Left behind

This is in reply to Jay Barth’s article in Arkansas Times regarding Hobby Lobby (“Hobby Lobby case affects more than just contraception,” March 27). The way he lambasted Hobby Lobby almost breaks my heart. It shows how far away from God some people have strayed.

We can’t help kill innocent little babies, and it sounds like murder to me — pure and simple. No one should be forced to go against their Christian beliefs. It should be their right to run their business as they see fit.

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What if Obama started telling you that you had to go to church and get saved, or be fined and lose your job? Same difference — only opposite.

You are messing with America’s freedoms and in the end, it’s liable to turn on you. And why, for crying out loud, did you bring Chick-fil-A in on this? You’ll already did them enough harm!

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They are asked what they believe about marriage and they answer. They believe marriage should be between one man and one woman — and look at how they had to suffer persecution.

What if you were asked what you think — and you said the opposite—and you were persecuted! We got called bigots and haters, and in my opinion, you all are the bigots and haters.

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Hate us if you please. But God hates the sin but loves the sinner — because it is the day of grace through Jesus Christ. Try not to hate us too much, for we’ll be gone up in the clouds to meet Jesus before too much longer with the world getting this sick and ungodly. Then you won’t have to worry and fuss about us anymore. For God’s spirit will be gone out of this world, and guess who you will be left behind with?

I pray for you that you will repent, be baptized in the wonderful name of Jesus, and receive the gift. God brought Saul of Tarsus off his high horse, so I believe he could help you.

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J.W. Cox

North Little Rock

Vote for Cotton

We must not make a mistake this year. Our vote is crucial. We need to put our millions of unemployed back to work. The small businesses of Arkansas and our country have to be freed from the shackles of overregulation and high taxes. Obamacare has already cost the Medicare program Five Hundred Million dollars and more taxes to come. The Republicans can stop this. We can start with electing Tom Cotton to Congress along with other Republicans. Our motto should be “The Republicans Can.”

Edwin Holstead

Blytheville

From the web

In response to Max Brantley’s post, “The real story about the judicial system in Arkansas”:

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Coal barons in West Virginia and nursing home magnates in Arkansas remind me of a TV commercial I saw in Texas in the ’80s. It featured Eddie Chiles, who owned an oil services business. His motto was, “If you don’t have an oil well, get one — you’ll love doing business with Western!”

With a little modification it could become, “If you don’t have an Arkansas/West Virginia State Supreme Court Justice, get one — you’ll love doing business in our states.”

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Don Blankenship, CEO of A.T. Massey Coal Company, did just that. He formed a PAC called “For the Sake of the Kids” (irony abounds!) through which he funneled $3 million to elect his man to the West Virginia Supreme Court. The case that had Blankenship in such a lather was not related to the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, which came later, but was related to Massey reneging on a contract to buy coal from another company. Caperton, the petitioner, petitioned for Blankenship’s newly elected best boy, Brent Benjamin, to recuse himself and Benjamin refused. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supremes. The Supremes found for Caperton against Massey and remanded the case back to WV. It was a 5-4 decision. Justice Kennedy ruled for the Court that “Blankenship’s significant and disproportionate influence — coupled with the temporal relationship between the election and the pending case … offer a possible temptation to the average … judge to … lead him not to hold the balance nice, clear and true. On these extreme facts ‘the probability of actual bias rises to an unconstitutional level.’ “

Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the minority (That would be him, Scalia, Thomas and Alito — What? You’re not surprised?), wrote that the majority decision would have dire consequences for “public confidence in judicial impartiality.” The dissent emphasized that the “probability of bias” standard formulated by the Court was excessively vague and “inherently boundless.”

My point in retelling this is to convince you that this bullshit can of worms is exactly what that rogue’s gallery in Faulkner County will be opening up for the state of Arkansas if we aren’t proactive.

As for the “probability of bias” standard that vexes Roberts. I defer to Justice Potter Stewart in an earlier obscenity case: “I know it when I see it.”

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And now, let’s praise (faintly) a scummy horn dog and gossip monger who couldn’t resist letting his freak flag fly in an LSU chat room. Without him and the magnificent work of Blue Hog and others, all of this might never have come to light.

the outlier

In response to last week’s editorial, “Keeping It Quiet”:

If you think NAFTA was bad for our economy in terms of off-shoring jobs, the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) will make that look like a walk in the park. There’s no way we can compete worldwide with workers who are happy to work all day, 6 or 7 days a week, for 20 cents an hour.

Multinational corporations owe no loyalty to any country. They operate on one principle only — greed. They will use up resources and people alike, eventually creating neofeudal societies and vast pockets of post-industrial wasteland. When nothing is left to exploit, they will cannibalize themselves, taking the rest of the world with them and dooming future generations to a life of mere subsistence.

The TPP will be the final nail in the coffin of our economy.

Brad Bailey

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