Saturday's Letters to the Editor

<p><b>What we need</b></p><p>EDITOR: We need a representative in Congress who will reject cuts to Social Security and Medicare. We need a representative who will instead vote to end funding for America's devastating, chaos-creating wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and, now, Syria. Unfortunately, we don't yet have such a representative.</p><p>PHIL BALDWIN</p><p>Ukiah</p><p><b>Militia Acts</b></p><p>EDITOR: If you want to know what the Founding Fathers thought of Second Amendment remedies, look at the Militia Acts of 1792 and 1795. In Section 1, the acts authorized calling out the militia if the country was being invaded or under imminent threat of invasion by foreign nations or Indian tribes. Section 2 says the president can call out the militia “whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals.” Nowhere is there mention of calling out the militia to overthrow a tyrannical government.</p><p>The reason is clear. The Founding Fathers went to great effort to craft a system of distributed power and checks and balances that they hoped would obviate the need for another revolution. Not trusting a standing army, they needed a broad-based citizen militia to, among other things, protect the government from armed factions taking it upon themselves to usurp the powers of government. </p><p>CARL H. INGLIN</p><p>Santa Rosa</p><p><b>President's choice</b></p><p>EDITOR: The coercion and deception campaigns waged by the oil cartels to continue their degradation of our habitat — while obstructing our vital alternative energy development — places President Barack Obama in a special position.</p><p>If he allows them to pursue these shameless practices unabated, future generations will denounce him for defaulting on his promises to correct this disastrous and possibly irreversible trend.</p><p>If he stands up to them and forges the necessary reforms, history will treat him well despite the defamation he can expect.</p><p>ROBERT SETTGAST</p><p>San Rafael</p><p><b>Cruz's questions</b></p><p>EDITOR: Those who witnessed Sen. Ted Cruz's outlandish questions and comments during the Chuck Hagel hearing or his infantile question to Sen. Dianne Feinstein would read Ruben Navarette's Thursday column (“Senator gets scolding, not answers”) no further than his admission that Cruz is a friend of his.</p><p>Cruz asked Feinstein if it would be acceptable to ban some books and not others, I assume using books as analogies to weapons, or inferring that Feinstein picks and chooses which of the Bill of Rights should be adhered to. I do not recall Feinstein ever challenging the Second Amendment, or the right to own firearms, but I do recall the fact that certain assault weapons were banned for some time and that law's constitutionality was never challenged.</p><p>In the case of books, some kinds of books are banned; child pornography, for example. Cruz and his ilk cannot find any reasonable defense of the right to own certain kinds of weapons — such as assault guns or bazookas or hand grenades. They stand only on the vague language of the Second Amendment, which leaves open the question of the type of weapons that are covered.</p><p>The fact that Cruz was a great litigator in Texas, dulls rather than polishes his legal credentials.</p><p>RICHARD SANSOM</p><p>Sebastopol</p><p><b>Will church change?</b></p><p>EDITOR: I don't think that the Vatican, under new leadership, will become a force for peace, honesty, justice, humanism or openness in the world. It has never practiced these virtues consistently.</p><p>If it did, it would open the Vatican's archives to scholars, open its vast wealth and banking to an independent audit and open the Vatican art to the public. It would have fought vigorously against the secret war in Argentina and similar historical atrocities. It would spend its wealth feeding the hungry, healing the sick and ministering to the poor, not maintaining an unimaginably luxurious private club for cardinals and their associates, and not on lavish costumes, bejeweled rings or Prada footwear.</p><p>A simple wooden cross creates the illusion of humility — good public relations by a man who will live each day in utter splendor. Many Vatican watchers understand that politics trumps piety in that secret and most secretive enclave.</p><p>When priests may choose to marry and women can be priests, when gay people are treated without derision, then progress might begin. I doubt it will happen.</p><p>THURSTON SMITH</p><p>Santa Rosa</p>