Brooklyn Prosecutor Defends Record on Sex Abuse Cases

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/nyregion/brooklyn-prosecutor-charles-hynes-defends-record-on-sex-abuse-cases.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, May 19, 2012 at 6:50 AM
Subject: re:Brooklyn Prosecutor Defends Record on Sex Abuse Cases
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

  Attorney General Charles Hynes seems to have lost his compass. He is paid to pursue justice, not convictions. Justice can only be served by applying the same law to all, to the powerful and to the weak. If he wants some trophy scalps to hang on his belt, he should prosecute the criminals who--by his own account--have been intimidating witnesses under his own nose.

Barry Haskell Levine

New Cautions About Long-Term Use of Bone Drugs

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/new-cautions-about-long-term-use-of-bone-drugs/?ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, May 10, 2012 at 10:11 AM
Subject: re: New Cautions About Long-Term Use of Bone Drugs
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    Twenty years ago, when Merck sought FDA approval for the first bisphosphonate drug, its terminal half-life was already  known to be very long. Now it's reported to be ten years. Logically therefore the safety studies would have had to run at least sixty years i.e. until the drug had cleared from the body. That would have been an extraordinarily expensive Clinical Trial.  Of course that was not done and a slew of similar drugs were approved with no more scrutiny. So now the FDA is trying to fix what it didn't do right the first time.  We wish them well. But the American public looks to the FDA's approval to mean that a drug is safe. That's a conclusion that can't be rushed for the manufacturer's convenience.

Barry Haskell Levine

The Structural Revolution

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/opinion/brooks-the-structural-revolution.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, May 8, 2012 at 8:54 AM
Subject: re: The Structural Revolution
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   The only thing that's rigorously cyclic in economic policy debates is the rallying cry. "But this time it's different!" has justified running over every cliff since the Dutch tulip bubble of 1637.  Of course 2012 is not 1932. Myriad details are different. But we'd be great fools to refuse to learn from Herbert Hoover's failures and from FDR's successes. History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme.

Barry Haskell Levine

Murdoch’s Pride Is America’s Poison

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/opinion/sunday/keller-murdochs-pride-is-americas-poison.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, May 6, 2012 at 9:12 AM
Subject: re: Murdoch’s Pride Is America’s Poison
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

     Bill Keller continues to posture as the Voice of Responsible Journalism and offers the willingness to acknowledge getting a story wrong as the test of that creed. The test case is still on the table. When he acknowledges that he was wrong to quash the warrantless wiretaps story, he will have credibility on this issue. That decision cost the New York Times one of the best investigative reporters of our generation. More important, it cost the American electorate the chance to know that one of the candidates was engaged in a pattern of criminal activity as we went to the polls in 2004 to elect a president.  We don't know exactly how Dick Cheney threatened Bill Keller. But we do know that a press that comes to heel when the  White House tugs its leash is a press that's not serving the Public.

Barry Haskell Levine

Recovered Bin Laden Letters Show a Divided Al Qaeda

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/world/recovered-documents-show-a-divided-al-qaeda.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, May 4, 2012 at 10:19 AM
Subject: re: Recovered Bin Laden Letters Show a Divided Al Qaeda
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   Osama bin Laden was no religious scholar. But how different our world would be if al-Qaeda kept even to his understanding of Sharia!  As he wrote "it is not permissible in Islam to betray trust and break a covenant".  Recall that all nineteen bombers of 9/11 had entered the U.S. on valid visas. Each of them therefore broke trust and violated the hospitality of the U.S. in the gravest fashion. Scholars at al-Azhar laid this out soon after 9/11. By their action, the bombers had put themselves outside the community of Muslims and deserved to be treated as "bandits". They were certainly neither martyrs not paragons to be emulated.

Barry Haskell Levine

Fallout of Bin Laden Raid: Aid Groups in Pakistan Are Suspect

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/world/asia/bin-laden-raid-fallout-aid-groups-in-pakistan-are-suspect.html?_r=1

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, May 3, 2012 at 9:04 AM
Subject: re: Fallout of Bin Laden Raid: Aid Groups in Pakistan Are Suspect
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

   When civilized nations undertook to bind themselves to Laws of War, they started by defining who is and who is not a combatant. For the sake of civilization, certain people (including journalists and healthworkers are excluded from the category of combatants. They thus enjoy some freedom and even protection to operate in the field of combat.  There is therefore a temptation for a combatant to seek an advantage in war by claiming falsely to  belong to one of these protected categories. For this, there is a technical term. It is called "perfidy". Civilized nations prosecute it as a war-crime.

Barry Haskell Levine

Is Our Adults Learning?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/opinion/brooks-is-our-adults-learning.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 8:54 AM
Subject: re: Is Our Adults Learning?
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

     Mathematical models of economies--or of anything else--are only as valuable as the data they're built on. If we mean to learn, we must never lose sight of the experiments we have performed.  Between the stock market crash of 1929 and FDR's inauguration in 1933, president Hoover had over three years to fix the U.S. economy. He hewed to austerity, and we fell into the Great Depression.  FDR also dabbled in austerity as the election of 1936 approached.  The recovery he had achieved evaporated and the Depression deepened. By 1952, former president Hoover was still railing against the evils of deficits. But by then the U.S. had moved from the Great Depression to the Post-War Prosperity through deficit spending for raking leaves and deficit spending for infrastructure and deficit spending for our part in WWII and deficit spending for the Marshall Plan. No one can prove what part each of those contributed, but the prosperity was real.  At that time, Hoover was the only one who had failed to learn from our own experience.  No one who has been paying attention believes that Hoover was right in 1930; no one should expect his austerity policies to work for us in 2012.

Barry Haskell Levine