Imagine that you have been stopped for driving 85 mph in a 25-mph zone. The officer, recognizing you, decides it would be politically prudent to issue just a warning in spite of the obvious criminal nature of your action. To avoid even the warning, you make a few phone calls, twist a few arms, and have the speed limit changed to 85. When the average person complains of the special treatment you received, you enlist the aid of people such as Carl Leubsdorf (syndicated columnist, March 27) who has, like our current president, obviously spent too much time in the Dallas sun.

Two basic precedents of American law are that everyone is equally subject to the rules of law, and that the law in effect at the time a crime is committed is the law that is applied.

When America’s government becomes so corrupt that even the basic precedents of law no longer apply, as Leubsdorf would have it, its greatness will no longer exist.

The rest of the world is, indeed, watching and laughing. The irony of telling American citizens that they should ignore the corruption because to take action might diminish America in the eyes of the world is rich. And America is all the poorer for it.

John Steele, Lewiston


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