Lott’s Leadership Spoils the Party

Re “As the Broadsides Continue, Lott Issues Another Apology” (Dec. 12), on Sen. Trent Lott’s racist remarks praising Sen. Strom Thurmond’s run for president in 1948: Lott has stated, “You know, I’ve asked for forgiveness and now I want to, you know, do the right thing in the future.”

The right thing to do, Senator, would be to step down from your position of Senate majority leader -- and then perhaps America could forgive you.

Nate Rubin

Los Angeles

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Re “Lott Remarks Earn Presidential Rebuke,” Dec. 13: President Bush’s eloquent stand against segregation deserves our applause. The fact that it took him almost a week to do it demands our criticism.

John Heaner

Valley Village

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Re “GOP Revisits a Sordid Past,” Opinion, Dec. 15: Do Harold Meyerson and his fellow liberals -- or anyone with half a brain -- seriously believe that in 2002 any politically savvy operative, let alone the majority leader of the Senate, would deliberately and intentionally stand up in a public forum and say, “Gee, I sure wish we could go back to the good ol’ segregationist days of 1948”? If so, I’ve got some beachfront property in Baghdad I’d like to sell them. No, this shameful piling on says more about the holier-than-thou attitude of the liberal chattering class than it does about the so-called “racism” of Lott.

Carl Moore

Lomita

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If Abraham Lincoln were alive today, he’d be a Democrat.

Arthur D. Wahl

Oxnard