Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Larry trying to eat that pig…#90dayfiance #90dayfiancebeforethe90days pic.twitter.com/ViPlOW1f7z

— Clockworx (@SayItClox) October 23, 2017

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To the editor:

Retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, attempted to explain what President Trump meant when he spoke to the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson. (“John Kelly, who lost a son in combat, gives an emotional defense of Trump's calls to military families,” Oct. 19)

Over these many months, I have heard too many members of the present administration try to explain what the president meant after he had spoken publicly.

I was a middle school teacher for 31 years and am proud to say that I have received numerous kudos for the way I did my job. Can you imagine the scenario if my principal had to come into my classroom day after day to explain to my students what I had actually said or meant to say?

How this same scenario can be considered acceptable today when our president speaks is beyond me. How long would I have been allowed to keep my job?

Linda Lambert, Ojai

Jeff Flake, with an 18% approval rating in Arizona, said "a lot of my colleagues have spoken out." Really, they just gave me a standing O!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2017

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This pig is a Never Trumper. I hope he burns in hell.

Café du Soleil (1990). I can't get enough of this man's accordion.

Here.

Here.

Your Oct. 22 editorial “Chicago, pining for the Obama years” gives a very straightforward list of all of President Barack Obama’s achievements both domestic and foreign that President Donald Trump is trying to undo. In short, the current administration is rolling back the clock, and your editorial recounted in great detail how this president is the polar opposite of the last one. I thought that I was reading a great and accurate recent history lesson until you discussed how, in 2008, Republicans mourned the end of an era when their guy lost. You said, “That’s how democracy goes.”

Yes, both parties usually mourn a loss when the other guy wins. But refusal to work across the aisle is only a very recent part of our political history. In the winter of 2008-09, Obama worked with President George W. Bush to secure a workable solution to the greatest economic recession since the Great Depression. They put the interests of the nation first in order to figure out a way out of a crisis that was bipartisan in its causation, and thus deserved to be bipartisan in its solution.

In 2006, Bush endorsed and pushed for a bipartisan immigration plan that U.S. Sens. Ted Kennedy and John McCain had worked both sides of the aisle to achieve. Throughout history, our foreign policy has been mostly bipartisan. The recent showing of Ken Burns’ “The Vietnam War” proved that five presidents (from both parties) were responsible for getting us into that war and that President Richard Nixon’s execution of the war was not that different than President Lyndon Johnson’s. Only very recently has one party shirked its constitutional duty (and therefore its oath to the American people) by refusing a hearing to a candidate for the Supreme Court, which left the seat vacant for months, only because the other guys nominated him.

Trump is not just trying to undo every decent idea that Obama and the Democrats have had. He is trying to undo all that was decent about America.

— Jan Goldberg, Riverside

Note from KBJ: He's making America great again, Jan. Get some help for your Trump Derangement Syndrome.

The three Roman Catholic authors of the commentary "Death penalty represents broken system of justice" (Oct. 19) present some good practical arguments in favor of abolishing the death penalty in Missouri and elsewhere: for instance, the danger of mistaken verdicts and the present system's inbuilt discrimination against the poor.

However, they cross a line for Catholics when they say the death penalty "violates the God-given dignity of the human person." That implies capital punishment is immoral, always and everywhere. But such a claim contradicts Sacred Scripture and 2,000 years of Catholic teaching.

The New Testament teaches the right of civil authority to execute criminals (Romans 13:4), and God tells us in the first book of the Bible that human dignity is precisely what justifies the death penalty: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has man been made” (Genesis 9:6).

All previous popes and approved Catholic catechisms have therefore taught that capital punishment is not immoral in principle.

Unfortunately, the authors are able to quote Pope Francis in support of their position. He recently said the death penalty is always wrong because “it attacks the inviolability and the dignity of the person.” However, we Catholics are not required to accept everything a pope says as infallible; and since the present Holy Father has here contradicted all his predecessors, we should believe, with all due respect, that the mistake is on his part, not theirs.

Rev. Brian W. Harrison • St. Louis

Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesn't have a clue as…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

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…the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle' Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

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