedom of my own conscience that I have a right to avenge myself, pull up beside you at the next traffic light, and shoot you through the head, will society excuse my murder of you on the basis of my freedom of conscience?

The archbishop is not judging the state of Mr. Kerry’s conscience so much as he is standing up for the right of the unborn child to live, which Mr. Kerry’s position repudiates.

ROSALIE DANCAUSE

Dumfries, Va.

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George Donadoni’s assertion that presidential candidate John Kerry’s stance is pro-choice, rather than pro-abortion, is erroneous. Mr. Kerry is on record as having voted against the bill that would have banned partial-birth abortion. Such a stance is by definition pro-abortion and is in direct opposition to the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Second, Mr. Donadoni’s premise of “leaving it to the individual to make the choice that conforms to his or her conscience” is a philosophy that would allow one to rationalize virtually any type of action and reflects a permissiveness that is at the root of so many of the problems in our culture.

The Catholic Church is clear that there is a difference between right and wrong, and that choices have consequences. For these reasons, Archbishop O’Malley is correct in declaring that Mr. Kerry is in a “state of grave sin” and in denying him the Blessed Sacrament.

MICHAEL K. GREEN

Bethany Beach, Del.

Punditry parading as journalism

I have to agree with your assessment of the Newsweek article about the Bush tax cuts that it “amounts to nothing more than a reprehensible journalistic hit piece” (“Newsweek piece ’doesn’t add up,’” Editorial, Saturday).

I do, however, take exception to your calling the article “journalistic.”

On June 2, 1998, Doug Harbrecht, Washington news editor of Business Week magazine, said in a speech at a National Press Club dinner, “… journalism means being painstakingly thorough, even-handed, and fair.”

By this definition, the article was not journalism, but plain old punditry of misstatements and distortions.

HAZEL O. EDWARDS

Houston should be released (“Iraqi militants put allies on defensive,” Page 1, Friday). Two aid workers, Noriaki Imai, 18, and Nahoko Takato, 34, and a free-lance cameraman, Soichiro Koriyama, 32, have been threatened with being burned alive if Japanese troops do not leave Iraq.

Mr. Imai, a dedicated high school student, decided to visit Iraq despite the seriously deteriorating situation there to study the health effects to Iraqi children of depleted uranium from ammunition. He wants to publish his findings in an illustrated book to enhance public awareness about the problem and to mobilize international support to improve the health conditions of Iraqi children.

Miss Takato has been engaged in volunteer work with the street children in Iraq since last year, providing medicine and food and appealing for humanitarian support through the Japanese media.

Through his photographs, Mr. Koriyama has vividly conveyed the deteriorating living conditions of the Iraqi people. These pictures showed the importance of mobilizing humanitarian support for the Iraqi people.

The three held captive clearly recognized the dangerous situation in Iraq, but they believed it was their duty to help the people there.

The Japanese Self-Defense Forces provide only humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people. They have been providing water and medical assistance to hospitals, as well as reconstructing schools for the children.

In view of the dedication and sincerity of these Japanese, I sincerely hope the hostage takers free them so they can continue their work.

KATSUHISA FURUKAWA

Senior research associate

Center for Nonproliferation Studies

Monterey Institute of International Studies

Washington