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Corrections
In our Sept. 26 Fall Arts issue story about gallery owner Luis De Jesus, Kinsee Morlan added to De Jesus' résumé. He did not attend Parsons, and he worked at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in Manhattan, not the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.
Also, in our Oct. 3 Newsy Bits section, Eric Wolff misspelled Water Department spokesperson Alma Rife's name. And in his Oct. 3 "Front Lines" story about the upcoming District 3 City Council election, Wolff erroneously reported that candidate Stephen Whitburn won the San Diego Democratic Club's endorsement over Todd Gloria by a narrow margin; the vote count was actually 175 to 65-not at all narrow. Wolff also misspelled former City Councilmember Gloria McColl's name. In the same story, thanks to an editing error by David Rolland, candidates Robert Lee and James Hartline were reported as having been at the Democratic Club's candidate forum. They weren't there.
But Rolland wasn't finished screwing up. When editing Edwin Decker's Oct. 3 "Sordid Tales" column, Rolland had Mitt Romney still in the Massachusetts governor's seat, and he feels like a total chump for it. In the same piece, Decker reported that Romney had outspent all other candidates in Iowa prior to a straw poll there. That was incorrect.
We regret all these errors more than you can ever know.
Letters
The Coronado case
We couldn't agree more that the law under which Rodney Coronado was charged is "half-baked" ["Editor's Note," Sept. 19]. In fact, we made precisely that argument in an amicus brief filed with Judge Miller last year. As we argued, the statute as written criminalizes pure speech. Therefore, it violates the First Amendment unless it is understood to contain the twin requirements that the speaker intends to incite an imminent illegal act and the listener is in fact imminently likely to commit that act. We are glad that Judge Miller so instructed the jury.
As you say, we can't read the judge's mind, but we like to think that our brief had something do with his decision.
David Blair-Loy,
Legal director,
ACLU Foundation of San Diego & Imperial Counties
Gentleman Jim
I was interested in your Sept. 26 editorial concerning the mayor's action on the proposal to support gay marriage. In particular, I noticed your compliment to Councilman Jim Madaffer at the end of the editorial. I am aware that you have been critical of him on previous occasions, and this came as something of a surprise.
I have no connection to local government. I served with Jim on the board of a local nonprofit and had contact with him on a regular basis. I found him to be very thoughtful and not averse to speaking his mind on some controversial subjects. I value his continued friendship, although my contact with him now is infrequent.
I'll be interested to see what is ahead for him after his term on the City Council ends next year.
Leonard Fry,
Downtown
Extreme measures
I just had to write and tell you that your column ["Backwards & in High Heels," Sept. 19] about your willingness to blow Bush in order to get him impeached entertained me immensely!
I've walked around for days now with images of talons and toothpicks trading places in my brain. These moments are accompanied by (shrill) fits of the giggles. My gawd, it's outrageous that it would take that, rather than his commission of mass murder, to get our newly elected Congress to act. They have bummed me out.
And how refreshing it must be to have a mister like yours, I might add.
Alan Wade,
Golden Hill
Ed has no talent
I am writing in regards to Mr. Edwin Decker's Oct. 3 "Sordid Tales" column. What a bigot! This kind of crazed rant and bigoted opinion should not have been published. It doesn't matter who the target is, bigotry is bigotry.
Replace the word "Mormon" with "Jew" and see what happens to your paper. Edwin is not worried about the elections, or Mitt Romney as a presidential candidate; he just wants a platform to write columns that wouldn't get published in most junior high school newspapers due to his love of clichéd phrases, "fry short of a combo meal," which not only has always been the most lame saying, but just shows how on top of things Mr. Decker is.
Who cares what people personally believe; isn't that why we live in America? Mr. Decker's reasoning is nonexistent, along with his talent for writing.
Chad Call,
Hollywood, Calif.
Editor's note: Since Edwin Decker began writing for CityBeat, he has pissed off the Mormons, the Jews, the Catholics, the Protestants, the gay community and probably more groups that don't immediately come to mind. So, there's no need to replace "Mormon" with "Jew" to see what would happen-been there, done that.
It's not about religion
In Edwin Decker's Oct. 3 "Sordid Tales" column, "Mitt Loony: You have to be crazy to vote for this guy," more time is spent bashing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rather than confronting applicable issues to the presidential campaign or Mitt Romney's platform. When considering the presidential campaign, this amounts to nothing more than wasted space in your publication.
On another level, defaming someone's religion is disgusting. Had Mr. Decker's tirade been for Joe Lieberman's adherence to Orthodox Jewry, I'm sure he would have heard from the Anti-Defamation League. Yes people believe unusual things-whether it's Joseph Smith, Buddha or a Palestinian Jew who is the Savior of the World. It's not what they believe; the question here is, would Mitt Romney's religion get in the way of his presidential duties. The answer to that is no. Neither would the religion of most mainstream Judeo-Christian sects.
Personally, my politics do not sympathize with those of the Republican Party, but if I don't vote for Mitt Romney, it won't be because he is Mormon.
Karl Kuebitz,
Mt. Helix
Published: 10/09/2007
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