Threats toward judges speak to a deeply harmful strike at the core of our democracy | Opinion
Judges deserve our honor
Virtually every day we learn of serious threats against judges, their families and their staff members. This situation is beyond being unfortunate.
According to the American Bar Association, threats against federal judges have doubled in the past three years.
We should not tolerate, applaud or follow those whose words or conduct encourages threats against our fellow citizens whom we enshrine with the label of “Your Honor.”
Our judges are our fellow citizens who have undertaken to administer justice, with no friends to reward and no enemies to punish, as they labor in the vineyard of every imaginable controversy.
The conduct that has the appearance of sanctifying these threats is not only morally and legally wrong, but it also threatens the very fabric of our society.
Judicial independence and the rule of law, the concept that no one is above the law, makes our country a shining light that protects us all.
Everyone has a responsibility, by word and deed, to embrace the rule of law and to protect and defend those who administer the law against the people whose poisonous words and actions encourage violence against those who safeguard our liberties.
Good citizenship demands no less.
Ellis I. Kahn, Charleston
Frustrations with Mace
Does anyone else read the garbage that Nancy Mace sends to constituents?
Nancy recently sent an email bragging about voting against the bill to keep the government open. She claimed it was to save money and to prevent increases in spending.
Anyone who has even a rudimentary knowledge about the federal government budgeting process knows that the bill to keep the government open was intended solely to pay bills already incurred.
It wasn’t new spending like Nancy Mace claimed.
If she had succeeded in shutting down the federal government, our national credit rating would tank, interest rates would soar and inflation would run rampant. The cost of most everything would skyrocket.
So either she’s willfully ignorant about the essentials of her own job or she is trying to dupe her constituents. Which is it?
Nancy also has a bill to prevent people convicted of sex crimes from entering the country. Doesn’t she know that Customs and Border Protection uses existing legislation to already arrest immigrants who have been convicted of sexual crimes outside of the U.S.?
But all is not lost. Nancy is hard at work on her bill to protect puppies and kittens.
What about motherhood and apple pie?
Al Muench, Bluffton
Imagine this
Imagine someone signing a contract to be a school teacher and then refusing to teach the students. You would assume that they would be fired, right?
Imagine that they are fired, but they sue the school district for wrongful firing. We’d think that they were mentally unbalanced.
Now imagine someone who calls themselves a Christian but is upset when they are “persecuted,” even though the New Testament pretty much guarantees that persecution will be an integral part of the “job description,” that persecution is something to wear as a badge of honor, in a sense a sign of one’s faithfulness, a sign that one is “doing it right.”
Then imagine that these same people turn to secular agencies — state or federal government — to come to the rescue and save them from this “persecution.”
At best, we would simply say that they know nothing about the faith they claim to follow; at worst, we would say that they seek to destroy the very faith that they claim to follow, looking for a life of ease and entitlement rather than a life of servitude to one’s fellow man.
More simply: Trump is not a Christian, and people who claim that he is aren’t either.
Tim Mueller, Columbia
