Letters To The Editor
March 12, 2008 - MidWeek
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Del.icio.usBarking orders
Who, indeed, gives Rick Hamada his barking orders?
I’d just read the letters to the editor in last week’s MidWeek, appreciating especially Jane Asato-Evans’ letter about Mr. Hamada parroting whatever O’Reilly, Hannity and Limbaugh spew, when I turned to his column about Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein - and read the same lame argument that the national big boys were making on the air.
Rick Hamada, it appears, is nothing more than a human echo chamber.
Tyler Chang
Honolulu
Hussein hoo-hoo
Of course there’s nothing wrong with using a candidate’s full name, unless that usage is intellectually dishonest. Which Rick Hamada’s seems to be. if he were being honest, he’d also remind MidWeek readers of a former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak. In the Middle East and Africa, as in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain, there are many common names.
When you have to make a campaign issue out of a person’s middle name, you’re standing on very shaky and insecure ground. But there Mr. Hamada is.
David Yamasaki
Honolulu
Funeral ‘present’
Thank you to editor Don Chapman for a column about a very serious subject - funeral planning - but doing so in a way that made it entertaining, “So How Do You Want To Be Dead?” It inspired me to make a call and begin planning for my children’s next “Christmas present.”
David Gomes
Honolulu
Stick to showbiz
It’s too bad Rick Hamada does-n’t just stick with what he’s fairly good at - entertainment stories, such as his Grammy column. He obviously has greater understanding of popular music and films than he does of politics, which requires nuanced thinking.
Janis Nagata
Honolulu
The sinful EC pill
This is in response to the letter from Barry Raff of Planned Parenthood, in which he corrected Bob Jones’column about Catholic health workers’theological dilemma concerning emergency contraceptives (EC) causing abortions.
Mr. Raff wrote, “emergency contraceptive pills do not cause abortions - they prevent pregnancy and the need for abortion.”
The Catholic Church believes, based on scientific proof, that life begins at conception. The church also teaches that at that same moment God has created a new soul within this new little being. It is based on this belief that once conception has happened, a life is present and anything that purposely prevents this life from its natural process ending in its demise is in itself morally wrong.
As Mr. Raff states in his letter, the EC pill “prevents pregnancy by inhibiting ovulation, fertilization and/or implantation.” Implantation is the action taken after conception has happened. The action of the EC pill of preventing implantation after conception is therefore looked upon as causing an abortion.
Conception can take place anytime within the 72 hours after intercourse. To my knowledge there has not been any device or test created to state 100 percent sure that conception has not happened and the EC can safely be given to prevent a new life from being created. On this note, it is morally wrong to give an EC pill in order to prevent pregnancy when it could actually be killing a new life that has already started.
I am an ER nurse. I am Catholic. I will never give this pill, and those I work with know this fact.
Kathleen Bechen
Aiea
Correction
In the article Get Up, Stand Up, which ran in the Feb. 27 edition of MidWeek, two errors were made. Brian Keaulana was a lieutenant and captain for the Waianae lifeguard program, not the head lifeguard for the city. That title belongs to Jim Howe, who has been Honolulu City and County’s chief of lifeguard operations for the past 14 years.
Howe says that contributions from the QuikSilverEdition Ku Ikaika Challenge went to the Hawaiian Lifeguard Association, a statewide non-profit organized in 1990 to deal with educational issues related to providing lifeguarding and ocean safety services in Hawaii’s unique culture and environment.
It was requested that the funds go toward the Junior Lifeguard Program on the Leeward Coast, but there is no such entity called the Junior Lifeguard Foundation, as previously reported.
Howe adds that many of the day’s competitors graciously donated their winnings and that QuikSilver has made many generous donations to the association as well.
Send your letters to MidWeek Letters, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 500, Honolulu, HI. 96813; by fax to 585-6324, or by email to dchapman@midweek.com. Please include your name, address and daytime and evening phone numbers. We print only the letters that include this information, but only your name and area of residence will appear in print. Letters may be edited for clarity and space.
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