A hypocritical stance

Re “That perilous first stone,” Opinion, Sept. 9

How hypocritical of Andrew Klavan to hide behind the Christian notion of refraining from throwing the first stone while casually chucking rocks at Bill Clinton, first by mentioning him in the context of Sen. Larry Craig’s bathroom bust (in the second sentence, no less) and later by lumping him together with Ted Kennedy as “drunks, adulterers and liars.” It’s even worse that Klavan scoffs at the idea of hypocrisy in the Craig case because Democrats are among those suggesting it. This is the kind of loose-lipped railing one expects from personal blogs on both sides of the political extremes, not from The Times. Although I believe Craig was entrapped in an embarrassing exercise of police power, that doesn’t mean his is not a story of hypocrisy. That’s the essence of the story, no matter what your political persuasion.

Tom Stringer

Santa Monica

Klavan claims the furor over situations like Craig’s cannot really be about the hypocrisy. Nice try, but I’m afraid it is about the hypocrisy. How soon Klavan seems to have forgotten the folly of the whole Republican family-values platform, and the claim that the rest of us simply did not have those values unless we voted Republican. That’s a concept as ludicrous as the one about Republicans being superior at fighting terrorism. As for his “co-religiosos,” is he referring to the Moral Majority? We all need to stop putting ourselves up as the group best suited to judge how everyone else should live their lives. If you don’t want a big fuss about your personal behavior, stop telling us what ours should be.

Michael Valente

San Clemente

Klavan seemed pretty reasonable until I got to the part where he complained about “fighting our enemies with rules of engagement. . . written by Miss Manners.” I don’t know what world Klavan occupies, but things like extraordinary rendition and torture sound more like Reinhard Heydrich than Miss Manners. He also complains about “this tumor of a government that’s eating away our liberties.” It is eating away our liberties largely because this administration can’t seem to fight terror without recourse to the tactics of the Gestapo.

Ron Prentice

Temecula