ELECTION RESULTS

Finally, some clarity on presidential priorities

So, the winners of the Republican contests so far have been someone who says he likes firing people and doesn't care about the very poor, someone whose obsession is banning contraception and someone who thinks the moon could become the 51st state. And they all boast about being the one who can best destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and any other program that helps ordinary Americans. Gov. Mark Dayton was right: Today's Republicans really are unfit to govern.

PAMELA J. SNOPL, MINNEAPOLIS

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With regard to the recent election results, "It's not the economy, stupid -- it's the social issues."

RICHARD CARLQUIST, WAYZATA

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HEALTH CARE

Go single-payer and simplify this mess

In the Feb. 4 article "Future of health care: Comparison shopping," a very good point was made about how complicated, expensive and unavailable health care is to most working people. Most of them have insurance through their employers that has a very high deductible. Every paycheck, the employee and the employer both pay the insurance corporation for a health care policy that will not cover any health care expenses until the deductible is met.

Having health insurance that is useless is the same as having no health care at all.

The answer is the single-payer health care bill written by state Sen. John Marty. With this bill, everybody is covered -- everybody in, nobody out. Minnesota could lead the county in health care! It could be the first state in the union to pass single-payer health care for all. (Vermont has passed a health insurance bill, but allows insurance corporations to profit.)

Vermont did it first; Minnesota could do it right.

AMBER GARLAN, ST. PAUL

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ANIMAL WELFARE

Activists don't warrant a voice in the matter

Hog farmer Larry Liepold rightly questions whether farm practices should be dictated by the federal government and the Humane Society of the United States ("The government soon may tell farmers how to do their jobs," Feb. 1). But he left out an important point: Animal-rights activists are not stakeholders in animal welfare debates.

Animal welfare regards treating animals well, but activists want to liberate animals totally, putting farmers out of business. At a 2006 conference, the Humane Society's vice president for farm animal issues revealed that her group's goal was to "get rid of the entire [animal agriculture] industry" and that "we don't want any of these animals to be raised and killed." Federal egg legislation backed by Humane Society clearly puts the fox in the henhouse.

Just as no farmer should take direction from the vegan activists at PETA, no farmer should be subject to the whims of the Humane Society of the United States.

RICK BERMAN, WASHINGTON, D.C.

The writer is executive director of the Center for Consumer Freedom.

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'YOU DON'T SAY'

Artist can do better than mocking faith

One of my Monday-morning treats is to see what your Opinion Exchange artist L.K. Hanson has done with a creative quote from the past.

Hanson is clever and ironic, but has apparently not penetrated beneath the lazy cultural image of the Christian cross as a hipness retardant enough to avoid using it as an icon on his Feb. 6 drawing of a hopelessly outdated individual.

I'll let someone else defend the Daughters of the American Revolution and the United States of America, which he also sent up, but I invite a bright guy like Hanson to investigate the living center of faith symbols before revealing a sort of adolescent unfamiliarity with the stuff of the soul by mocking them.

JOEL WARNE, PLYMOUTH