Readers write for Monday, Sept. 21: Obama halts missile shield

There's anger in Europe as President Obama scraps the missile shield. One response from a beleaguered American taxpayer: "Why don't you build your own?"

MARK HANLON, EAGAN

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President Obama just threw in the towel to Russia and Iran by canceling missile defense programs in Eastern Europe. We will get nothing in return for projecting such weakness.

REED SAUNDERS, ROCHESTER

I am puzzled about the headline on the Sept. 16 article "ACORN's fall latest win for conservative activists." The news story is really about two adults who went into three ACORN offices posing as a prostitute and a pimp. The staff offered advice and assistance to secure a housing loan for a brothel that would include child prostitutes, to commit tax fraud, to avoid detection of their business, while acknowledging that the couple also planned to participate in human sex trafficking of illegal, underage prostitutes from El Salvador.

Why wasn't your article filled with outrage and indignation that this is occurring in our country with millions of taxpayers dollars funding ACORN?

BRUCE PETERSON, EAGAN

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I see our tough-as-nails governor is calling for no state money to go to ACORN, when none has for more than a decade. Why not also make sure no state money goes to support elephant-poaching on the Iron Range? Go get 'em, guv!

CRAIG M. WIESTER, MINNEAPOLIS

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BRENNAN PALMER, HOPKINS

As someone who participated in the design of the charter school policy, I object to the revision of history in the article about the growth of charters in the suburbs ("As charter schools grow in suburbs, critics raise red flags," Sept. 16). The charter law was a bipartisan push for more innovation and wider choices for students, not a remedy for "troubled urban schools."

CURT JOHNSON, ST. PAUL

A Sept. 16 letter to the editor comparing the death of James Pouillon to the death of Dr. George Tiller is grossly inaccurate.

Pouillon's alleged murderer, Harlan Drake, is mentally ill; there is no evidence he was a "prochoice kook." He had a grudge against three men (including Pouillon), two of whom were killed in his rampage.

STEVE SCOFIELD, MINNEAPOLIS

Earlier this month, Josh Hendrickson brought two concealed guns to the Obama rally in Minneapolis, apparently to make a point about the Second Amendment. Other than being dressed in army fatigues and packing a .40 caliber Glock 22 gun and a Kel Tec 380 gun, he was just another (self-described) laid-back guy who loves kids and his country right? Really? When there's already a conceal-and-carry law, what's the point?

This type of behavior is yet another example of the extreme lengths the hard-core gun-rights activists seem committed to in the interest of furthering their cause. I'm a hunter and have been for the last 45 years. I am also a supporter of gun rights. It's precisely this type of extremist behavior that tends to undermine our future as hunters.

As a hunter, I feel it's important to make a distinction between the more extreme side of the gun-rights lobby that supports such things as assault rifles, conceal-and-carry laws, etc., from the right to bear arms for hunting. There's a more effective, less extreme approach to the gun-rights issue, such as the basic preservation of hunters' rights to bear arms, but I seldom hear fellow hunters make this point.

PATRICK BLOOMFIELD, CHASKA

Gov. Tim Pawlenty was seated in a row of other dignitaries two rows ahead of me. Seated in several rows ahead of him were the Maplewood police officers.

When the family and friends of Officer Crittenden were to be seated, evidently not enough rows had been determined for them. As a result the first row of Maplewood officers were asked to give up their seats. Without hesitation, the governor told his row of dignitaries to come with him and sit in the back of the arena so the displaced row of officers could sit with their fellow officers.

The governor receives much criticism, but people need to know he is a class act.

BRAD JOHNSON, APPLE VALLEY;