‘Sense From Suozzi’

In the recent New York Sun editorial “Sense From Suozzi” [May 12, 2005], you quote the Nassau County executive, Thomas Suozzi, as saying, “Anyone who really wishes to reduce the number of abortions has an obligation to help those women who choose not to have an abortion yet find themselves alone.”

We at Catholic Home Bureau wholeheartedly agree. For 80 years, we have been helping “women who choose not to have an abortion yet find themselves alone” with all the resources they need to deliver healthy babies into strong, stable homes. Our Maternity Services Program provides mothers and mothers-to-be with pre- and post-natal care, free counseling, maternity clothes, safe new cribs with bumper guards and mattresses, baby clothing, maternity clothes, blankets, sheets, layettes, baby formula, and emergency assistance with rent and food. The program includes a full-service adoption as well as a post adoption program. We also conduct domestic and international home studies and place infants in approved homes.

Whether pro-life or pro-choice, surely we can all agree with Mr. Suozzi that maternity services are indispensable where many needy pregnant women do find themselves alone and in need of vital assistance.

EDWARD SHORT
Director of Development
Catholic Home Bureau
Manhattan

‘No Shift to the Center’

Peter Beinart’s May 11 opinion piece “No Shift to the Center” discusses where Senator Clinton stands politically and if she has indeed moved to the center. I am surprised there are Republicans in Congress who believe this and may not perceive that in their praise of her bipartisan cooperation on certain issues, they are unwittingly helping her self-promotion campaign for president in 2008.

Independent-minded Democrat voters are outraged that their party has been hijacked by the far left (i.e., Pelosi, Kerry, Kennedy, Clinton) and believe Mrs. Clinton underestimates their intelligence. I believe Mrs. Clinton is a brilliant strategist who has believed that her goals have justified any means, and that “attacks on her character” have often been justified.

A Google search for Mrs. Clinton’s longtime mentor, socialist activist Saul Alinsky, has countless items about him, including the influence he had on Mrs. Clinton and President Clinton. Advice given to his followers was not to dress, talk, and act like the 1970s radicals but, rather, to appear mainstream, moderate, while reaching for high political positions in which they would have the power to make changes in our government and push a socialist agenda.

ELLEN J. SINGER
Hartsdale, N.Y.

‘Try Swatting Flies’

This is in response to Michael Kinsley’s recommendations on how to perk up declining newspaper readership [“Try Swatting Flies With a Computer,” Michael Kinsley, Opinion, May 11, 2005].

Whine, whine, whine! In the past 20 years, I’ve sent at least 50 letters to newspapers, pointing out that it should be dear to the heart – and wallet – of every newsman to cultivate a future supply of readers – readers who should be emanating from our public schools, but aren’t. From Mr. Kinsley’s inane (tongue-in-cheek?) suggestions, I sense he is feeling the heat but not yet seeing the light.

For the past half-century, the numbers of active U.S. newspapers have followed the downward parade of literacy levels in our schoolchildren. Yet it has been only the less major newspapers (bless The New York Sun!) that have attempted to hold educators’ feet to the fire, in the face of perpetual parental protests. Where does the Los Angeles Times fit into this picture?

Has it (along with the New York Times and the Washington Post) treated our education system with kid gloves, being a cheering section “for the children” every time the “system” says the solution is more money? An occasional major article just to nurture the illusion of caring about our future citizens? Just muffle the public outcries and salve the big-business consciences as you go along with the educrats?

E-mail networks and Web sites are overflowing with real information on real problems and real solutions, which big media ignore. Get real. Those of us in the trenches are fed up with your wimpy waffling.

CHARLES M. RICHARDSON
Chairman
The Literacy Council
South Setauket, N.Y.

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