Letters to the editor, Jan. 7, 2009

A Jan. 6 letter writer states that it was a "Democratic sleight of hand amounting to corruption beyond measure" that allowed Al Franken to seemingly win the election.

But it was apparent to everyone following this election that the recount was above-board and conducted in plain view for everyone to see.

It wasn't done behind closed doors; voters weren't denied their rights to vote, and the Supreme Court of the United States didn't step in to stop the recount process as was done in Florida in 2000. All parties had ample time to view and review the recount process and did so during the recount. This is democracy at its best.

STEVE KOZICKY, MINNEAPOLIS

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The new motto for the Secretary of State's office should be: Making sure almost every vote is counted -- and some are counted more than once.

MARK JOHNSON, EDINA

MEG RILEY, MINNEAPOLIS

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After our recent voting debacle, I can just see everyone suggesting that the answer is instant-runoff voting. I have just one question: If voters cannot follow the simple instructions to fill in an oval, does anyone really think that they'll be able to rank their voting choices in order of preference?

MIKE MCLEAN, RICHFIELD

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DEAN CARLSON, MINNEAPOLIS

I read with amusement that Hamas has called for a "day of wrath" against Israel. What makes such a day different than the other 364 days of the year? A culture that teaches its children from their earliest days to despise Jews while wishing for, and actively participating in, their deaths defies all logic and deserves its fate at the hands of the IDF.

JOHN RAUSTADT, PRIOR LAKE

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There can surely be no more disastrously fitting end to eight years of Bush "foreign policy" than the Israeli Defense Forces' brutal attacks on the impoverished civilian population of Gaza. This is a humanitarian outrage that will bring neither peace nor prosperity to Israel or its allies.

The Jan. 2 letter concerning abortion ("New rule on abortion / Some day, America will value life in the womb") could have been respectful. It could have been understanding. Instead, it fell back on the same talking points that have made abortion such a difficult topic to even attempt to discuss.

The author seems to think that the only reason women have abortions is "convenience." It is not up to anyone but the patient to decide why they are having a medical procedure anyway, but to suggest that women would end a pregnancy because of "convenience" is truly worthy of ridicule.

I also take issue with this idea of "proabortion" voters as a whole. No one is proabortion. The decision to have an abortion is a difficult and certainly painful one for everyone involved. The fact that the author thinks there are people eager to have and perform abortions indicates apathy at best, ignorance at worst. There are, however, those of us who do believe that the government has no right to tell a woman what she can do with her body. When Bristol Palin announced that she was pregnant and that she would carry her child to term, conservatives were thrilled that she didn't have an abortion. What they failed to realize is that the whole situation proved the prochoice argument: women can choose to have babies, too. The operative word is "choose."