Administration’s Ethical Issues

Why did you publish that vicious, outrageous cartoon by Rob Rogers (Commentary, April 8)? Kenneth Starr has labored for more than three years, at a cost of millions of dollars, to pin something about Whitewater on the Clintons, without success. Webster Hubbell’s friends got him jobs long before he was involved with his trial for theft, so there is absolutely no basis for a payoff conspiracy.

If the Clintons were not public figures, which prevents them from suing, this vicious cartoon would be prima facie libel.

ALEX BRADIE

Laguna Hills

* Bill Press (Column Left, April 6) presented the point of view that the Hubbell controversy is not about hush money. Rather, it is about a failed Whitewater investigation. The truth is, Press does not know the facts. He is nothing more than an agent of the Democratic Party attempting to put a positive spin on one of a long list of tawdry events that have taken place in the Clinton administration.

TOM HIBBARD

Loma Linda

* Unfortunately, what Clinton has done and continues to do is rewrite the book of proper conduct for the highest office in the land. There is no justification for the president and his employees (actually, ours) to propagate the goodwill of a convicted felon; no more than there is for drug smugglers to be invited to the White House and to write checks from their bank accounts filled with drug money.

The entire concept of fund-raising for politicians must be seriously altered. Just think of the amount of money that could be made available for public projects, for health care of indigents and advancing the true potential of our country, in lieu of fattening Clinton’s bank account. Therein lies the true sin of what the president has done, is doing and likely will continue for the next three years to do.

MICHAEL H. SUKOFF

Tustin

* Re Laura Ingraham’s April 6 Column Right:

* Clinton: Ketchup is good with fries. Reagan: Ketchup is a vegetable.

* Clinton: Human rights not a major issue. Reagan: Human rights not a major issue.

MIKE MADRID

Lomita

* Ingraham provides such incisive analysis as aligning Ronald Reagan with C. Everett Koop against “tobacco abuse” and Bill Clinton with Joycelyn Elders on “self-abuse.” That would have been semi-funny in the Laugh Lines column, but is the worst kind of sophistry on the Commentary page. She might have mentioned something about how Reagan wouldn’t touch the tobacco companies while Clinton is taking them on. She might have mentioned that Koop’s position was a major thrust of his work, while Elders’ remark was offhand and widely misinterpreted.

Just because they don’t allow enough time for reasoned arguments in Ingraham’s medium (TV news) doesn’t mean she couldn’t have come up with something more than a Jay Leno monologue.

DALE KIRBY

Oxnard

* My dear Ms. Ingraham, let us not also forget that among your St. Ronnie’s notable achievements were the murders of those Catholic missionaries in Nicaragua by St. Ronnie’s Contras and the increase in our national debt by several trillion dollars. For a news analyst, you ought to know better than to compare your “glorious” black pot to the kettle.

MALCOLM WITTMAN

Los Angeles

* Ingraham’s assertion that even Reagan’s “foes knew he led by holding a firm grip on the rudder of right and wrong” is like saying Marshall Applewhite had a firm grip on reality.

DAVID KEELER

Anaheim