Letters

Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill

Dear UTW:

In Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210 (1990) & FOUCHA v. LOUISIANA, 504 U.S. 71 (1992) the Supreme Court essentially held that a person has no intrinsic right to counsel during a mental health evaluation. This article by Roberson on false confessions by ordinary people without any mental illness shows why it should reconsider.

The Tulsa Center for Behavioral Health fills its beds, based upon these mistakes.

--Don Baker

In, er, Praise of Obama

Editor's note: Just for the record, although we do have our opinions, UTW did not make any candidate endorsements for the 2012 general election.

Dear UTW:

Congratulations. Your preferred candidate won a second term as president. I'm sure y'all are too busy dancing in the streets and smile-crying and stuff right now, but this will be here when all that is done.

Now that Obama has got himself a second term, you and I need to have a chat. I just have a couple questions I need to ask, and then you can be on your merry Democrat way.

1. Now that this is no longer an "election year," will you now pay attention to the drone strikes, kill lists, allowance of indefinite detention, and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants?

2. Now that Obama is safe in the White House until 2016, will you pay attention to the continued incarceration of Private Manning?

3. Now that your dude has won, will you look critically at his connections to the parasitic financial institutions that sent our economy spiraling out of control in 2008?

4. Now that there will never be another Obama campaign, will you protest with us against all of the above?

Or will you stay home, wring your hands and sit there looking worried that your friends won't like you anymore if you speak out against all of these things, things that people in other countries are justifiably mad at? Will you still call people who protest these things impractical, "emotional progressives," or worse?

Will you sit there, pensively waiting for Obama to become the man he promised he would be in 2008?

Here's a hint: he won't.

You don't have to be an anarchist to see that the man you elected, while ostensibly "better" in a couple of arguably important ways than the man he was running against, is still no one to write home about.

The "lesser evil" is still evil.

All we are asking is that you remove your head from your collective behind and, at the very least, help us make sure that his evil doesn't grow.

You don't need Adbusters to tell you to take to the streets. Just do it.

--Trevor Hultner

Armed People are Free People--a feminist perspective

Dear UTW:

About 30 years ago, a Miami TV station, with some news slots to fill, followed several women who had signed up for a pistol instruction course at a local gun range. There were at most three short segments on the local news. In the months after that interesting news filler, assaults on women in the area dropped -- brace yourself -- 90%!

So the more the bad guys know people might be packing, the better!

--Anatoly Arutunoff

Food Truck Fun

(Re: "Street Treats," Nov. 8-14, Vol. 22, No. 19)

Dear UTW:

What a fun read! Thanks, Angela Evans, for a refreshing article on the greatness of food trucks. I have long been a fan, my absolute favorite being Mackey's shrimp truck in Hale'iwa, Hawaii (North Shore). A good food truck can rival any restaurant any day.

--Tracy Heller Clark

You Can Run from Your IQ, but You Can't Hide!

Dear UTW:

It's IQ, IQ, and IQ.

You are born with this number marking your intelligence and it never changes.

You can over-achieve or under-achieve with high or low IQ but nothing beats its ability to help or hinder your progress.

All the state's report cards on our public schools tell us is something we already knew.

Schools with the most high IQ kids got the As, Bs, and Cs.

Schools with the most average and low IQ kids got the Ds and Fs.

In the D-rated and F-rated schools, the students, teachers, and principals must wear the state's "Scarlet Letter."

Much of the grade was determined by how students performed on one test on one day.

Test scores don't tell us whether a student is being educated. Test scores only pit school against school, principal against principal, and teacher against teacher.

The law forbids schools from exposing student test scores to anyone other than the parents of the student tested.

The state has just done it with their "Scarlet Letters," which give our kids a low self-image.

Gov. Mary Fallin and State School Superintendant Janet Barresi had better hire a good lawyer because they should be sued for breaking this law by releasing school grades based test scores.

Fallin and Barresi have kicked our troubled schools when they are down, held it against them, and that makes it more difficult for them to get up.

But what else should we expect when we put two dumb blondes and the Legislature, the biggest aggregation of nincompoops on record, in charge?

--Virginia "Blue Jeans" Jenner