Special Section, Poll on Clinton

* In “Pathway to Peril” (Sunday Report, Jan. 31), you talk about President Clinton as though he simply has the wrong bloodline. “It almost seemed to be in his blood.” Is The Times taking us back to the 1930s, when such canards led to the wholesale slaughter of millions of Jews by the Nazis, who believed in purity of blood, or to the South, where the amount of African American blood in anyone was calculated to the smallest fraction? The Times slanders the president’s mother, who is no longer alive to defend herself, by referring to her as a “flirtatious, nightclub-loving woman” and suggesting that the president’s biological father may not have been his father after all.

This is a vicious, personal attack against the president of the United States. The Times should be ashamed for aligning itself with those who write such trash in the tabloids and on the Internet. I don’t ask the editors to share my political views, but I do ask that they engage in some editorial restraint.

ESTELLE GERSHGOREN

NOVAK

Beverly Hills

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* You are to be commended on the quality of this Sunday Report. While succinctly reviewing all the issues, you made it abundantly clear that, like alcoholism, this type of “womanizing” is an addiction, therefore a disease.

Not a sin and not an impeachable offense, a notion that the skunk majority in Washington, in its relentless bent to avenge Watergate, seems unable to grasp.

MARYSIA MEYLAN

Santa Monica

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* So “[Monica] Lewinsky had disaster written all over her, if only Clinton had eyes to see.” Those are the smoothest semantics since Tricky Dick told us that the people had the right to know that their president was not a crook.

“Blind from the beginning”? Slick Willie can certainly see to push that red button launching global atomic annihilation. And he could certainly “lurch between weakness and conscience” as he signed those fascist executive orders murdering and maiming demonized Iraqis and destroying their homes and property. What conscience?

The question is not whether you’d buy a used car from him, but should he be trusted with the power of life and death over all mankind. Emphatically not! But impeachment charades obscure crimes against humanity.

SAM HOUSTON ALLRED

Hollywood

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* I am trying to figure out how a poll of 960 people nationwide can even begin to speak on the views of the millions of people living in this country (Times Poll, Jan. 31). Also, I am unsure what random-digit dialing techniques mean, when you go on to say that the sample was weighted to conform to census figures for sex, race, etc. I continue to question the impartiality of The Times, when you imply that such a small percentage of our population can speak for so many.

ARLETTA SMITH

Lynwood

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* Here’s a novel approach that just might satisfy those who want Clinton to remain in office and others who want him convicted and thrown out: The Senate could postpone its verdict until Clinton’s last day in office and then vote unanimously to convict him.

LEW PRITCHETT

Placentia