Guns do not protect the law-abiding
Re: “Guns save lives,” June 24
Please allow me to counter John Stossel’s June 24 column. Law-abiding people, most of whom do not own guns and cannot shoot, do not kill people. They are more likely to injure a relative at home than respond quickly enough to a sudden attack in a restaurant.
Criminals, most of whom use guns, do kill people. Allowing everyone to carry arms is an invitation to social chaos and bloodshed.
Madeleine Soudee
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Happy to see McDonnell standing up to Metro
Re: “Metro says Va. needs to pay up or $3b funding unravels,” June 25
Iapplaud Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell for putting the brakes on Metro funding until the commonwealth has a voice on its board.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and the Sierra Club have predictably tripped over themselves to rip McDonnell, though I wonder why Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine or Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., both former Virginia governors, never stood up to Metro the way McDonnell is doing.
Metro has a well-documented record of fiscal mismanagement and safety lapses.Doesn’t the governor have a responsibility to make sure the billions of state dollars given to Metro are spent responsibly?
Perhaps if former county board chairman Connolly,Kaine, and other Virginia leaders had demandedaccountability years ago, Metro wouldn’t be reaching for life preservers while it raises fares by 18 percent.
Rob Paine
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Government workers punished for speaking up
Re: “Democrats: Free speech for me, not for thee,” June 25, and “Unaccountable government breeds corruption,” from readers, June 25
Mr. Drake is totally correct that government employees will not attempt to correct corruption in government for fear of their jobs.
Here’s why: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Churchill v. Waters, that federal employees have First Amendment rights “to the extent that their exercise of speech does not interfere with the efficiency of government operations.”
But administrative bureaucrats determine which speech “interferes with the efficiency of government operations.” Just as Gen. Stanley McChrystal was forced out of his job for criticizing his boss, civilian government employees can also be hounded out of their jobs for refusal to go along with corruption and dishonesty hatched at higher management levels. And the Supreme Court says the First Amendment does not protect whistleblowing.
In the case of Jerry Falwell v. Larry Flynt, the court ruled that First Amendment protections are not lost just because some speech offends people. But when some government official’s ox is being gored by a conscientious subordinate, the worker will still be fired under the convenient pretext that his “offensive speech” interferes with the agency’s efficiency.
Lawrence K. Marsh
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