Canceling out the concept of a contract because some people are not willing to really consider what it means to sign their names to a mortgage is ridiculous. A mortgage isn't a bankruptcy proceeding. The contract to pay back the loan is backed by the property -- the property is the guarantee.

That many thousands of people could not afford to buy the homes that they purchased and are now losing them as a result is not a justification to wreck the mortgage contract instrument for everyone else.

You can't protect people from overreaching in what they can afford because of what they want. Bailing such people out is utter nonsense.

David O'Shea

Costa Mesa

Right now the fight is over how (or whether) to bail out the folks in danger of losing their homes because of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. But the fight that needs to be fought is over regulation of an industry run amok. New rules need to be put in place, such as making borrowers prove they can repay the loans they are taking out, requiring lenders to act in the interest of their clients and holding those who sell mortgages as securities on the stock market accountable for the quality of their product.

Pedro Morillas

Sacramento

Do most homeowners really deserve mortgage relief assistance? How many put little or no money down and have actually enjoyed payments less than what equivalent rent would have been? How many have used their home as an ATM, living far beyond their means and owe much more than the purchase price?

Any government assistance to these irresponsible people is a slap in the face of the sensible taxpayers who must now incur higher mortgage costs and contribute through loan guarantee programs.

Ed Skebe

Manhattan Beach

Once again, the Democrats feel the need to jump in and protect regular people from evil businesses -- in other words, anyone who tries to make a profit. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? People made bad choices. The trustworthy borrowers shouldn't be punished for those bad choices, nor should the lenders, to their own detriment, be required to adjust those loans.

Terrance Dauplaise

Torrance

Blaming the rape victim

Re "What campus rape crisis?" Opinion, Feb. 24

As a rape survivor and someone who volunteered at a community rape crisis line for nine years, I knew where Heather Mac Donald was headed. She begins with the implication that she spent countless hours sitting by a college rape crisis phone but nobody called. If this were the truth and not a myth, Mac Donald would have stated it outright. If Mac Donald were to respect women's self-identification as rape survivors -- something she demands of feminists -- she couldn't label up to 50% of women who report rape as liars, and she couldn't try to label the rest as promiscuous young women who got what they deserved for not being chaste.

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