Letters to the editor for Monday, May 19

With all of the talk of cuts to sports, music, arts and other non-classroom-related activities, maybe it's time to also talk about teachers' and administrators' wages and benefits. Why are these never on the table during these discussions?

ERIK WIEBOLD, SHAKOPEE

President Bush says he gave up golf in 2003 out of "respect for the U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq War." Giving up golf is a sacrifice?

Since we invaded Iraq, we have watched the president live a life of leisure -- fancy dinners and formal events, hours of exercise a day, sarcastic jokes he makes routinely to the press and all his followers, endless vacations at his ranch and, just this month, a "spectacular" wedding for his daughter at his ranch.

Maybe the president needs to think of a different sacrifice.

ANDREA LITTLE, MINNEAPOLIS

I respect Katherine Kersten's column more than I respect Garrison Keillor's opinion. She makes me think and think again. He just spouts.

LINDA BERGLUND, BROOKLYN CENTER

The article in the May 15 Star Tribune about access to political conventions ("Political parties to media: Get noses out of our tent") was misleading in several respects.

First, while the article acknowledges that exclusion "appears to have happened more often at GOP events," it should have mentioned that exclusion on the Republican side is a systematic policy that the leadership supports. The DFL Party has an open-meeting policy under which "[n]o person can be denied access" to caucuses and conventions.

Second, the two examples of supposed exclusion at DFL conventions omitted significant details. For example, the supposed exclusion at the Second District DFL convention was of a paid Republican tracker who was actually offered press credentials, but refused them, and so was asked not to videotape. He was not asked to leave the convention -- which was broadcast live on streaming video by a journalist who took the offered credentials. The two trifling incidents on the DFL side are nothing compared to the systematic exclusion on the Republican side.

Finally, the article overlooks a bigger picture: that exclusion at Republican conventions is just a symptom of evasion and secrecy on a broader scale. Reps. John Kline and Michele Bachmann avoid public contact except under tightly controlled circumstances. Sen. Norm Coleman is still evading legitimate questions about his ties to a firm that helps prop up the oppressive military dictatorship in Myanmar.

BRIAN MELENDEZ, ST. PAUL;

CHAIRMAN, MINNESOTA DFL

I read with much interest Warren Wolfe's piece on Alzheimer's dementia and the violent outbursts that it can bring to sufferers ("Troubled minds find a home," May 13).

My family and I had a very similar experience this past year with my mother. I am very surprised that the Wageners were able to find a place to take a violent patient. During my mother's second stay in a hospital dementia ward, we began the arduous task of trying to find a home to place her in when we got her behavior under control.

I have a list of more than 30 homes that would not even consider taking her after they learned of her record of violent behavior.

The questions we have to ask are: Do we want to care for our parents, and will we fund the programs to take care of them?

MARK MERSHON, MINNEAPOLIS

In his May 14 commentary, Michael Gerson points out that Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., is preventing action on the reauthorization of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a bill that would save millions of African lives, because it is just "too expensive."

To be sure, its current $50 billion price tag is bloated and that number can be winnowed down some with the bill still being effective. Chambliss is correct: The Senate should only pass the leanest of legislation.

What is unacceptable about Chambliss's position, however, is that while he claims it is his fiscal conservative credentials holding up this lifesaving bill, in the past few weeks the Georgia senator and ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee has proudly opposed the president and other members of Congress from both sides of the aisle in trying to limit farm subsidies to those making less than $200,000 a year. In fact, he favors giving federal freebies to farmers making hundreds of thousands more.

ANDY BREHM, MINNEAPOLIS

In the May 10 Star Tribune article "The Web according to Huffington," Arianna Huffington states that "impartial coverage doesn't mean you give equal weight to both sides of an issue when one side is wrong."

Really, Ms. Huffington? That statement says all you need to know about Arianna (I decide who is wrong) Huffington.

Huffington should hide her head in shame. She claims she "speaks truth to power," but she doesn't have a clue what truth is.