Letters to the editor for Sunday, Aug. 31

Welcome to Minnesota, Republicans. The state built by people like Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey, people like Walter Mondale, Paul Wellstone, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken -- welcomes you. The state with the longest streak of voting Democratic welcomes the party that has given Americans one of the worst governments in the history of our country.

Minnesota is what happens when you have people who have figured out that the Republican Party has been the propaganda party. Most of us know who got us into this mess. We know Republicans are the last people we should listen to now.

ROBERT PERSCHMANN, CHASKA

Lori Sturdevant would do well to read her own newspaper when handicapping the race in District 41B (Aug. 24). The landmark legislation that Rep. Neil Peterson touts as placing the Hwy. 169/Interstate 494 interchange project back on track isn't even on the 10-year plan per a recent story in the Star Tribune.

A check of the state Department of Transportation's website has the project listed as Future Construction Proposed and To Be Determined. It has been six months since the legislation was passed and we can either believe that it takes MnDOT that long to update its website or Peterson knows something that MnDOT doesn't when it comes to construction plans.

The transportation bill is also more than a gas tax. This legislation was a blank check to raise sales taxes and motor vehicle registration fees. And all of the funding from the sales tax goes to mass transit.

The Republican-endorsed candidate, Jan Schneider, knows that roads and bridges require funding for maintenance and expansion and supports the use of bonding, which makes a lot of sense to me. Bonding should be used for vital infrastructure instead of everyone's pet project. I bet we would have a lot fewer of those "pet projects" if we had to increase taxes for them.

MARK STOLTZ, BLOOMINGTON

Sarah Palin is referred to as a maverick by the citizens who elected her governor and has a favorable rating with over 80 percent of Alaskans.

It's refreshing to see someone in politics who is not afraid to go after unethical behavior even within her own party. This was witnessed in her ethics probe of Alaskan Republican Chairman Randy Ruedrich and his conflict of interest with the oil industry. Her investigation led to his resignation. I am one of many Americans who are tired of politicians in bed with lobbyists, special interest groups and big corporations for personal benefit.

Who better but a woman to clean up the messes!

TORI EIDE, SAVAGE

As a Hillary Clinton supporter at the caucuses, I am stunned and insulted that the McCain campaign thinks it can win my vote by trotting out Sarah Palin. An arch-conservative opponent of equal rights is no more palatable just because she happens to wear a dress.

CHRIS COUGHLAN-SMITH, ST. PAUL

Just this year alone, the topics covered by Katherine Kersten have included student clubs devoted to kinky sex (Jan. 27), pornographers "proselytizing on campus" (Feb. 24), kids with "frenzied adolescent impulses" who "do it" (April 6), classrooms displaying "an infra-red demonstration of an erection" (June 18), "naked, gyrating women" in strip clubs (Aug. 17), and, most recently, exhibitionist "girl-on-girl kissing" (Aug. 24).

Now I'm no great prude, and I support everyone's right to privately entertain, if they must, the thoughts and fantasies of their "soul's dark basement," as Kersten put it recently. Still, the Star Tribune is supposed to be a family newspaper, and I increasingly find myself afraid to turn to the local section for fear that my mind will be filled once again with the disturbing mental images of Kersten's sexual obsessions.

Could she not limit her frequent sex columns to an online blog, perhaps with some sort of age verification process, rather than putting them in the print pages that come to the doorsteps of thousands of upstanding citizens like myself?

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The only label fitting the girls-kissing-girls trend should be "Ultimate Desperation." It is sad to realize that these same girls are experimenting also with the earliest beginnings of bending their own morals, just to "fit in" with their peer group.

MARY SUE SKELTON, PARK RAPIDS, MINN.

Oh, poor Mac Hammond! Do I see shades of Jim and Tammy Faye Baker with his denials and foot-dragging in providing records to the IRS (Star Tribune, Aug. 26)? This isn't about destroying ministers or churches, it's about accountability.

My Bible records Jesus as advising the rich man that, if he wanted to follow him, he had to sell it all and give it to the poor.