Republican leaders who lied about the election should resign
Resign U.S. Reps. Mike Kelly and Glenn Thompson. It is insulting to Pennsylvanians for each of you to ever be called congressman again. You two have aided and abetted lies on a free and honest national election. A woman is dead. Donald Trump-inspired terrorists stormed the U.S. Capitol. These terrorists wore Trump hats and Trump clothing and flew Trump flags in the great hall of the Capitol.
For four years, you have enabled un-American, and unpatriotic zealots to hinder free and honest elections. Your votes, words and actions have always backed and supported Trump. A woman has died. Your attack on freedom and truth is wrong. Resign. You have no honor left. Resign today.
Joe Cieslak Sr., Branchville
Censorship has no place in American schools
I am writing in response to the Jan. 4 guest column written by Col. Warren C. Bulette. In Col. Bulett’s article, he asserted that the curricula in public schools was not properly educating students about the founding principles incorporated in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. He is asking for change because he fears the youth of today favor socialism over capitalism.
As a freshman attending a public high school in North East, I am confident that the founding principles are thoroughly taught. In addition to these principles, other political and economic systems are also thoroughly taught. These principles and systems are not taught in opposition to each other but are represented equally. The curriculum is not failing students.
What would fail students is Col. Bulette’s ideas that schools should be censored and monitored using input from a task force made up of conservative experts, such as the Young Americas Foundation.
We cannot censor schools as was done in the past when slavery and segregation were the law. This takes away students’ ability to think on their own. The reason we prefer socialism to capitalism is not because the curriculum is failing to educate us, but because we are educated.
My generation is starting to realize how destructive our current systems can be, and our founding principles encourage altering or abolishing systems when they become destructive. We are acknowledging that democratic socialism may be a better way for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all.
Taryn Baker, North East
America made the right pick in electing Biden
There is no question, Americans made the right decision on Nov. 3, 2020!
Mary Teas, Erie
Kelly’s attacks on election are about Trump, not the rule of law
If U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly has been objecting to the 2020 election results “because the objection is necessary to uphold the rule of law,” and is “not for political gain,” where has he been since the June primary, a contest conducted under the same rules as the election in November? Why did neither he, nor anyone in the Republican Party that unanimously approved the enactment of Pennsylvania Act 77 (which sets forth the unlimited right to vote by mail) seek to challenge that law as unconstitutional when it was signed into law by Governor Tom Wolf in October of 2019?
The answer is quite clear now why Rep. Kelly is so enthusiastic about setting aside the results of the 2020 election. It has nothing to do with his newfound concern about the rule of law, and everything to do with his attachment and loyalty to the seditious president he has supported and continues to support.
If Kelly truly wants to “restore faith in the election system going forward,” one of the things he could do would be to acknowledge loudly and clearly that his complaint about the 2020 election in Pennsylvania has nothing to do with massive voter fraud, miscounting of votes, or “stealing the election,” as is being falsely asserted by the former president. It has only to do with the constitutionality of Act 77.
If Mr. Kelly is genuinely interested in upholding the Pennsylvania Constitution, we can only hope that he will have the same eagerness for the rule of law and the United States Constitution when weighing the conduct of the former president.
William D. Kemper, Butler
Trump might be gone, but the damage he did endures
He’s gone. His sulfurous belchings may in all likelihood continue but without the oxygen of incumbency, they will no longer cast such a dark shadow. Most unfortunately this country will exist, now more likely fester, in the penumbra of the Donald Trump presidency for a generation and no passage of time will remove the Faustian stench surrounding his Republican enablers.
Jerome Swabb, Erie
Raising a child is easier in a strong, loving community
In late autumn 1964, while living in California, far from close family, our son’s father told me he wanted a divorce. Only a few months earlier, my dad had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. I felt my world was falling apart.
However, after learning about his grandson’s and my circumstances, my father telephoned and said, “You and your little boy are welcome to return to Erie where there are people who love you.”
So, on snowy Jan. 10, 1965, Douglas and I landed at the Erie Airport. My mother and aunt met us inside and quickly bundled Doug up in a yellow, hooded snowsuit, knit hat, mittens and blanket. Upon arrival at my parent’s home, my dad’s first words to me were: “…take this little boy to church every Sunday and when he grows up, you’ll have a young man to be proud of.”
My father’s advice was followed and near Christmas later that year, while dressed in a blue velveteen vest I sewed for him, Douglas, along with other pre-kindergarten children at Bethany Lutheran Church, loudly sang the verses to “Away In Manager.” I was proud of him then and now as I turn age 83, and Doug has long since graduated from Academy High School and Penn State University, I reminisce about my dad’s advice and the many good people who were there for us throughout many years.
Despite my being a divorced single parent, I believe that my son having received love, tender discipline, caring grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins — plus a secure environment — turned out to be a good man.
Joan C. Harvey Wheeler, Erie
I don’t think skeptics deserve damnation
With all due respect, Erie Times-News letter writer Dave Heintzel is wrong and I think he knows better. He said in a Dec. 5 letter that in other religions you have to earn your way to heaven, but not so with Christianity.
He says both that you don’t have to earn your way to heaven, but also that you must surrender to Jesus. If I’ve understood Christians I’ve spoken to, “surrendering to Jesus” means “or be eternally tortured.”
Is eternal torture for being skeptical — i.e. a careful non-purchaser of the Christian brand — wrong? Or are Christians who buy into the pro-eternal-torture-for-dissenters commodities brand wrong? This distinction is important because loyalty to a brand seems to be all the rage lately.
Mark Amatangelo, Erie
Trump’s seditious refusal to admit defeat endangered U.S.
With the help of lackeys like U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, ex-President Trump morphed into a weird hybrid of Monty Python’s Black Knight and Bram Stoker’s Dracula — laughable, yet dangerous.
Even though he lost the election by more than 7 million votes and President Joe Biden garnered 306 electoral college votes, the same number Trump said was a landslide in 2016, even though state and federal courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court soundly rejected more than 60 lawsuits filed on his behalf, and even though Republican governors and secretaries of state certified Biden the winner in Arizona and Georgia, Trump refused to concede. He lost every contest, but he still insisted that he won by a landslide.
While his unhinged flailing grew increasingly pathetic, Trump’s incitement of Congressional Republicans and the rabid mob that descended on Washington, D.C., was a threat that struck at the very heart of American democracy — the peaceful transfer of power from one president to another in accordance with the will of the American people and the Constitution.
This is sedition, pure and simple. Yet, none dare call it treason.
Regis Sabol, Erie
GOP lies about election fueled attack on Capitol
The attack we witnessed Jan. 6 on our democracy was an act of insurrection and treason caused by Donald Trump and his congressional accomplices. U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly and others fanned the flames by promoting baseless claims of voter fraud and election irregularities. As the invasion of the Capitol building unfolded, I wondered why Kelly and his fellow members of the House and Senate who are complicit in this act of domestic terror did not rise up to protect their colleagues and staff members.
Where were they during the attack? Why wouldn’t tough guy Kelly and his Trump loyalists confront their followers and quell the riot? That’s our proud representative from Pennsylvania’s 16th District. We must never forget who created this disgraceful moment in our nation’s history.
Ken Adams, Erie
Trump and Capitol rioters must face reckoning for crimes
Sedition is defined as conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.
18 U.S. Code 2384 — seditious conspiracy: “If two or more persons in any state or territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”
From the above it is apparent that the president and his supporters who breached and occupied the Capitol were blissfully unaware of the gravity of their undertaking and were very proud of their actions. Otherwise, how can you explain the profusion of videos and selfies shared on social media as evidence. Perhaps they thought, as they went in together in such great numbers and in support of the president, they were protected from prosecution by herd immunity.
It hurts me to know that members of the Capitol police were hurt by the rioters and one was killed. I believe that the police were not expecting to be attacked by members of the so-called party of the law and order. It’s now clear that violence against the police and rejection of authority occurs across the political spectrum.
I very much agree with the “Our View” editorial published on the front page of Erie Times-News on Jan. 8. It said what was needed. “Trump needs to face reckoning, so too must rioters and all his enablers.” Stiff penalties are necessary so such acts do not happen again.
Joao Tavares, Fairview
GOP knew, yet enabled danger posed by Trump
Former Erie Congressman Phil English suggests slapping President Donald Trump with congressional censure while this president’s hand still holds the bloody knife. Donald Trump is a cancer on our nation, and all Republican leaders foretold this in the 2015 campaign for president. Watch CNN roll the tape as Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham and many others predicted the future for America with Donald Trump in the White House.
Phil English should sit back on the couch and enjoy his congressional pension and Congressman Mike Kelly should do the same.
Ray Jones, Erie
