“Jury nullification” doesn’t mean what you seem to think it does. Please look it up before you make a fool of yourself again misusing the term in another column.

I wonder if you were present for Casey Anthony’s entire trial, or watched the whole thing on video, or read the transcript. If not, I’m not sure why you think you are in a position to second-guess the decision of the jury.

Your claim that the jury’s verdict is a lie and makes no sense is bunk and is incredibly disrespectful to the jurors who did their civil duty, put their lives on hold, experienced the trauma of sitting on this jury through this trial, and did their best to render a just verdict.

I often agree with your columns and usually find them to be leaps and bounds better than those of some of your clearly mentally disadvantaged colleagues, but I despise when pundits and talking heads use sensationalistic, inflammatory language to question the verdict of a properly empaneled jury based only on a tiny, biased subset of the trial testimony, i.e., the skewed mishmash reported in the media.

Please stick to the well-reasoned, well-supported, well-articulated columns you are so good at, and leave the lurid, yellow journalism to your colleagues who can’t write anything else.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kamens

What a relief to see our elected officials finally getting tough on the aid recipients who spent 0.002% of last year’s welfare funds on underwear (“Pol gets tough on welfare abuse“, Feb. 15).

How dare these women buy high-quality, inexpensive undergarments from Victoria’s Secret? Wal-Mart should be perfectly fine for poor people. Or maybe they should make do without underwear; if beggars wandering the streets half-naked in rags was good enough for our ancestors, it should be good enough for us.

It’s even more outrageous that some of these women are shopping at outlet stores. If they’re going to use taxpayer money on underwear, the least they could do is pay full price.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kamens

(Simulblogged.)

To the editor:

It is infuriating to see rich people, who can afford to give back their imaginary “profits” from Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, whining about the actions of Irving Picard, the trustee for Bernie Madoff’s defunct firm.

As the Herald noted, Picard isn’t suing people who can’t afford to give the money back. In contrast, many of the victims for whom Picard is trying to recover assets were literally impoverished by Madoff.

Any profits withdrawn by Madoff’s “investors” were fraudulent. As the trustee for Madoff’s defunct firm, Picard is required by law to do everything in his power to recover those profits to help other victims. Blaming Picard for what he is doing is as absurd as blaming the police for recovering a stolen car and returning it to its rightful owner.

Picard is even permitted to sue investors for more than just their profit if they knew or should have known that it was a scam. Plenty of the people Picard is suing are sufficiently savvy that they should have known something was fishy. Rather than complaining, they should be happy that they, unlike most of the victims, got back their initial stake, and that Picard isn’t suing them for more.

Jonathan Kamens
Brighton

My wife would say that they took out the last paragraph because I tried to make two points in my letter instead of just one, and removing the second point makes the first one stronger. I suppose she’s right. But I can’t fathom why they added the extra “Bernie” in the first paragraph.

Two articles in a row in the Boston Herald mentioned that the authorities were investigating how the twins drowned despite the fact that the pool had a cover.

There seems to be a widespread misconception, which the Herald articles exacerbate, that pool covers are a safety device. In my letter in today’s Herald, I tried to set the record straight:

Safety hazard

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

“I don’t want to take away licenses from able-bodied people or force them to go through a driver’s test,” he said.  What the Legislature did, he said, is “fine.”

Hey Tim… The point of road tests for the elderly people would be to figure out which people are not “able-bodied.”  Anybody who can look at the string of completely avoidable accidents involving elderly drivers and think that this isn’t necessary is a moron.  I don’t vote for morons.

A loser’s game

The condition of our economy proves the absurdity of John Stossel’s argument that gambling should be legal because, “People are responsible for the consequences of their bad habits” (“Is it your choice to gamble? You betcha!” May 14). We’re digging ourselves out of the worst recession since 1929 because people took out mortgages they couldn’t afford. It’s costing us trillions of dollars to clean up from their “bad habits.”

Whether it’s Keno, a slots hall or a casino, any gambling establishment is a blight on the community, one that hurts those who patronize it and everyone else.

- Jonathan Kamens, Brighton

Here’s what I sent them:

Gambling not a victimless vice

To the editor:

John Stossel argues that gambling should be legal because, “People are responsible for the consequences of their bad habits.”

The condition of our economy proves the absurdity of that argument. We’re digging ourselves out of the worst recession since 1929 because people took out mortgages they couldn’t afford. It’s costing us trillions of dollars to clean up from their “bad habits.”

The spa down the street from my house has a dedicated keno room. I see people who clearly cannot afford it sitting in that room gambling for hours at a time. Many of them are entirely disreputable, the kind of people who provide a market for the wall full of seedy porn magazines the spa recently added. Whether it’s a keno room, a slots hall or a casino, any gambling establishment is a blight on the community, one that hurts the people who patronize it and everyone else.

– Jonathan Kamens, Brighton

Interestingly, I got email this morning from the executive director of Stop Predatory Gambling, thanking me for my letter and describing it as “right on the mark.”  I wonder how he found out about it so quickly.

To the editor:

Jonah Goldberg’s recent suggestion that severe winter weather disproves global warning shows an alarming ignorance of basic science. In particular:

• When the air is warmer, more water evaporates into it.
• When there is more water in the air, it snows more.
• Once you get below freezing, colder temperatures actually decrease snowfall.

In short, the simple truth is that global warming causes more snow, not less.

Of course, ideologues like Goldberg rarely let something as inconvenient as the truth stand in the way of their agenda.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kamens
Brighton

Not only did the Herald not print my letter or any other letter or opinion piece making a similar point, they have run at least two idiotic editorial cartoons mocking the idea that more snow supports global warming theories.  Here’s one of them (I couldn’t find on-line the other one I know about; maybe Holbert decided it wasn’t his best work and took it down):

It’s so nice to see the Herald pandering to the segment of the American public that is too stupid to think through the basic science enough to realize that this argument is bunk.

Perhaps the reason why the Herald‘s editorial staff continues to promulgate this theory is because they fall into that segment of the American public themselves.

Interestingly, the very same day Jonah Goldberg’s column was printed in the Herald, Time magazine ran an article explaining in detail, with quotes and citations from experts in the field, exactly what I explained in my letter to the editor.

To the editor:

I enjoyed Joe Fitzgerald’s recent satire of the pro-life movement. I laughed so hard coffee came out my nose when I read that “the only choice [the pro-choice movement] will tolerate is its own.” It was obvious that he was joking, since it’s so patently absurd to suggest that people protecting a woman’s right to choose are trying to deny her a choice.

Wait, what’s that? He was serious? Are you sure? Oh, in that case, never mind.

Fitzgerald is right that pro-choice extremists sometimes say stupid things, but I’ll take them over the extremists on the other side who think it’s God’s work to assassinate doctors performing legal medical procedures.

Jonathan Kamens, Brighton

Good citizenship taught

The school my wife and I chose for our children stands out dramatically because the students, faculty and parents are nice to each other and happy to be there. This does not happen by chance; it is the result of a consciously designed, constantly maintained culture which emphasizes respect and empathy as the community’s most precious values.

That culture could not possibly be achieved through punishment and discipline. Rather, good citizenship is an essential component of the curriculum, in every class and every grade.

And therein lies the solution to bullying. Schools cannot merely teach our children not to be bad; we must teach them to be good.

Jonathan Kamens, Brighton

Here’s what I originally sent them:

Standing up to bullies is not enough

The terrible tragedy of Phoebe Prince’s suicide, following months of relentless bullying by other students, has triggered yet another wave of calls for schools to enforce strict anti-bullying policies. Such policies are important, but if they were enough, then the bullying problem would have been eliminated long ago. Bullying is the symptom, not the disease, and the time for stronger medicine is long overdue.

When bullying is pushed into the spotlight, it is always because of a tragedy. The rarity of these leads us to believe that the bullying which caused them is also rare, a belief to which we cling because it absolves us of communal responsibility. But in fact, bullying and meanness have become the norm: a 2001 study estimated that 30% of students in the U.S. were involved in bullying.

The academic subjects taught in school are intended to give our children the skills and knowledge they need to grow into happy, successful adults. Respectful, polite, and thoughtful behavior, which in our parents’ day was referred to as “good citizenship,” is just as critical as reading, writing or arithmetic, and it, too, needs to be taught continuously.

The school my wife and I chose for our children stands out dramatically from the others because the students, faculty, and even the other parents are nice to each other and happy to be there. This does not happen by chance. Rather, it is the result of a consciously designed, constantly maintained culture which emphasizes respect and empathy as the community’s most precious values.

That culture could not possibly be achieved through punishment and discipline. Rather, good citizenship is an essential component of the curriculum, in every class and every grade.

And therein lies the solution to the bullying problem. Our schools cannot merely teach our children not to be bad; we must teach them to be good.

To the editor:

On Dec. 10, Joe Fitzgerald wrote about Irina Koltoniuc, his favorite Christmas-loving Jew, for the sixth time (“Jewish immigrant champions Christmas”).  Does he keep writing about the same woman because he’s too lazy to find someone else, or because he can’t find any other Jews willing to talk about how nice it is to have a religion they do not believe in shoved down their throats?

We can talk about the “conspiracy against Christianity” when Fitzgerald can write about a public school system which marks Christian kids with unexcused absences for observing their holidays, which is what the Boston Public Schools did to to a student recently for the Jewish holidays, or a city soccer league which prevents Christian kids from playing by scheduling all of its games on Sunday morning, as opposed to the all-Saturday-morning schedule which kept me out of the league.  And when was the last time Fitzgerald was unable to attend the Herald’s holiday party because he had to go to Mass?  To the detriment of my career, I will (once again) this year be missing my employer’s Friday-night party.

There is no “conspiracy against Christianity” in this country. There is, rather, a long overdue recognition that it’s not nice for the majority religion in this country to impose itself on everyone else.  Unfortunately, there’s a long way to go before non-Christians will truly be treated equally in the public sphere.  Maybe Fitzgerald should write about that.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Kamens

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