Letters: Philadelphia Daily News op-ed columnist Christine Flowers is right - and wrong

RE THE op-ed "Massacre Triggered an Insane Reaction":

Christine Flowers is correct when she says that attempts to link Jared Loughner's alleged actions to tea-party people or right-wing pundits amount to irresponsible and opportunistic grandstanding. But she's disingenuous when she compares the Tucson, Ariz., shooting to the assassination of George Tiller.

Assassin Scott Roeder was a member of several organizations that shared his extremist views on abortion.

In the 1990s, he authored contributions to Prayer & Action News, a magazine that supports the belief that the murder of abortion providers is justifiable. Roeder was an active participant on the website of Operation Rescue, an anti-abortion group fined nearly a million dollars for harassment and intimidation of Planned Parenthood employees.

The Tucson shooting was the result of a mental-health system that fails to keep people like Loughner out of society, and gun laws so lax that almost anyone can get his hands on an automatic weapon. Tiller's assassination was the result of a network of right-wing extremist organizations encouraging their most unhinged members to carry their agenda out to its logical conclusion.

Mike LePostollec, Philadelphia

They climb out of their red, white and blue right-wing clown car one by one - Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, et al - and tell you their First Amendment-protected hate speech had nothing to do with the tragedy in Arizona.

And, like clockwork, the last one to exit, Christine Flowers, punches in and sits down at the keyboard to tell us "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

I'm pretty sure I was told otherwise when I was a child. Along with everyone else I grew up with.

Roy Lehman, Woolwich Township, N.J.