Stiegler’s Concealed-Carry Compromise

This week's letter comes from Mike Caba who continues our ongoing dialogue over interrogation practices with a nice meditation on the moral perils of state-sponsored torture. Thanks for the letter, Mike. You can pick up your winnings, a pound of Strictly Organic Coffee, at our offices, 704 NW Georgia.
With this business about torture our country has accomplished two bits of the devil's business, namely, we are both more evil within, and less protected from evil without. When this unfortunate practice is examined, we see that discussion surrounding the use of torture nearly always circles around two pivot points, the moral and the utilitarian, summarized as follows: is it evil and, does it work? On the first question, nary a voice is heard in opposition to the contention that torture is essentially evil at its core; and those who have practiced it in the past, or who unfortunately still practice it today, have often devalued their victims to a subhuman status in order to soothe their own moral vibes against the use of various devices (e.g. the Nazis and the untermensch).

The Bend Metro Parks and Recreation District has applicants for its summer programs in a bind suitable for Ken Kesey or Joseph Heller. We've tried to hack our way out only to be ensnared by the befuddling labyrinth of BMPRD's Dickensian circumlocution office.
BMPRD plans to queue up all walk-in summer program applicants-seniors, other adults and children alike-at the Senior Center at 7 a.m. on Saturday, May 9, and to use the DMV model (take a number and wait your turn) once the doors are opened to the clamoring throng. We are a group of senior hikers who object to this procedure.
Recent registrations until now have reduced crowding for everybody either by accommodating different groups simultaneously at different facilities or by registering different groups on different days in the Senior Center.

Being a recovering climbing "dirt bag," I used to spend A LOT of nights out at Skull. Most of the people camping out there are climbers.

I was so amused by Mr. Epstein's letter in Source (April 16) that at first I thought it intended to be satirical. It was such a perfect presentation of the usual non-sequiturs, pseudo-history, myth making, errors and canards of the loony Right, that I assumed it must have been written in jest. Its delivery, in the tone of one who is as uninformed as he is supremely self-assured - so like the boss in "The Office" - was first class. The "Jesus Loves You" finish was a classic of the condescension and hypocrisy at which American Evangelicals lead the world! I even drafted a quick note to the editor of Source to compliment him for being so brave as to publish a letter that so effectively satirized the Christian Right. But Mr. Epstein, like the large slice of the US population he so closely resembles, is serious - and dangerous.