THE WASHINGTON TIMES

EDITORIAL: If America is serious about open democracy, 3 debates just won’t cut it

For all America's bluster about democracy, for all the super-charged admonitions by both Democrats and Republicans we citizens "get out and vote" and "make your voice heard," there is a certain perversity in the fact that we have, for the past few decades, averaged something like 2.5 presidential debates an election year.

July 1, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Shortsighted ‘defund’ movement

I do not believe I have ever heard a more insane idea than the call to defund the police. Imagine drunk drivers speeding down your street, where children walk and play. Imagine no one obeying traffic signals. Imagine cars and motorcycles going over 100 miles an hour on the freeways. Imagine your house is on fire and the firefighters cannot get to the fire hydrant because of illegally parked cars. Imagine listening to or watching a man beating a woman -- and having no one to call for help. Imagine having no one to investigate a theft, rape, murder or drive-by shooting. That is what we will reap if we defund the police. If this is what the American people want, there is an easier way: Just get rid of all the laws.

July 1, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Contradictory messages

As a communication scholar, I believe that Sen. Chris Murphy, Connecticut Democrat, hit the nail on the head at Tuesday's Senate coronavirus hearing. He explained why slowing the spread of COVID-19 is in large part a rhetorical problem. As Mr. Murphy noted, we have "two parallel messaging operations" leading to confusion and a lack of compliance with virus-prevention guidelines.

July 1, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Biden couldn’t order mask wearing

The president has no authority to require the general public to wear masks ("Joe Biden: I would insist anyone in public wear a mask," Web, June 26). As sovereign entities that both predated and retained broad powers under the U.S. Constitution, only the individual states possess inherent "police powers" to protect their inhabitants' health, safety and welfare. In contrast, federal authorities must be expressly enumerated in the Constitution.

June 30, 2020

EDITORIAL: Anti-cop policies are killing Americans

When police flee, bullets fly and Americans die. It's a troubling description of the current state of national affairs. Gunfire kills, but so do decisions by politicians that force cops to retreat and leave the streets to the angriest throngs. The sounds of death are likely to echo until Election Day.

June 30, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Defund universities, not police

It's an ill wind that blows no good. The good that can come from our present distress is the final realization that we have long been subsidizing our own problems. Funding institutions of higher education that for two generations have had an anti-American atmosphere has come to a head, as a large majority of the destructive Black Lives Matter crowd is made up of white, "university-educated" women.

June 30, 2020

EDITORIAL: Black Lives Matter is rooted in a soulless ideology

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have taken to gathering in the streets to protest racial injustice. They comprise a rainbow of color — black, white and every hue in between. The nebulous organization behind it all, Black Lives Matter, has succeeded in bringing U.S. citizens together in common cause like never before in modern times. What's not to like? Its Marxist roots, that's what.

June 29, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: No constitutional right to harm

We were caught flat-footed by COVID-19, as was almost every country. A few states took the brunt of it, and in those places people stayed at home, socially distanced and wore masks, finally bringing the spread under control.

June 29, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Bolton’s ‘punches’ powerless

Although John Bolton's book, "The Room Where It Happened," is currently undergoing litigation in the United Staes, here in the United Kingdom we have been able to read it — and far from finding it to be the scandalous torpedoing of the Trump administration that liberals are hoping, I actually looked up from my copy with a favorable view of President Trump.

June 29, 2020

EDITORIAL: Digital revolution poses unique risks to our intellectual inheritance

The phone in your palm has the potential to hold more books than filled the vaunted Library of Alexandria. Your movie subscription service grants you access to more films than you have hours in your life to watch. And song? Well, pick any tune from day one of recorded music to the present and the likelihood is high that you can listen to it after five minutes of online searching. Put another way, thanks to digital technology, we are living in an unprecedented time with respect to access of American (indeed, global) arts and letters.

June 28, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Past being repeated

When I was a child watching news reels about Adolf Hitler, I wondered how such a man and his followers could have attained control of Germany. How could his Brownshirt thugs have run around unimpeded, attacking, burning, looting and intimidating the citizens? Now, at the age of 82, I am at last finding the answer to that question as I see the same horrifying scenario playing out in my own country. If it isn't stopped, we are heading for disaster.

June 28, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Suppressing history same as lying

Jacob Bruggeman is a graduate student in history ("Removing Confederate statues does not erase U.S. history," Web, June 25)? Laughable! Apparently his leftist professors and mentors have allowed him to proceed without challenge in his academic career as the biased, ignorant, intellectual pretender that he is.

June 28, 2020

EDITORIAL: Transgender athletes have an unfair leg up on girls

Human progress is fueled by limitless flights of imagination. That's a good thing, except when the individual fantasy runs smack-dab into objective reality. Then it is best that the image so dear to one and so harmful to others remain a private reverie. Such is the case of young male athletes who claim to be young women, at least in their own minds. The physical advantage that lads have over lasses cannot be erased by wishful thinking, drugs or scalpels. Only the delusional refuse to accept that boys will be boys.

June 25, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Prosecute law-ignoring ‘leaders’

When is enough enough? We have had riots and murders in our streets for a month with Black Lives Matter leading the protesters and anarchists. This has turned into persecution of the white race and all cops, as well as anyone who is not Black.

June 25, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Moving away from reconciliation

I grew up in the era of the Civil War Centennial, when the fundamental view, as espoused in President Eisenhower's Proclamation, was that everyone who fought in that most horrible war was an American. Eisenhower understood that an essential component to achieving reconciliation between Black and White America was achieving reconciliation between the North and the South.

June 25, 2020

EDITORIAL: Postpone tax payments until 2021

Now that the spread of COVID-19 has slowed and the curve has "flattened" it's time for policymakers to come up with ways to bring the economy back to where it was before the lockdowns imposed by so many of the nation's governors knocked it flat on its back.

June 24, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: ‘White privilege’ exaggerated

So-called white privilege permitted me to forfeit a career opportunity with NASA back in the '70s. The reason? I neglected to comply with an interviewer's encouragement to pitch my race as Hispanic. Hmm, perhaps I should have taken a page from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and embraced a specious minority identity for employment. Did I naively squander that opportunity due to a hollow, self-contorted truth? After all, truth is relative now, right?

June 24, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Move against anti-Semitism

It is inarguable that the Black community has suffered. What happened to George Floyd was horrific and cannot be justified. There have been all too many instances of awful aggression against the Black community.

June 24, 2020

EDITORIAL: Close Seattle’s ‘Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone’ now

This past weekend, a murder (along with two other shootings) occurred in the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" (CHAZ), a six-block neighborhood that has been occupied by left-wing protesters and provocateurs for the past two weeks. We can add this murder to the rape, battery and assaults taking place in the "cop-free" area patrolled by roving -- and armed -- bands of strongmen.

June 23, 2020

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Will BLM effect real change?

This is not the first time a democratic nation has been hit by both a cultural revolt and an epidemic at the same time. In ancient Rome, when the poor had their property seized for debts, they marched across the city and out of town several miles in protest. This symbolized the fact that wealthy Romans were effectively driving them homeless into the countryside.

June 23, 2020