Printed letters, June 26, 2012

By Staff
Monday, June 25, 2012

On the afternoon of June 19, I received an email from the Western Slope Conservative Alliance indicating that The Daily Sentinel was remiss in its reporting concerning WSCA’s sponsored activity presenting four area county sheriffs.

In one sense, I would agree that the article wasn’t in the least representative of the discussion at that presentation, but I would have to consider the questions represented in the article did in some manner indicate a strange paranoia concerning federal law enforcement activities.

I sometimes think the less we know about these paranoid concerns the better off we are, but we still need to have responsible moderate- to-right groups disavow these concerns.

Jim Spehar did an excellent job in his June 19 op-ed column in taking some of these items to an uncomfortable account, according to WSCA. When people are uncomfortable, we need to examine that carefully.

Perhaps someone can speak to this: I believe in my fifth decade, when I was farming full time in the Midwest, there was strong effort to encourage the development of the county sheriff as the leading governing authority, having to do with Posse Comitatus. And as I understood it, there was little or no responsibility to be given to the central government.

As a matter of fact, there was a very financially secure farmer acquaintance in my county very active in that movement.

Now, in my eighth decade, I had fondly hoped that silliness would have dissipated. Is there some effort of this nature going on at the present?

I had hoped that by this time in the 21st century we would have abandoned that sort of thinking.

WAYNE WESTERSON

Grand Junction

Silent majority won’t be quiet any longer

What happened to the once-balanced newspaper that people trusted? When did it become permissible for a reporter to editorialize?

Gary Harmon’s information about the meeting with county sheriffs was opinionated, slanted and highly inaccurate. The headline was not only wrong, but only was presented to incite people’s anger by misinformation and further widen the division in our country.

Jim Spehar’s contempt for an opinion he opposes was beyond the pale. I would expect that type of rhetoric out of a 10-year-old schoolyard bully, not a grown man.

His biting criticism of the audience, based on only what I believe is leftist ideology, left me with the feeling he was determined to intimidate others in an effort to make himself and his political allies feel superior.

It’s too bad he never bothered to investigate from real sources, not “blogs,” what the attendees have been doing all along. I guess in his eyes, conservative opinion should be stifled.

I would suggest that before more scathing and inaccurate articles appear in the Sentinel, the hierarchy, reporters and columnists of the Sentinel at least investigate from real sources what was presented instead of ridiculing the presenters. Agenda 21 is a reality, and the United Nation’s plan for the United Staes can be proved by its own writings. Presidential gun agenda? Take the time to review Obama’s own words in speeches and executive orders.

Are those who now represent the Sentinel so hidebound in their ideologies that they only want to present the hard-left position?  Are they hoping by ridicule they can cause the silent majority to go back to sleep, shut up and just accept the unacceptable, as they have for more than 60 years? The silent majority is silent no longer and will not be silenced.

SUSIE ADAMSON

Montrose