Your beliefs should not decide another’s fate
Manhattan: To Voicer Enrico Mango: Thank you for your dedicated career as a health care providing physician. I, like you, am closely connected to the health care industry, my wife being a dedicated hospice care registered nurse for the past 25 years. I provide the support she needs at the end of the day, listening to her sad stories of hospice patients from preschool-age children to centenarians.
While you are certainly entitled to your opinion on the subject of assisted suicide, people with opposing views are also entitled to theirs. Your religious beliefs should not set the standard on whether or not assisted suicide is acceptable or not acceptable in our society. That decision should be made by the people who are suffering unimaginable pain and agony during the last days of their life, not you. I could detail numerous cases where the patients, many over the age of 100, exist in conditions where endless injections of morphine mitigate the pain and trauma somewhat, where the hope of recovery is nonexistent and the pain they suffer is nothing more than pure torture — for them as well as their families, who bear witness to their suffering.
Our corporate health care industry loves to keep these hospice care patients alive as long as possible, as each hospital bed that’s filled is a profit-making unit. An unfilled bed does not add profit to the corporate health care industry’s bottom line.
So, Dr. Mango, follow your beliefs and let the rest of us follow ours. Enrico Rizzo
Unclear options
Manhattan: I had to read Harry Siegel’s column twice before I figured out what his position is on ranked-choice voting (“NYC’s lousy election rules create lousy choices,” June 15). He seems to be in favor, yet all he does is expose its weaknesses. He never explains how the voting system has anything to do with who the candidates are. If the choices are lousy, they would be just as lousy under ranked-choice or not. He acknowledges the difficulties the average person has with this system. It seems to take much explaining to a person who is unengaged with voting in general, and then some get it wrong, defeating its purpose. Siegel’s solution is to tell them to be more careful. Finally, he repeats the lie that electing a Democratic mayor is a foregone conclusion, failing to cite recent history from 1993-2009, when Democrats lost five mayoral races in a row. So, what supports his position? Steven Fromewick
No way out
Kew Gardens: Both political parties should be concerned about the assassination of a state lawmaker in Minnesota. Congress should agree in bipartisan solidarity to amend the Constitution to limit the presidential power of issuing pardons. What would be devastating to the American people is if the president, at the end of his term, issues a pardon for the murderer responsible for killing our public servants, declaring the horrendous event an act of patriotism. He did pardon more than 1,000 so-called patriots who attacked and vandalized our Capitol Building while causing injuries to and deaths of police officers. Congress must protect our freedoms, democracy and public servants by eliminating heinous pardons that can incentivize assassins and can swing both ways depending on who has that executive privilege. Glenn Hayes
Constitutional objective
Bronx: To Voicer Eileen Zanelli: You can accuse me of having a selective memory, but that does not change facts. Also, Eileen, Joe Biden was in mental decline from the onset of his presidency, as even members of his party are now admitting. TDS has affected your own memory. The constitutional crisis is the illegal entry of millions of migrants through our wide-open southern border. Fear not, President Trump will proudly leave office at the end of his term as another Republican president is sworn in. The jig is up. Joe Schulok
Personal interest?
Toronto: I understand that Trump is excluding restaurants and hotels from his ICE raids. Doesn’t he own a number of hotels that also have restaurants? Peter Earle
Rooting for release?
Spotswood, N.J.: To those who are against ICE, please make a list of which pedophiles, rapists and murderers you want ICE to release. They can drop them off at your house. Tom Scott
Out of step
Hampton Bays, L.I.: The first thing I learned in the Army back in the 1970s after getting my head shaved and being given a bunk was: “Your left, your right, your left, right, left.” The soldiers marching in that parade either forgot that or were never instructed. Watch the video and you can see the heads bouncing out of cadence. I wonder if Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth noticed that. Gene Kelly
Branch timeline
Manhattan: Knowing that President Donny craves association with the biggest, best and first — passing through Whitehall, N.Y., on my way from Vermont and reading a historical marker — I realized he had missed an opportunity to shine. About a month before the U.S. Army came into being on June 14, 1775, the colonists engaged in naval action after seizing a schooner, renamed the USS Liberty, and taking control of Lake Champlain (under Benedict Arnold). An unlucky name, perhaps: Another Liberty was sunk in World War I, and the most notorious was viciously attacked by Israel during the Six-Day War. Oldest branch of service? Applying the standards of the tourism signage (clearly Lexington and Concord, land battles a month before the capture of the Liberty) would confirm the Army’s precedence. But the president is resourceful. He could probably convince the MAGA crowd that the Air Force was first. Michele P. Brown
Lingua not-so-frank-a
Lackawaxen, Pa.: In Trump’s neo-P.C. lexicon, will it be regarded as antisemitic to refer to the Friday, June 13 Israeli sneak attack on Iran as “Pearl Harbor Redux”? John A. MacKinnon
Peace through strength
Medford, L.I.: Kudos to Trump for giving Israel the green light to take out Iran’s nuclear program the day after his 60-day deadline to conform to a disarmament deal expired. The bitter lesson learned from the 9/11 terrorist attack is to neutralize threats before they metastasize on our shores. As the saying goes, if people show you who they are, believe them! The last thing we need is to allow the world’s most prolific sponsor of terrorism to have the world’s deadliest weapons, and whose parliament routinely chants “death to America.” Trump bent over backwards to give peace a chance and to remedy this dangerous standoff diplomatically. But he drew a red line at the 60-day mark, and Israel took care of business. Whether the liberals of the world want to acknowledge it, the world is a lot safer with Iran defanged through the Trump Doctrine’s “peace through strength” tenet. Luana Dunn
Don’t let up
Lake Ariel, Pa.: I hope That Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not listen to all this talk about Iran requesting an immediate ceasefire agreement. They had their chance and blew it. And believe me, if you had not attacked them and they would have gotten the bomb, they would have used it on Israel, and I think you know that. All you want to hear from them is unconditional surrender and that they have nothing left to fight with. Just look at all the ceasefire agreements in the last 70 years. All it did was give the losing side a chance to rebuild and start all over again. And besides, they are lying hypocrites. Joseph Beyhl
Attack dog
Providence, R.I.: According to “Bibi: Regime change in Iran eyed” (June 16), “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brushed off urgent calls by world leaders to deescalate.” Bibi makes the future grim / Why are we supporting him? / How long would he hold full sway / If our assistance went away? Felicia Nimue Ackerman
Don’t click
Brooklyn: I received a text message from somebody pretending to be from Amazon. I did not click it, but it is surely a scam. I just want to warn unsuspecting people about it. Michael Drazner
Small talk
Brooklyn: Watching an Aaron Boone press conference is brutal. He keeps repeating “ya know, ya know, ya know” and “uh, uh, uh.” He also doesn’t know how to have the Yankees play small ball — bunting, squeeze plays, stealing bases, ya know, duh, ya know. Don Adler
