To the Editor:
If '"lifelong Democrat" Jim Daniels ("Missing Republican Party," Connection, April 11-17) would remove the partisan goggles he might find there really is another way of looking at the world. Every time a fraudulent vote is cast, a legitimate vote is canceled and a voter disenfranchised. Up till now anyone who showed up at the polls without proper ID was allowed to vote by simply signing an affidavit swearing they're a registered voter. We require valid ID to board a plane, buy cigarettes, or beer and no one seems to find it unduly burdensome. Few would be foolish enough to be satisfied with having a 15-year old beer purchaser sign an affidavit saying "sure I'm 21 years old." Why should voting be held to a lesser standard than fraudulent teen beer-buying?
"Women's control over their reproductive health" is a strained rationalization for gutting the First Amendment's guarantee of the free exercise of religion. Especially since no one is preventing any woman from controlling her reproductive health, just stopping the abortion industry from forcing religious objectors to fund practices they find morally reprehensible. Doesn't sound so high-minded when you look at it from someone else's perspective, does it?
It would be easier to believe a claimed commitment to fighting "dependency on fossil fuels" when the crusaders begin abandoning their own luxury cars and jets for wind-powered wagons. And wasn't it just a short time ago when "the truth of global climate change" was "the truth of global warming" and before that "the truth of global cooling"? Nostalgic for the ozone hole, acid rain, and nuclear winter? Seems like "the truth" is whatever notion is politically useful this week.
And how exactly is the Democrat takeover of healthcare respectful of "privacy rights"? Every personal health decision is to be forcibly pried into and approved or disapproved by swarms of apparatchiks. Where exactly are the Democrat programs that would decrease their power?
Michael Crawford
Great Falls