Certainly, they can’t be aware of the fact that this administration threatened to fire the chief Social Security actuary if he disclosed to Congress the true projected cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit. They must also have a clear explanation as to why the Republican Congress would pass such a bill without giving Medicare the right to bargain for reduced drug prices with the drug companies that wrote the legislation. I believe corruption is the appropriate word here.

Nor could they have heard of the memorandums of meetings in which the administration disclosed that, with respect to the invasion of Iraq, they were going to make the facts fit the policy. In my family, we call this lying.

Finally, they must not have anyone in their family suffering from diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis or any of the other conditions that could benefit from stem-cell research on cells that are going to be discarded by clinics anyway. This is a typically incompetent use of the president’s very first veto.

Since I could be overheard saying these things on my phone due to the illegal, warrantless wiretapping being conducted by the administration, I decided to write.

I pray for our soldiers and our country.

— Martin Harary, Oxnard