Letters to the editor for Tuesday, July 1, 2008

In all of the talk of what to do about our burgeoning oil crisis, nobody seems to be talking about what I think would make an immediate impact -- lowering speed limits.

Experts agree that lowering your speed by 10 miles per hour can make a 10 to 15 percent savings in fuel consumption.

We would be pulling the needle of addiction to fossil fuel ever so slightly out of our arms and probably saving lives as well.

ALLEN LUND, ST. MICHAEL

Since cartridges for handguns can easily be embedded with genetic markers, Congress should pass a law requiring such markers, with a strict record kept by authorized manufacturers and sellers of such ammunition.

Then, whenever a bullet is recovered from a crime scene, law enforcement could easily trace the record to find out who bought the ammunition and what happened to it.

Guns don't kill people, bullets do. People with legal handguns for self-defense won't mind the genetic markers record, and the rest of us can feel much safer, knowing that law enforcement has a very powerful (and constitutional) tool.

Rights circa 1791 The June 28 letter "Weapons of the era?" proposed that Second Amendment rights only be extended to weapons that were available during the era in which the Bill of Rights was written.

The Supreme Court did mention this rather common snark in its brief on the ruling. Its short answer: Only if you want the protections of the other amendments to work the same way. In other words, no freedom of speech or freedom of the press over the radio, TV or the Internet, because none of these existed when the Bill of Rights was drafted. Nothing in the Bill of Rights would cover anything to do with telephones, cars, any electrical device, any computer, PDA or other recording device -- in fact, anything invented after 1791, the year the Bill of Rights was ratified.

I don't think it's a good tradeoff, so I'll just keep both my gun and my computer, thanks.

JOSHUA ROBSON, ST. LOUIS PARK

A June 29 letter writer said that "if same-sex couples are granted the same benefits as married couples, people will cease to get married and have kids."

And then there is my family. The fact is that our government does not treat our family fairly under the law. But while certainly angering and unjust, it didn't stop us from getting married over a decade ago.

The choice is not for us to exist or not. The choice is to treat us fairly or not. It is that simple.

SHARON ROSENBERG-SCHOLL, ST. PAUL

Stop the oppression There is one crucial fact missing in this harassment of the gay community. During the Holocaust, it wasn't only Jews who went to the gas chambers; thousands of homosexuals suffered the same fate.

I stand with Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, who wrote: "That is why I swore I'd never be silent whenever and wherever humans endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. ... Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to those who need us desperately."

Given her antipathy to expressions of political dissent, Katherine Kersten's alarmist commentary on the expected protests at the Republican National Convention was predictable ("Legal challenge is in line with plans to disrupt GOP convention," June 25). Nevertheless, its scapegoating and hostility to basic rights bear mention. As a member of local group -- Coldsnap Legal Collective-- educating activists, I feel compelled to respond.

Kersten's focus on "anarchist groups with ominous names" -- whose tactics she blithely and hyperbolically equates with those in "a guerrilla warfare manual" -- is part and parcel of a longer tradition: The emphasizing of those perceived as "extreme," while whittling away at everyone's fundamental legal protections.

The fact, however, is that the rights to speech and assembly can't be revoked because those in power -- or with a newspaper column -- disagree ideologically. On the contrary, it's precisely in such circumstances that they are most crucial.

Kersten's attacks on the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild also profoundly miss the mark. Like Coldsnap, both groups support the right of demonstrators to freely and safely express their political views. To hold legal organizations liable for "what happens" at some future demonstration -- simply for upholding the right to participate in advance -- is illogical and fundamentally distorts our role.

Finally, it's deeply ironic that Kersten charges her targets with "intimidation," yet ends her column with a threat. The intent is clear: To paint all demonstrators and legal advocates with a single brush, and to chill dissent. Fortunately, quite a few Minnesotans still cling to basic understandings of the freedoms Kersten would shrug off on our behalf.