Being an honest conservative I do read the columns in your paper with the intent of balancing out input from other, much more "right wing", sources. Who knows? Someday, I might find myself or my sources in error and change my views and resultant actions (eg Voting). Yet, Mr. Joel McNally's ongoing parade of ignorance as to almost any subject he discusses has done nothing to encourage my ongoing efforts to view the world and its people in a fair way.

Immigration cruelty is at an all time high in the recent May 12, raid at Agriprocessor, a meat-packing plant in Postville, Iowa. 389 undocumented workers, mostly from Guatemala, some as young as 13, were swept up by some 900 ICE agents, arrested, shackled, and chained together in groups of ten, and taken to a makeshift court in a cattle corral, where they were pressured into pleading guilty to knowingly using a false social security number. While they had only the papers provided to them when they began work at Agriprocessor, these desperately poor and mostly illiterate workers, were manipulated into believing that pleading guilty was the quickest way back to their dependent families in Guatemala, through a "fast-track" Plea Agreement which allowed for no changes. Without understanding what it was they were pleading guilty to, and no understanding of immigration laws, the frightened workers waived their constitutional rights, and having pled guilty, were then taken away to serve a five-month sentence, followed by deportation. It is the Agriprocessor mangers who should be prosecuted and made to serve prison sentences for labor law abuses, fraud, and human rights violations.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and others have been charged with crimes against the United States of America. These are serious charges and the impeachment trial is necessary to determine if these charges are valid or not, if the accused are guilty or not. Would we ignore charges of violence, rape, murder or theft of a suspect? No! We would continue the Trial to make a determination.

Joel McNally’s exposure of former Republican State Senator Tom Reynolds’ efforts to replace good, solid Democrats with wolves in donkey-hide is greatly appreciated. I would never deny anyone the right to run for public office. But, I strongly and vociferously object to this attempt by Reynolds to portray these individuals as Democrats in an attempt to hood-wink the voters. As Mr. McNally correctly stated, none of these candidates are dues paying members of the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, there is no legal requirement for someone to belong to the political party that they claim to represent as a candidate and potential office-holder.

This week, talk show host Michael Savage made inaccurate and derogatory comments about autism on his radio show, calling the condition “a fraud” and the result of a lack of parental discipline. Mr. Savage’s unsubstantiated comments reflect the misconceptions of over 50 years ago, that autism was caused by “refrigerator mothers” or unemotional parenting, which have been completely disproven by the scientific community. Autism is a neurodevelopmental medical condition that requires early identification and lifelong treatment.

Last week, in a major address in the nation¹s capital, former Vice President Al Gore called for a ten-year plan to move the nation's entire energy supply to solar, wind, and other renewable sources. What he failed to address is the massive role of meat production in the global climate crisis.

Summerfest did the right thing Tuesday and asked the Army -- at the urging of Peace Action and others -- to remove a virtual urban warfare game that allowed fest-goers as young as 13 to hop into a Humvee simulator and fire machine guns at life-size people on a computer screen. Rabid radio talker Charlie Sykes devoted more than half of his morning show railing on Summerfest for asking the Army to shut down a virtual killing game, urging listeners to call those wimpy Summerfest folks and complain.

What ever happened to the good old days when the worst things we had to fear on the 4th of July were traffic jams and wayward fireworks? According to our government's Meat & Poultry Hotline, this year's top fear is food poisoning by those nasty E. coli and Salmonella bugs lurking in inadequately grilled hamburgers and hot dogs. Of course, they don't bother to mention that high-temperature grilling that kills the bugs also forms cancer-causing com-pounds.

Lisa Kaiser's article "Bush's High Crimes and Misdemeanors," June 19, should act as a trumpet call to citizens, especially because Kucinich's articles of impeachment have already been sent to committee where they are expected to die.

The last 7-1/2 years have brought me horror and heartache, as I've seen my country turn from its good principles of humanity, and jeopardize the safety of us all in its escalation of the war mentality. When the Soviet Union fell, the European Union was learning to live together peacefully and we had a chance to work with the world to catch terrorists together and yes, try them in a world court.