Michael Ryan Allows Personal Attacks on His Editorial Page

Re: "Rap against conservatives was dishonest," by Ron Kazen from the May 10th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Not only did Mr. Ryan allow this letter on his editorial page, but it was the featured letter of the day.

Ron Kazen wrote a rebuttal to a letter published in the Chronicle about a week earlier that had been written by Kevin Palmer. Here is the quote that is nothing other than a personal attack.

"He (Kevin Palmer) needs to reflect on his diatribe and consider retaining friends of a higher social caliber than with whom he apparently associates."

What an outrage! Because he has a different political philosophy than Mr. Kazen, supposedly he associates with low lifes?

The rest of Kazen's letter falsely accuses Mr. Palmer of racism, Marxism, and promoting racial divisiveness.

It should not have been published, let alone featured.

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This was actually a slow week. Last week, I didn't comment on an editorial from that week in which Mr. Ryan accused those of opposing the new discriminatory anti-immigrant law of being emotional while those in favor of it being rational.

Oh yeah, that's right. If you disagree with me, you're being emotional.

I did actually read the law and it's pretty stupid. Obviously, it was written to oppress hispanics. But besides that, it's just a bad law. Arizona orders local law enforcement agents not to refrain from enforcing existing federal law. So the police are ordered to enforce an unenforceable law. If it's proven to be already unenforceable, how are they going to enforce it? Will passing a state law repeating a federal law make it more enforceable? I doubt it.

But that's not even the stupidest part of this law. Arizona invited private parties to sue government parties for not enforcing the unenforceable law. Considering how state's are already strapped for money, this sets an incredibly bad precedent that will lead to mountains of frivolous lawsuits. Plus the constitutionality of the law will be challenged in courts. Can anyone say bankruptcy caused by legal fees.

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Rick Mckee drew a couple of stupid cartoons this week.

On Friday May 14th a cartoon compared Obama's health care reform with the oil spill.

McKee has given the health care reform bill a whole month before calling it a disaster. What a race to judgement.

In today's (May 15th) cartoon he shows the media blaming Bush for the oil spill, as if that's some kind of joke.

A week of testimony at capital hill clearly illustrates that Halliburton cut corners, thus contributing to the oil spill disaster. In secret meetings with Dick Cheney the oil companies wrote rules later put in by the Bush administration so that standards were relaxed and shortcuts were allowed. Bush is at fault. Rational people don't need the media to inform us of this fact.

BTW, Obama is also at fault. It is his administration that is continuing the bad environmental policies of the Bush administration, and they're the ones who approved the permit for this ill-fated oil rig.

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Re: "First Grade? No, first rate!" from the May 15th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Mr. Ryan needs to stick to English, not Yiddish. He misused the Yiddish word, chutzpah, in the subtitle, "Hephzibah teacher Kristi Davis shows chutzpah in protecting kids."

Chutzpah is not a synonym for courage. Chutzpah means gall. As in someone offering $250 for a car worth $10,000. Nobody would call that brave. The car dealer might say, "that guy has a lot of gall," but he would never call him courageous.

Misusing a foreign language shows embarrassing ignorance.