No one has forgotten
Thank you to Philip Martin for remembering the importance of Nov. 22, 1963. I found no other article nor heard another mention of JFK's assassination in the media.
I was in Mrs. Thornton's sophomore English class at Hot Springs High School when the announcement was made over the loudspeaker. Not one person I know has forgotten where they were when they learned of our unspeakable loss.
Thank you also to Becca Martin Brown for the superb High Profile of Mr. Gene King. Truly a remarkable man!
CAROL MOENSTER DYER
Hot Springs Village
Election falsehoods
Here's the real election ripoff threat. If Trump commits an un-American coup by bullying Republican legislators in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to choose electors that vote Trump instead of Biden (their states' popular-vote winner), giving Trump the presidency despite losing the election, you will witness the end of American democracy. You won't live in a democratic republic. You'll live in a Republican dictatorship. Period. It will be the GOP's political greed that destroys democracy and the republic to maintain permanent one-party power.
Truth-challenged Republicans can't accept the reality that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump.
Despite the facts, Republicans continue to believe unproven theories and hearsay "evidence" alleging unproven voter fraud, recycled by right-wing media (Fox News) and the radical-right Republican urban-myth factories such as Breitbart, One America "News," Newsmax, etc., etc.
Trump has lost almost all post-election lawsuits because his lawyers haven't produced evidence to prove widespread voter fraud. If you don't have the evidence, don't go to court.
I can prove my own voter facts. My father-in-law, brother (an independent who usually votes Republican), brother-in-law, and myself--four Christians, military veterans/retirees, and patriots--all voted for Biden. Trump was too corrupt a liar and incompetent president to earn our vote.
Here's why I believe Republicans refuse to accept Biden's win. Paraphrasing Marine Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) from "A Few Good Men," they can't handle the truth.
Their consciences can only accept Trump's lies about voter fraud (which are never said with evidence). It's easier to believe Trump's continuous cascade of voter-fraud falsehoods than admit hard reality: More legal voters chose Biden over Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia.
PHIL PARISH
Conway
Driven underground
Remember the phrase, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do"? The anti-abortionists fail to realize that they want to swap abortions done in a safe, relatively aseptic setting with low complication rates for the ancient back-alley methods with high mortality and morbidity rates. They want to do the same thing that was tried with Prohibition, where all that was accomplished was to drive the production of alcohol to moonshiners and the consumption to speakeasies.
Didn't that effort work out well? Do we really want to drive all abortions underground. for that is what will happen, with more maternal lives lost?
F. RICHARD JORDAN
North Little Rock
About voting fraud
Well, Professor Gitz, you may have hit a new low with your recent screed regarding voting. So many issues, so little space, but let's give it a go.
Voting was made too easy? Nonsense. Voting should always be easy for those eligible to vote. Safeguards regarding registration should be very safe but not ridiculous nor discriminatory. Once that bar has been cleared, voting should be easy in every way. If you're concerned that the resulting vote might not go your way, live with it. If you're concerned about an uninformed electorate, consider this, and I quote: "... 80 percent of the members of one of our major political parties say they believe an election was 'stolen'." (Compare that to the 33 percent of Americans who with considerably stronger evidence believe in UFOs.) Why the election belief? Because despite a near-complete lack of supporting facts, their "awful" leader claims that which isn't so. Not his first vehement assertion of a non-truth, but the voting-fraud bell having now been rung, it cannot be unrung regardless of facts. Shame on Mr. Trump for that.
My home state of Oregon has had mail-only elections since 1998. That's six presidential elections and 12 congressional elections. To date no significant fraud has ever been detected. With many safeguards in place, eligible voters must register according to the rules. Once registered, they receive a ballot with instructions on how and by when to vote. Simple, secret, and secure--exactly what voting should be. Oregon isn't the only state to take this route. Others have and more should. It requires building some infrastructure, but the result is well worth it. The only real risk is when the president seeks to impair the mail service. Does that sound familiar?
Get over it, Bradley. Trump lost, as did the Democrats. But democracy won.
DENNIS BARRY
Little Rock
Spreading hate, lies
Bradley Gitz continues to feed into our plague of divisive rhetoric. His most recent column starts out by calling our president-elect "an enfeebled hack" who had "'defund the police' ... hung around his neck."
First of all, ugly name-calling should be beneath the standard of someone I assume considers himself a well-regarded columnist. Any self-
respecting journalist should have plenty of other ways to try to make a point. Secondly, implying that Joe Biden wants to defund the police is blatantly false. Shame on you, Mr. Gitz, for fueling hate and spreading lies.
SANDRA STEVENS
Little Rock
Why, we'd be lost ...
Wouldn't it make sense that all of our illustrious politicians, state and federal, be the first to receive mandatory covid inoculations? After all, they are the most essential and valued people in the USA. Where would we be without them?
LINC GURLEY
North Little Rock