KATHY LEE'S NOT THE DARK SIDE?
Having never been on a cruise, all I can envision is Kathy Lee belting out chorus lines while guests sip drinks in tiki glasses full of fruit and baby umbrellas. The dark side to cruising, including grey- and blackwater, is that the cruise lines don't always like to treat the water like they do their paying guests [see "Cruise Control," May 10, and "Cruise Dumps," p. 11 this issue]. Not only did Royal Caribbean Ltd. just dump its untreated wastewater; September 16, 1998, the Coast Guard spotted a 7-mile long oil slick by the Nordic Empress, [and] they lied about it. In 1998, according to the DOJ, "the Miami sentencing was for one phase of an investigation that uncovered an array of environmental crimes related to Royal Caribbean's fleetwide conspiracy." Within the last four weeks, two cruise ship have been caught discharging greywater in the Northwest, Holland America and Norwegian Cruise Lines.
The truth is, owners of these cruise ships are not good corporate citizens. Therefore, my advice: If you are going on a cruise this summer, cancel your vacation, or if you must go, hold it in for the length of the cruise—quite a biological feat for a seven-day cruise!
Stephen Miller
Sammamish
DREAMING OF ASS-KICKING
This review ["Fair Abuse," The Wind Done Gone, May 10] was among the most prejudicial and unfair articles I have read in several years. This guy obviously has an axe to grind and appears to be using the "review" as an excuse to project his bigoted views of the South. I resent it. It is one of my most fond dreams to get one of these silly little SOB writers in a public debate and kick their ass. But alas, most are like this fool who writes is [sic] words and then goes and hides behind his editor's skirts.
Philip D. Hodgens
Chelsea, Ala.
WE'RE IN DEEP DOO-DOO
Great article on the death penalty ["The Case for Timothy McVeigh,"Geov Parrish, May 10]! I've been a public defender for 10 years, and I could not agree with you more that the ONLY rationale for the death penalty is vengeance. However, most American Christians are not for the death penalty, as you suggest. Bud Welch, whom you favorably quote, is against the death penalty and he's Catholic. The Catholic Church and numerous Protestant denominations actively oppose the death penalty. Sister Helen Prejean continues to advocate against state-sanctioned murder.
The fact that our incoherent president spouts his faith incoherently— as you pointed out, Bush claims to be against murder and has also presided over dozens of murders as governor of Texas—is just another proof of the deep doo-doo we're in (again). His smiling face and vengeful heart say nothing about what American Christians think about the death penalty.
Otherwise, great article.
Keep it up!
Andy Simons
Seattle
MINDBENDINGLY STUPID
You've done it again; you've let that idiot make your otherwise excellent publication look ridiculous. Why do you publish Mr. Parrish's mindbendingly stupid rants? He claims [in "The Case for Timothy McVeigh," Geov Parrish, May 10] that there is "no good reason for the death penalty—not moral, not legal, not preventative, none." Let's run down his little list, shall we?
(1) Moral (as in Right and Wrong). If there was any moral justification for killing, it would be to prevent further killing. Anyone who reads the paper knows that there's nobody more likely to kill than someone who's already done it once before. The public has a moral right to protect itself by stopping a murderer from killing again. Period.
(2) Legal. I really don't think there's any clear definition of a "legal reason," so this is nothing more than mindless ranting. As long as it's legal for the state to kill a murderer, that's good enough for me.
(3) Preventative. What better way to prevent a murderer from killing again than to kill him? And those unnamed studies Mr. Parrish refers to were probably conducted in the current context; a society that refuses to kill those that deserve death quickly and efficiently, with a reasonably small number of appeals. So we really don't know if the death penalty is "preventative", do we? In fact, with the lengthy appeals process, can we honestly say we even HAVE a death penalty? More like an "appeals" penalty, isn't it? Please, get a clue and drop this knee-jerk liberal psycho from your staff before he does even more damage.
Scott Hill
Seattle
THE LONG KISS GOOD-BYE?
A new 24-story tower is called "a defeat for both the rich and poor of Belltown" by Rick Anderson [News Clips, "News Flash! Belltown to Get More Condos," May 10], who doesn't explain his thinking but notes that the project was opposed by neighbors who didn't want the tower to block their views.
If Rick is assuming we've all come to an agreement that private views have achieved the same status as wetlands or endangered species, something so significant in value to the community as a whole as to require the intervening hand of government in the housing market, then I must dissent.
