This is Viewpoints for Sunday, August 14, 2016

Parent not pathetic

I take great exception to Michael Snipes’ letter on Khizr Khan, the Gold Star parent who was critical of Donald Trump. It is typical of Trump and his supporters. They attack the messenger rather than refute the message. In doing so they play fast and loose with the truth.

Khan is not an immigration lawyer. Immigration is just one of his specialties and not his main practice. What Kahn is being accused of (if you know what a EB5 visa really is) is helping people come to America to start businesses to employ Americans. This is a far cry from a well-known billionaire named Donald Trump who sends American jobs overseas to get cheap labor and brings in foreign workers to his businesses here to take jobs away from Americans. But my greatest objection to the article by Snipes is, what did Khan say that wasn’t true? Trump has said or done things Khan accused Trump of doing, and good people who are not Hillary supporters have condemned Trump for saying these things. The pathetic person is not Khan.

Totally correct

Editors, your editorial entitled, “Do the right thing with concessions contract” was 100 percent on target. What’s at stake here is something called integrity. Once lost it is scarcely found.

Electoral College

Why doesn’t someone tell the public that their vote does not count in the presidential election. The Electoral College consists of 539 voters, and the first presidential candidate to get 270 votes is the president of the U.S.

Firing of Nick White

We are writing on behalf of the National Association for Public Defense (NAPD), a nationwide organization of nearly 15,000 public defenders committed to enhancing the right to counsel for our clients and the role of the public defender in the criminal justice system.

We are deeply concerned about the firing of Nick White as Houston County public defender, and we urge the Houston County Commission to consider whether this action is in the best interest of the clients served by the office and whether it will compromise the provision of justice in Houston County courts.

NAPD stands strongly behind a public defender office director’s ethical obligation to advocate for more resources when workloads are excessive. It violates the public defender director’s ethical obligations not to seek additional resources when workloads compromise the ability of the office to provide zealous, effective assistance of counsel.

In fact, there are standards to guide effective public defense systems. The first principle of the American Bar Association’s Ten Principles is that the indigent defense function is independent. It reads in part that the “public defense function should be independent from political influence.” We urge the Houston County Commission to consider whether the firing of Nick White was truly independent of political motivations.

Laugh out loud

Every morning I enjoy my coffee while reading the letters to the editor. When I saw Gilbert Held’s claim that Trump “doesn’t lie about anything” I choked and laughed so hard coffee shot out my nose.

New definition

Hysterical. Synonyms are “out of control, frenzied, frantic, wild, feverish, crazed.”

Too strange. Who would have dreamed that (the male) Trump’s Republican campaign would behave more hysterically than (the female) Hillary’s Democratic campaign?

Hysterical was “originally defined as a neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus.” Finally, “generally, modern medical professionals have abandoned using the term ...”

Selective outrage

It seems that it is now fashionable to rabidly hate yet another flag besides the Confederate Battle flag. Earlier this year the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received a complaint from an African American charging his employer with discrimination because a co-worker wore a cap with the Gadsden flag (a Revolutionary War banner featuring a coiled snake above the words “Don’t Tread On Me”) on it. The supposed offense came because the flag’s designer, Christopher Gadsden, owned slaves. EEOC likely welcomes such nonsense to justify its existence, so they began investigating if wearing Gadsden Flag headgear to work could be considered racial harassment. Folks, will the utter insanity of political correctness ever just go away? Are we now, as a nation, so pitifully dumb?

I wonder what the next target will be? Will offended souls start a bonfire of dollar bills because George Washington owned slaves? Let’s up the ante — Grant is on the $50 bill and he held his slaves well after the Civil War was over. Come on, now. If something is offensive then it is offensive — pitch those greenbacks into the flames if you feel so strongly about it. Perhaps millions of offended will stop drinking Coca Cola because a former Confederate soldier invested in it? Just wait, one day someone will figure out that Old Glory flew from the mast of slave ships that docked in America — not the Confederate flag. I’ll say one thing for political correctness: It is pretty selective.

Just saying it

I just listened to an interview in 2007 done by Wolf Blitzer where the person being interviewed was definite on the need to declare victory in Iraq and leave because it was a civil war that we had no business being involved in. Who was it? Donald Trump. Now he calls leaving Iraq a mistake. Should we label him a cofounder of ISIS as he has our president? Talk about judgment. Just saying it is much easier to be a critic than president.

This story was originally published August 13, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Sunday, August 14, 2016."