Readers Write (Jan. 7): Gov. Mark Dayton, President-elect Donald Trump, fact-checking, moral standards, regulations

In a Jan. 3 article, Gov. Mark Dayton states that he is not optimistic about working with a Republican-controlled Legislature ("Dayton sees a polarizing session"). What the governor seems to fail to understand is that Republican legislators were voted into office by a majority of Minnesota's voters. When he expresses pessimism about working with Republican legislators, he's actually saying that he can't work with the majority of Minnesota's voters. Minnesota deserves better. We need a governor who would be willing to work with the people he is supposed to represent.

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A person can agree with Dayton's initiatives, as I do, or disagree with them. But one cannot dispute the fact that the governor is doing what he strongly believes is best for Minnesota and all Minnesotans. He is not positioning or posturing for a higher office; he is not introducing legislation written by a national partisan organization like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has no investment in Minnesota's success; he is not bound by a "no new taxes" pledge to nonelected, non-Minnesotan Grover Norquist; he is not bowed by the pressure of right-wing organizations like the Center of the American Experiment. However, the same cannot be said about House Speaker Kurt Daudt and many other Republican legislators. How many? I think it would be an important service to this state if this paper (and other media outlets) would do some investigating into how many legislators have made pledges to non-Minnesota individuals, groups or organizations; how many legislative bills are boilerplate ALEC initiatives, or other out-of-state organizations, and which legislators are submitting initiatives produced or promoted by out-of-state lobbyists or wealthy individuals or groups promoting their version of what's good for Minnesota.

All Minnesotans should be concerned about the growing phenomenon of our elected legislators committing to these national partisan individuals or organizations rather than to their Minnesota constituents. Voters, please pay attention! Ensure that your representatives are passing legislation that reflects what Minnesotans believe is best for Minnesota and its citizens.

First, he tells us he knows more than the generals. Then, he tells us he knows more than senior intelligence officials ("Trump still doubts Russian hack," Jan. 5). I am certain it's only a matter of time before Donald Trump tells us he knows more than the nation's founders.

Knowing the facts is a tricky business. Frequently, the search for the truth stops at the door of our beliefs. So it is with the Dec. 4 commentary by Clive Crook of Bloomberg View ("The problem with checking facts: Mission creep").

How could PolitiFact have rated President Obama's claim about the Affordable Care Act that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" as "True" in 2008, " Half True" in 2009 and 2012, and "Lie of the Year" in 2013? Crook accuses the fact-checker run by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tampa Bay Times of practicing "sanctimonious intellectual malpractice."

Fact-checkers with good reputations, like PolitiFact, give us hope that truth matters, that lies and half-truths can be revealed if only folks care enough to open the next door.

Recent moves by Facebook and Google toward removing the economic incentive from fake-news sites is also encouraging. The chasm between what people believe and what is true involves one of the most important issues of our democracy — an informed electorate.

With regard to Lynda McDonnell's Dec. 29 commentary, "How has sexual intercourse become so degraded?": I think that she has the answer to that question in the response she gave to her mother so many years ago: "It depends on how you define immorality." Although I doubt that she was thinking about the proverbial "slippery slope" when she gave this reply to her mother's question about morality, it seems that our current society is careening down it.

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It was my generation that gave us the 1960s (although I was a bystander). The question was asked: "Why do we have all these rules?" And the conclusion? "No good reason."

Cultures down through history have put boundaries on male sexuality, and consent used to mean consent to enter into a lifetime commitment — marriage. Social acceptability required a man to value a woman as "worth waiting for."

When sex was separated from the potential for producing a child and then from marriage, consent became a muddy concept. Sexuality is the most elaborately rationalized behavior in which humans participate. Reason is not used to evaluate the advisability of a particular act but to justify it.

The incoming Congress may be more religiously diverse ("Other Views," Jan. 2), but we should remember that government officials are not elected to represent their particular faiths. All elected officials should take the oath of office with a hand on the governing document of their office — the U.S. Constitution, the state Constitution, or the city charter. Add a religious book if you wish, but remember that your first obligation is to the secular office and the people who elected you.

I agree with Steve Williams that the financial-services industry uses predatory practices against merchants and customers ("We're in danger of backsliding on swipe fees," Jan. 4). But there's a big contradiction in his argument.

He begins by criticizing government regulation and saying markets should be free. But he concludes by asking government to protect consumers and the economy against those predatory practices. That's exactly what regulation is — protection against powerful corporate interests and their potentially dangerous practices.