Time to come back to earth, Ronnie: Bevilacqua was never indicted. The grand jury report to which she refers was itself an exercise in anti-Catholic bigotry in legalistic dress. No other institution was subjected to a similar witch hunt by the D.A.
Not only does Polaneczky vilify the late cardinal, she condemns the church more generally, saying that "in a hierarchy where the sex-abuse cover-up has reached into the uppermost levels, no one is appointed a leader unless he can do such a thing." Such wild speculation is egregiously anti-Catholic.
Marcus Plieninger
Policy Analyst
Catholic League for
Religious and Civil Rights
New York
Philly's a ba-a-a-d town
Mayor Nutter calls for a bounty on the heads of Philly's violent criminals. Citizens call for the end of these "senseless" acts. Actually, these acts are not senseless. They are, in fact, quite sensible and logical . . . to the violent criminal, that is.
Think about it. If you were a drug-dealing, murderous thug, where would you choose to set up operations: Philadelphia or Texas? The choice is clear. You would choose Philly, because the citizens have willingly allowed the local government to disarm them, and make it a crime to own a gun, or to use it to defend yourself, your family, your property or your neighborhoods.
Wake up, Philadelphia. You don't have a crime problem. You have a guts problem. The criminals are just doing what they always do - what comes naturally. The wolves always know where to find the sheep. You better start exercising your Second Amendment rights, Philadelphia, or expect to keep getting sheared.
Stuart Caesar
Philadelphia
It doesn't look like the crime rate in Philadelphia is reducing. Maybe a return to "old-time Western" justice might help. Strung up to a limb on tree with a sign hanging from his neck: "I was a cattle rustler, stagecoach robber, etc." There's not many trees in the city, but plenty of lampposts would serve the purpose: "I was a dope dealer, shot an innocent bystander, child molester, etc."
The potential criminal might think twice about committing the crime.
A good idea, don't you think?
Tom Woodruff
Oreland
Murders are happening at the rate of almost one a day in this city, a woman was murdered in cold blood for "snitching" to the police, the Greyhound terminal was held up, you take your chances walking anywhere in the city day or night, there are no jobs, no money, rich criminals continue getting away with everything and all the Philadelphia Thug Department (a/k/a the police) can worry about is assaulting Occupy Philly protesters?
Nothing like prioritizing, folks!
Donna Di Giacomo
Philadelphia
Troubling idolizing
On Stu Bykofsky's and Christine Flowers' columns on the death of Joe Paterno: Christine, comparing covering up for a child rapist in order to save your precious football program to President Kennedy cheating on his wife? And Stu: Heavenly encounter? I don't think so. Hopefully he saves a seat in hell for his sexual-deviate cohort, Jerry Sandusky. Stu, do you think if St. Peter saw another apostle having his way with a young boy he would have kept it to himself? I don't think so. The gates to heaven are narrow and I don't think Paterno makes the cut. Sorry.
Watching thousands of morons hero-worship a person who potentially stood by while young boys were violated is very troubling.
Mike Franklin
Marlton, N.J.
Merit's demerits
Your editorial about recusal standards for judges raises the spurious argument that merit selection of judges would somehow "insulate judicial selection from politics." In fact, merit selection only pushes the politics behind closed doors so that judges can be selected by their patrons and cronies rather than by citizens in free and open elections.
Exhibit A for my argument is the Honorable Midge Rendell. While Rendell has turned out to be an honest and competent jurist, there is simply no way she ever would have been appointed to the federal bench (first to the District Court in 1994 and then to the 3rd Circuit in 1997) had she not been the wife of a powerful Democratic mayor in a large Eastern city whose husband happened to be a friend of President Clinton. Merit selection? Hardly.
There are no guarantees in a democracy. Sometimes we elect fools, or knaves, or people whose main qualification is a pretty smile. That's why we always have another election a few years later, so we can throw the bums out. The fact that there are mistakes is no reason to strip citizens of their electoral power and turn the job over to political elites with little accountability, who think that they know what's best for us more than we do ourselves.
Michael Kubacki
Philadelphia
