Wombs are not soapboxes
[Re: “Personhood revisited,” News, Aug. 26.] They’re at it again. They just can’t stay out of women’s wombs and couples’ bedrooms. They say they are protecting the unborn or preborn or whatever language they can dream up to cast one cell, two cells, a few cells as “persons.” There was a resounding “no” in 2008. But they will keep it up until they get some state, any state, to pass it. They hope for a legal challenge so that they can take it all the way to the Roberts U.S. Supreme Court in hopes of overturning Roe v. Wade. As a Coloradan, I don’t appreciate being used and abused to advance someone’s or some group’s religious dogma.
Our young women don’t remember a time when a woman didn’t have the right to make her own reproductive choices. They don’t remember that it took two Supreme Court rulings to make it legal for women to use birth control. And they assume that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land — and will remain that way.
But there’s even more to this than a religious belief. Those of us of a certain age remember the days when society supported the notion that the proper role for women was “to keep them barefoot and pregnant.” Most men and many women subscribed to the notion that a woman’s place was in the “house,” not the “House.” And there are those who still believe this and who are deter mined to turn back time to achieve it.
Amendment 62 is a measure that if passed, would change the state constitution and insert the government into the personal, private health care decisions that women and their families make every single day. The amendment seeks to extend legal and constitutional rights to fertilized eggs. It would ban all abortion, including in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is at risk. It could also ban emergency contraception and commonly used birth control.
So keep saying no to these people.
Say it loud and say it often. And make sure no judge ever sits on a bench that could rob women and families of their rights to self-determination. Talk to your friends, your neighbors, members of your extended family. Make sure that when November’s votes are counted that the rejection of the amendment is larger than the last time. Keep saying no for as long as it takes. Only you can protect your reproductive rights.
Kaye Fissinger/Longmont
Danish, terrorists and The New York Times
[Re:
What to do about the mosque near Ground Zero,” Danish Plan, Aug. 26]
When Paul Danish and like-minded right-wing demagogues write anti-
Islamic screeds dissing Sufi community centers near Ground Zero, they
are disempowering Islamic moderates and boosting the recruitment numbers
of hard-line terrorists. When ignorant crackers attack law-abiding
Muslims with knives in New York, or burn down mosque construction in
Tennessee, they are marching to Paul Danish and friends’ tune, further
empowering the suicidal nut jobs we all are so afraid of.
Is Paul Danish a secret Islamofascist because he is providing material support to terrorists with his hate speech?
We
don’t even have to know for sure to have him indefinitely detained. We
just need a note from our president or the CIA or the NSA stating that
he is a terrorist. Since we are not in Pakistan or Yemen, we don’t even
need a drone or a hellfire missile. A couple of rent-a-cops in a van
armed with a Tazer can whisk him to the nearest airport and off to
Baghram for interrogation. No muss, no fuss, no trial, no recourse, no
bother. How great is that? God bless America! Make sure it’s a white,
Christian God doing the blessing. If the terrorists’ goal was to destroy
America, we are helping them by gutting the First and Fourth Amendments
of the Constitution. We are also helping them by sending billions
overseas when we can’t afford jobs, education or infrastructure at home.
Since
the Weekly is an independent, egalitarian newspaper, I look forward to
hateful screeds directed at other religious and minority groups written
by ignorant, privileged white guys in the weeks to come. In the
meantime, we could consider dedicating Ground Zero to a memorial for all
of the innocent civilians killed worldwide by us in the years since
9/11. It would be an ongoing jobs project, ’cause they keep on dying.
Hats
off to the rebranding of the occupation of Iraq. We withdrew 4,000
combat troops and are hiring 7,000 mercenaries to supplement the 50,000
“non” combat troops we left behind. Is this a “responsible” end of the
“war”? See you at the parade.
Scott MacInnis/Longmont
You guys should really send this [Danish column] in to the New York Times, this is nothing short of great.
Barb Karr/Boulder
Why the secrecy around 60, 61 and 101?
[Re:
“60, 61 and 101 would be disastrous,” Perspectives, Sept. 2.] Who is
behind the Bad 3? They are trying very hard to make sure you don’t know.
And they’re trying very hard to make sure you don’t know what damage
60, 61 and 101 would do to Colorado.
Reporting
this week in The Denver Post opened a window on the backers of these
intentionally misleading, job-killing measures as they attack the process
of creating the “Blue Book,” the state-prepared voter guide. The only
backer of these initiatives who will speak refuses to do so publicly. In
fact, she will only communicate with the state by e-mail. The Post says
this is because “proponents were not interested in meeting in person.”
But
the e-mails are instructive. In one, the backer likens the nonpartisan
analysts in charge of developing the Blue Book to Joseph Goebbels, one
of Adolph Hitler’s top lieutenants. Seriously!
Pledge
to vote no on the Bad 3. The name on the e-mails is Natalie Menten, who
bills herself as a champion of transparency. In 2009, when running for
Lakewood City Council, she told The Denver Post that all workings of
government “should be disclosed early on by using every method of
notification available. Lack of information is misinformation.” If
transparency is so important to her, why won’t she even show her face?
“Good
governance depends on transparency, so Colorado voters ought to ask
themselves why proponents of a trio of tax-slashing measures are so
stridently arguing to keep a fact-based analysis of them out of view,”
The Denver Post said in an editorial on Sept. 1.
The
Post notes that the phrasing and use of capitalization in e-mails from
Menten looks highly similar to two other e-mails the state received
directly from Doug Bruce. That suggests Doug Bruce is just hiding behind
Natalie Menten.
Bruce
is accused of violating the state Constitution for failing to disclose
who has financially backed the Bad 3. He’s spent months making a mockery
of our campaign finance laws — and the courts — by dodging process
servers after repeatedly failing to appear in court.
The
right wing is hell-bent on wiping out our campaign finance disclosure
laws. Doug Bruce is their poster child. Who is backing the Bad 3? Is it
out-of-state business interests trying to damage our economy to eliminate
com-people like Doug Bruce, we don’t know.
What
we do know is that Amendments 60 and 61 and Proposition 101 are opposed
by Democrats, and they’re opposed by Republicans. They’re opposed by
Colorado business, as well as labor. Liberals and conservatives. Rich
and poor. The people pushing these attacks won’t show themselves, and
they are counting on voters who are angry about the economy not looking
any deeper than having taxes cut during a recession. That’s exactly what
happened the last time Doug Bruce horn-swoggled Coloradans into voting
for one of his crackpot ideas — TABOR — during the Bush recession of
1992.
We have to put a stop to this. Pledge to vote against these destructive initiatives.
Mike Ditto/ProgressNow Colorado
Does anyone care about our sidewalks?
Is
there anyone at all in charge of enforcing sidewalk laws in Boulder? My
limited knowledge of overgrowth and low-hanging trees in north Boulder
makes me think that no — no one even cares. On Iris alone, there are at
least four instances of extreme overgrowth from Broadway to 28th Street.
What
is the chance that violators could be fined? Wouldn’t it be nice if the
fine money could be used to support our schools? After all, it is the
schoolchildren who use the sidewalks.
And speaking of schoolchildren, I noticed that the very costly
renovation of Casey Middle School has a front staircase that has two
trees impeding travel down the steps. The trees are planted directly in
the middle of two sections of the stairs at the bottom. Students would
definitely be strangled by the wires holding them up, should they be
unaware that the stairs end at a tree. Isn’t this a safety issue? And
why are administrators forcing trees into the faces of students who walk
down the steps?
Linda Nelson/Boulder
Tancredo’s third-party run a disgrace
I
am writing as I am concerned that Tom Tancredo is getting a free pass
on issues and how destructive his third-party run is for Colorado.
Tancredo
has made a career out of being the champion against illegal
immigration, yet his third-party run will certainly destroy any chance
of reform in Colorado.
This legislative session, State Rep.
Kent
Lambert (R-Colorado Springs) is introducing a bill modeled off of the
Arizona law, a bill the majority of Coloradans support. Logically, this
is an issue that Tom Tancredo should be fully behind, and he should be
doing whatever
he
can to ensure its passage, but his third-party run will split the vote,
ensuring a John Hickenlooper win and destroying any chance of reining in
illegal immigration and its destructive impacts on the state’s economy.
The
media is missing the real impacts of the third-party run. Even if a
newspaper’s “slate” is to support John Hickenlooper, all are missing the
real story of just what Tom Tancredo is doing to skew the coming
election and his seeming vendetta against the GOP.
Don Rodgers/Colorado Springs
Obama stretching military resources too thin
“Last
combat brigade leaves Iraq,” said Obama last week. The newspapers
dutifully printed what he said, but Obama was lying. The truth is that
Obama is waging four wars, a fact that he wants to hide from the
Democrats, especially before an election.
A
couple of days later, Gen. Petraeus, talked about the 56,000 U.S.
troops in Afghanistan. Both military and civilian casualties are rapidly
increasing.
About
six months ago, Obama ordered the invasion of Yemen with what our
military is calling a “modest” sized expeditionary force. An article in
the Wall Street Journal said that an increase in the number of U.S.
troops there is being considered.
Obama
is also furiously bombing Pakistan with drones and cruise missiles. A
news article gave details about one of our drone attacks on a building
that had 20 children in it.
Obama’s four-war strategy is militarily unsound and economically disastrous.
No
nation can wage four wars and win. Neither can we afford to wage four
wars. Our national debt is officially at $12 trillion. The actual figure
is closer to twice that. Niall Ferguson, the keynote speaker at the
Aspen Institute symposium last month, flatly predicted that the American
economy will collapse under our debt load within two years.
Democracy is not a spectator sport.
Either you go out and put pressure on Obama to stop this madness, or the economy will shortly bring the problem home to you.
George Newell/Boulder
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