Mash Notes, Hate Mail & Other Correspondence

To the Editor: Charlie Kirk, of Turning Point U.S.A., had a byline, “Prove me wrong.” Unfortunately, events appear to have proved him right. Mr. Kirk was killed by gun violence on September 10, 2025, while speaking at a college in Utah. According to Newsweek, in 2023, Mr. Kirk said, “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights… .” The premise of Mr. Kirk’s argument is that the Second Amendment must be read such that any restrictions on guns are unconstitutional. Until the …

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Dear Editor; This past week saw the Secretary of Health and Human Services, aka “The Charlatan,” grilled, roasted and fried to a crisp in front of a bipartisan panel of Congress critters. Between gasping for breath and lying through his teeth, we didn’t learn much we didn’t already know. I would like to have heard the senators ask the following questions. Q: Mr. Secretary, you repeatedly and constantly trash the data produced by the CDC, whether it’s Covid-related or pertains to other health issues. When asked to produce an answer involving data, you first say you need to look at the data, then you say …

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To the Editor, Trump’s FBI invades the home of John Bolton, a critic of this administration, and where is the outrage? The tepid response shows how much we have normalized the Republicans’ full-steam-ahead transition to fascism that such an abuse of government power is just ho-hum. Our rickety media wants to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, though, by remarkable coincidence, every person being harassed is an opponent or a Democrat (He is even accusing Obama of treason). Taken right from the playbook of Trump’s favorite dictators Orban, Erdogan, Xi and Putin, though, in fairness, they would just toss the offending party into prison …

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To the editor; President Trump has issued his list of “final” reciprocal tariffs which became effective Aug. 7th. They apply to almost all goods exported to the U.S. from sixty countries and the European Union with base rates ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent. Along with previously applied sector tariffs, the U.S. now charges an average tariff of approximately 18 percent, the highest rate since the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Bill of 1930. Trump has levied the tariffs on countries that have a trade surplus with the U.S., making the false claim that surpluses indicate unfair advantage. Trump states that countries with a trade surplus have …

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To the Editor: It’s a familiar cry for those of us who lived through the turmoil of the ’60s. Great things will happen “when the revolution comes.” One reason the revolution never came was money. The people in the street lacked the cash and time it would take to build a unified political machine! On the other hand, for Kevin Roberts and the folks at the Heritage Foundation, time and money have been no object. Years of planning and billions of dollars have been invested in “2025,” and it is quite well documented who the biggest contributors are. All of which led Roberts to arrogantly …

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To the Editor: From 1967 to 1986, Senator William Proxmire (D-Wisc.) gave 3,211 speeches on the Senate floor, tirelessly urging ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide. According to Proxmire: “This is one senator who believes that ratification is not only patriotic, but also good foreign policy and a moral imperative.” The U.S. Senate finally ratified the Genocide Convention on February 19, 1986. Subsequently, The Proxmire Act, officially the Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987, was signed by President Ronald Reagan on November 4, 1988, making genocide a federal crime. In his remarks at the signing, Reagan …

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