Sad words on the president

Re “Height of arrogance,” editorial, Sept. 28

The Times’ editorial does a good if belated job of listing the failures and excesses of the current administration. At the same time, it points out the lack of courage that the media have exhibited during the last eight years.

With the exception of the current financial crisis, this editorial could just as easily have appeared more than four years ago. And you could have added the charge of treason by an administration that outed an undercover operative purely for selfish political motives.

During the Nixon administration, the Fourth Estate had the fortitude to go after the Watergate affair and was able to bring down a corrupt executive branch. Yet today, the news media seem unwilling to reveal anything critical of the current administration for fear of being shunned by the White House or being labeled as unfair.

Or perhaps presenting the unvarnished truth may go contrary to the corporate interests controlling the media.

What a shame.

Ted Carmely

Sherman Oaks

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Your editorial will surely go down as one of the most damning opinions of an American president ever written by a mainstream newspaper.

It is a sad reflection on these once glorious United States that it had to be written, but it brings hope to the vast majority of good people living in this country that we collectively can admit our faults.

This is the only way we can move on and strive to return to what we once were and should be: the ethical, moral and fiscal leaders of the free world, and champions of human rights for all people!

William Brady

Reseda

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The editorial asks which candidate “will have the strength to roll back these expansions of presidential power”? But it’s not up to the next president! Congress has the power to run this country. Congress controls the purse strings. Our cowardly Congress has relinquished power to the president, but it can take it back.

On Iraq, Congress could have just said “no” in the first place. Congress could have ended that war at any time if it chose. As for the $700-billion bailout, it’s up to Congress not to relinquish our children’s potential profits.

And so it goes. On healthcare, global warming, alternative fuels and more, it’s Congress that has the say-so. It’s not up to the next president to decide whether to honor separation of powers. It’s up to us to vote to keep the current Congress or replace it. Get rid of the cowards.

Marty Schwimmer

La Quinta

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The Bush administration is such a dire threat to civil liberties that The Times is not only permitted to publish an editorial denouncing it, but will suffer absolutely no repercussions for having done so!

What possibly could have happened to this country that would have caused the administration to think it was necessary to monitor phone calls and e-mails between the U.S. and foreign countries without warrants, to hold prisoners in foreign lands without trial and to resort to waterboarding to extract information from them?

It’s not as if the country had been repeatedly attacked, at home and abroad, over the last 30 years. It’s not as if something terrible had happened, after the president took office, like terrorists hijacking airliners and flying them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands of people.

No, to the editorialists of The Times, this “so-called war on terror” is all a mystery, explicable only by the arrogance and perversity of the president.

Robert A. Philipson

Santa Monica

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Bush the Arrogant? My opinion of this opinion: It suffers from what it accuses.

Paul Huddle

Pasadena