Republicans blew it
In response to the letter from Varnel Williams, I have to ask: If Donald Trump is so furious about the migrant situation at the southern border, why did he order the Republicans to vote against the bipartisan solution that Republican Sen. James Langford and others worked so hard to create?
I’ll tell you why. It’s because the only interests Trump has in the border problem are how he’s personally going to “look” before the election, and how much money he can part from the fools who support him. Refugees are too poor for him to care about, so why bother?
Enough with the phony hand-wringing about the southern border. Republicans had their chance to solve the immigration problem, but as usual, they royally blew it.
Patrice Yeatter
Kooskia
Character still counts
In the late 1990s, we remember the lewd affair that President Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky. Many evangelical preachers loudly condemned such behavior by a president to the applause of their congregations. And so was born the slogan among evangelical, Bible-believing Christians that, “Character counts.”
But evidently character, integrity and principle don’t count anymore with many evangelical Christians. They look at Donald Trump and his moral trespasses and, in weak conscience, they excuse his conduct in one way or another. They say, “We can’t expect our leader to be perfect,” or they claim Trump’s political opponent “has committed much worse crimes” or they say, “In the Bible, God used men even with their faults.”
Yes, in Scripture, God used men like the apostle Paul, but only “after” Paul’s “repentance” of his former persecutive lifestyle. Yes, God used King David, but only after his repentance of his immorality, coverup and earlier sins. Yes, Moses sometimes displeased God, but it was Moses and Elijah who later appeared with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (Luke 9:28,30). So evidently, Moses found time before his earthly death for repentance.
So character and Christ-likeness don’t count anymore with most evangelical Christians, but only “lame excuses” to diminish the flagrant sins of their great misleader and idol. They can’t see the power-abusing sin in their great idol because they can’t see the hypocritical and prejudicial sin in themselves.
Jim Holsinger
Grangeville
TikTok a threat?
Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers has created a threat to free speech.
“The purported threat of TikTok to U.S. national security has inflated into a hysteria of Chinese spy balloon proportions, but the official record tells a different story: U.S. intelligence has produced no evidence that the popular social media site has ever coordinated with Beijing. That fact hasn’t stopped many in Congress and even President Joe Biden from touting legislation that would force the sale of the app.” (The Intercept: bit.ly/3Pqt9UN)
Reason.com calls H.R. 7521 our version of China-style censorship (bit.ly/4aeIGi9).
Racket News’ Matt Taibbi sums up the problem nicely: “As written, any ‘website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application’ that is ‘determined by the President to present a significant threat to the National Security of the United States’ is covered ... (because a foreign entity) can be any company founded or run by someone living at the wrong foreign address, or containing a small minority ownership stake. Or it can be any company run by someone ‘subject to the direction’ of either of those entities. Or, it’s anything the president says it is. Vague enough?” (bit.ly/3vdPVbu; partially behind a paywall)
Donald Trump might openly yearn to be a dictator but the attempts to use the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to force COVID-19 vaccinations and use Sarbanes-Oxley to charge felonies for Jan. 6, 2021, misdemeanors show that no modern administration can be trusted to act lawfully or administer justice justly.
Thomas A. Hennigan
Asotin
