Subject: re: Religious Liberty and Equality

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 8:30 AM
Subject: re: Religious Liberty and Equality
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Michael Brooks wants to find a legitimate distinction between refusing to bake a cake for a  gay wedding on one hand and refusing to serve Negroes at a lunch counter on the other. There is none.

   Where one's personal religious convictions collide with an other's Civil Rights, it is the Rights that must be upheld; that's what government is for.  If Mike Pence wants instead to enforce religious convictions, perhaps he should be running for office in Iran.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/opinion/david-brooks-religious-liberty-and-equality.html?_r=0

: re: To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 9:19 AM
Subject: re: To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

  Any Iranian nuclear bomb program is by nature secret; there is much room for doubt. So when our National Intelligence Estimate concludes that Iran's bomb program was shut down in 2003, but Director of National Intelligence warns that it's not so, whom should we believe? Certainly not National Security Director James Clapper. He is a confessed liar, even when testifying to Congress. Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus. While the National Intelligence Estimate is necessarily imperfect, James Clapper's word is known to be no good.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/opinion/to-stop-irans-bomb-bomb-iran.html

: re: Rebukes From White House Risk Buoying Netanyahu

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 9:46 AM
Subject: re: Rebukes From White House Risk Buoying Netanyahu
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

    Inevitably, writing from inside the political culture of Israel, one's view of the world is focused by that lens. But it's not all about Bibi. President Obama has a job to do of which relations with Likud is a tiny part. He must e.g. enforce our treaty obligations. Those include the UN charter which in turn calls for self-determination of peoples. So regardless of Netanyahu's flip-flops, apologies and obfuscations, president Obama is on the job and looking to his historic legacy. That should include the establishment of states for the Palestinians and for the Kurds at least, just as president Truman's legacy includes the establishment of the state of Israel.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/world/middleeast/white-houses-rebukes-risk-buoying-netanyahu.html

: re: Secularism With a Slightly Militant Edge

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 10:16 AM
Subject: re: Secularism With a Slightly Militant Edge
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   A French school cafeteria that accommodates Catholics students with fish on Fridays but doesn't accommodate Jews and Muslims on other days rejects a core value for which the French Revolution was fought. Rather than upholding la laïcité, this is granting peculiar privilege to the Church of Rome. That should enjoy no sanction in la Republic.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/world/europe/secularism-with-a-slightly-militant-edge.html?_r=0

e:Deep Wounds and Lingering Questions After Israel’s Bitter Race

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 9:27 PM
Subject: re:Deep Wounds and Lingering Questions After Israel’s Bitter Race
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
  In 1947, the UN voted to partition Palestine. That is the TwoState deal that ben-Gurion accepted, and that president Truman endorsed. No Arab had a veto; it was the national expression of a people's right to self-determination as enunciated in the UN charter.

   It is long over-due that the U.S. recognize the Palestinian state. PM Netanyahu owns no veto power over another people's national self-determination. And it would go a long way towards earning the Nobel Peace Prize on president Obama's mantel.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/world/middleeast/netanyahu-israel-elections-arabs.html?_r=0

: re: Congress’s Duty on Authorizing Force

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 9:14 AM
Subject: re: Congress’s Duty on Authorizing Force
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
   The constitution of the United States is explicit; the president of the United States is Commander in chief of our armed forces in times of war.  By implication, she/he is commander in chief of nothing in peacetime. And crucially, the decision to go to war is a power uniquely of Congress. Our Supreme Court has ruled (in re Schecter Poultry} that one branch of our government cannot cede or delegate its proper powers to another. It follows that no Authorization for the Use of Military Force can be constitutional except in the context of a declaration of war.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/opinion/congresss-duty-on-authorizing-force.html

: re: Afghan Peace Efforts Reopen Wounds Over Pakistan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 9:23 AM
Subject: re: Afghan Peace Efforts Reopen Wounds Over Pakistan
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   From 2007 to 2013, Pakistan's Armed Forces were yoked with the Haqqani Network to the agenda of Ashfaq Kayani. As head of Pakistan's military, Kayani's priority was always the struggle in Kashmir against India; Afghanistan was mostly an opportunity to divert American resources to his pet project. It remains likely that he cynically sheltered Osama bin Laden to prolong America's involvement in (and therefore cashflow to) Afghanistan.

    Kayani's retirement is thus an epochal event in the region. Of course president Ghani leaps to change the dynamic. We wish him every success.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/09/world/afghan-peace-efforts-reopen-wounds-over-pakistan.html

Mehlis

through meta-data
Hissam Eid's analysis
indicts al-Assad

: re: A Chilling Portrait of Ferguson

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 8:45 AM
Subject: re: A Chilling Portrait of Ferguson
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
   In Eric Holder's theory of justice, the rubber never meets the road. In Ferguson, as in the crash of Wall Street, he finds no individual culpable for the pattern of criminal behavior. Maybe he should be teaching sociology. He's plainly uninterested in being the nation's highest law-enforcement officer.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/opinion/a-chilling-portrait-of-ferguson.html?_r=0

: re: Termites: Guardians of the Soil

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 11:36 AM
Subject: re: Termites: Guardians of the Soil
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    While we pause to appreciate the role termites play in keeping soil fertile, we mustn't forget that they contribute more carbon dioxide and more methane to the atmosphere than all of human activity combined. Our contribution to the global greenhouse effect  is stacked on top of the larger contribution that termites have made for millenia. Termites have been largely running our climate for millenia. Only recently have we been messing that up.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/termites-are-guardians-of-the-soil.html

: re: Congress’s Critical Role on Trade

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 8:14 AM
Subject: re: Congress’s Critical Role on Trade
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:
     Trade is good. As Adam Smith taught us in the 18th century, it is better for one who is good at making pins to make a lot of pins and sell them to someone who is e.g. good at growing coffee rather than for each to dabble inefficiently at all of life's needs. But Trade must never be divorced from environmental and labor law. To import a cheap product whose maker externalizes damage to the planet is not only to undercut his domestic competitor; it is to underwrite that pollution. Likewise, to import the product  of slave labor is as repugnant as putting that slave child into a crate and buying her on Amazon.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/opinion/congresss-critical-role-on-trade.html