Perhaps this exhibition of leadership may finally quiet those who believe he is unfit to be our president?
Celia Lang
West Chester
There's a better way to choose judges
"Bewildering" is indeed an apt way to describe both the judicial choices for this month's primary election ("Judicial selections," Monday) and the judicial-selection process itself. It is bewildering that judicial selection in Pennsylvania remains a closed-door, backroom process dressed up to look like democracy.
The process is based on the foolish premise that voters have the ability and the motivation to inform themselves about the qualifications of perhaps dozens of candidates for half as many positions.
With no true electoral debate informing the voters, the political parties are free to control the process and hand-pick candidates based on party loyalty and hefty political contributions.
The best that can be expected of the average citizen going into the voting booth on May 17 is that he or she will have read just one sentence about each candidate in a newspaper editorial, such as the one in The Inquirer. But even this modest level of information will be available only to those who (a) read newspapers, (b) trust the judgment of a newspaper's editorial board, and (c) remember to take a copy of the endorsements into the voting booth.
Is this the best we can do? Let's switch to merit selection of judges in Pennsylvania.
John R. Attanasio
Philadelphia
jrattanasio@gmail.com
Gitmo helped U.S. track bin Laden
A recent editorial ("Obama wrong on trials," April 11) advocated closing the Guantanamo detention center because it was a recruiting tool for terrorist organizations.
But intelligence obtained from prisoners at Gitmo was among the reasons we got Osama bin Laden. Should it be closed now that he is dead? No. We should keep it open, because al-Qaeda will keep trying to attack us.
William Ruane
Garnet Valley
ruane-bill@comcast.net
