STRIP-MINED OF ANY INTELLIGENCE

Congratulations on your Senator Smith smear campaign. Kudos to you for playing a key part in setting Oregon back a decade in the Senate. I'm sure you're well aware that by giving Smith the boot we lost key positions in the Finance, Commerce, and Energy and Natural Resources committees and severely hampered our leverage to obtain federal funding for the myriad new spending measures and unfunded mandates recently passed.

I spoke with many Portlanders who cited your incessant immigration assaults on Smith as their primary reason for voting Merkley into office. Not only will Merkley be hard pressed to land important committee appointments or find legislative cosponsors, but we've lost our lone moderate voice capable of looking out for Oregonian interests in DC.

My main request, please, for the love of god, stop swooning for the political rhetoric the left churns out and give a shit about the pragmatic results of how public policy actually works.

I know you won't publish anything but self-congratulatory snarkiness in your next few editions, but I truly hope someone in your office starts giving serious thought at attempting to print a paper that reports news instead of trying to manufacture it and (gasp) maybe even approaches the occasional elected office or issue from a bipartisan perspective in a city dangerously stock full of insulated group-think liberals. Your endless ass-licking endorsements of all things Democrat is so strip mined of any intelligence I'm often surprised you people have the synapses to push a pen.

Matt Friesen
Southeast Portland

IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE MEAT, STAY OUT OF THE FOOD CHAIN

I've always seen the crusade against foie gras [Inbox comment, WW, Nov. 10, 2008] as just another narrow-minded manifestation of cultural imperialism, certain of the superiority of its perspective to that of rural France. There is nothing inherently any more cruel about foie gras than boiling live lobsters or the preparation of a thousand other meat-based foods. Often the anti-foie-gras jihad cites the way that over-feeding the fowls might be "unhealthy," but then killing them to remove their liver and consume the other parts can't be very good for them either. Personally, I am okay with eating meat in moderation. I think cougars should be allowed to eat meat too, even if the deer think it somewhat dastardly. If it offends you, by all means, desist, but please let the rest of us eat in peace.

"Russell Senior"
via wweek.com

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