Letters to the editor, Sept. 2, 2009

And so the Age of Camelot comes to an end
For those of us who watched the 1960s unfold as children, the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy is particularly poignant.
Whatever their political views or party affiliations, presidents and senatorial colleagues alike praised and respected that Sen. Kennedy’s passion for his causes always was tempered by a willingness to listen and compromise — qualities sorely lacking in the polarizing politicians and pundits of this decade. And if they did not always agree with the senator’s beliefs, they never questioned his commitment to whom President Andrew Jackson identified as “the humble members of society — the farmers, mechanics and laborers.”
At a time when questions over the concentration of power in the president (and vice president) have rocked this nation and its Constitution to the core, I offer King Arthur’s closing lines in Camelot in remembrance of the senator’s perseverance — even during his illness: “Thank you for saving Camelot. You have reminded us that a kingdom’s strength ? is not based on the strength of the king ? but the strength of the people.” 
The senator had promised in his concession speech at the 1980 Democratic presidential convention that his “? work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”
“By whom, now?” is a question that should haunt all of us in the coming days and months as public frustration simmers over perceived “haves” and “have-nots” in our troubled economy. Because if no one responds to this clarion call and average Americans lose faith they still can aspire to prosperity, what then?
I close by observing that
the senator’s eulogy in 1968 for his brother Robert has become his own best eulogy — that Edward Kennedy “? need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.”
Douglas Jensen
Sequim

Strike out
three stikes
Under our system of criminal justice, the punishment must fit the crime. Individuals should not be executed for burglarizing nor should they be incarcerated for life for committing relatively minor offenses, even if they commit them three times. This principal is known as “proportionality” and is expressed in the Eighth Amendment to the Bill of Rights. 
“Excessive bail shall not be required, not excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted.”
Many offenses considered “strikes” in our “three-strikes” law depart sharply from the proportionality rule.
This law encompasses a broad range of criminal conduct from murder down to minor attempted assault. It fails to take into consideration both mitigating and aggravating circumstances as well as the gravity of the situation. It renders our judges ineffective. It costs the taxpayers millions of dollars. It should be reformed.
Shirley White
Port Townsend