Readers Write (Feb. 9): Election results, health care, animal welfare, L.K. Hanson

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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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.

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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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.

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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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.

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.