Readers Write (Feb. 27): Soccer stadium, caucus concerns, media bias, Jason Lewis, police body cameras, Kansas shootings

Some things that always get left out of these stadium articles ("Soccer stadium design unveiled amid high hopes," Feb. 25):

1) What guarantees will Minnesota United make that it won't leave before 52 years are up?

2) Will the city have an option to break the lease with the Metropolitan Council if the team leaves before 52 years?

3) Will there be clauses that require the city to pay for upgrades that the team sees fit to "remain competitive"? Who decides which upgrades are necessary?

4) Will the surrounding businesses be assessed for infrastructure upgrades, but not the team, because it'll be "publicly owned"?

Hasn't any city official heard of Harrison, N.J., and looked at an aerial view of the $200 million Red Bull Arena? It's surrounded by empty lots that were supposed to be the same type of development they're talking about here. I predict there will be so many loopholes for Minnesota United that it will leave St. Paul stuck with an "obsolete" stadium and no team when team owner Bill McGuire decides to relocate across the river to get a better deal from Minneapolis in 15 years.

I hope that as Minnesotans prepare to caucus on Tuesday, they consider caucusing for women's rights. The rights of women continue to come under attack, and we should all make a pledge to caucus for reproductive freedom in four areas.

2) We should assure affordable and medically appropriate contraception for all women.

3) We should protect mothers from pregnancy discrimination in hiring and in the workplace.

4) Last, we should protect a woman's access to a safe and legal abortion.

This is as important an issue as any.

• • •

This program affects all Americans; some are closer to receiving Social Security than others, but anyone who works in this country pays into it.

Whether we like it or not, the future is coming. If the government fails to improve the Social Security system, future retirees could lose up to $10,000 a year once they retire.

If you want to be the president, you should have a plan for Social Security. I want the presidential candidates from all parties to take a stand on this issue and announce what their specific plans are. I hope you will help me remind them about why this issue is important.

The Democrat attack ad labeled as a review of "comedian" Will Durst ("The heavyweight champion of political standup," Feb. 25) is yet another example of a left-leaning opinion piece being printed as news in the Star Tribune. Put-downs disguised as humor are no longer politically correct if the targets are black, women, blonds, Polish, homosexuals or Democrats. Men and Republicans are still fair game. Even Republican women are acceptable targets. Probably, blond, Polish lesbians can be picked on if they are Republicans.

Readers could have read the review and just assumed a comedian touted by the newspaper was left-wing without the article repeating the reviewer's favorite specific put-downs of Republicans. Acceptable humor to the newspaper is evidently someone calling a Republican candidate crazy, sleepy, or an arsonist. Ha! Ha!

The notion that Lewis "questioned the role of the federal government in outlawing slavery" is absurd and gets what he wrote backward. Lewis strongly endorsed the clear and important intent of the post-Civil War amendments to protect newly freed slaves and enforce bans on racial classifications. What disturbed him were judges who have misused the amendments to satisfy their policy preferences on other issues.

Brodkorb's assertion that Lewis thinks "it was 'kinda hard to say' " whether ending slavery was worth the Civil War is bizarre. In fact, what Lewis was referring to was the best way to end slavery, not whether it should be ended. There were two options at the time of the Civil War: war or paying slave holders to give up their slaves. Six hundred thousand people were killed during the war. Jason's point was simply that it might have been a lot cheaper to simply buy the slaves and set them all free.

Whether one disagrees with Jason's arguments, no one who has actually read his book could have gotten his claims so completely backward.

What on Earth is the new overwhelming demand for Minneapolis body camera film footage at 150,000 requests ("Police brace for body-cam requests," Feb. 25)? The program is barely getting off the ground, and already a staff of 11 in the records unit are unable to handle the demand. What will the demand soar to with an additional 587 camera units? The City Council is debating the need for a vast expansion of the records unit, and there are even ridiculous unnecessary demands for all of the footage.

Get real — this is not free public entertainment adding millions of dollars to our tax liabilities. Of what value is any film if the Police Department gets first look and is free to redact anything on the tapes? There are limits to free public disclosure and limits to the breach of privacy that should pass legal muster. There should actually be a warrant process to release any film footage to anyone, requiring a well-defined, justified legal purpose.

Once again we have a Disturbed Lone Gunman, who was a Responsible Gun Owner right up until the moment he started killing people. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a way of telling them apart before the shooting started?