Talking about free speech

Re “A Capitol offense,” Opinion, Feb. 3

Cindy Sheehan is arrested in the visitors’ gallery and removed from the Capitol for exercising, quietly, her right of free speech as guaranteed by the Constitution, such as the majority of the people in the country understand it to be.

A few minutes later, the president addresses the nation and the world from the hall of the Congress about freedom and the spread of democracy in the Middle East and, indeed, in the rest of the world.

Of course, he believes in spying on his own people to save the rest of the country. His use of the English language may be torturous, but his doublespeak is fluent, flawless.

The state of the union today seems to carry echoes of the old USSR.

RENe C. SORAGGI

Los Angeles

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A more effective demonstration could not have been planned than the equal-opportunity ejection of a critic and a supporter from the president’s State of the Union speech.

As Congress deliberates the restrictions it will impose on our civil rights under the Patriot Act, perhaps it will consider what measures members are willing to have used against their own families and themselves.

ALAMADA BARRETT

Van Nuys