Found items

I found this while cleaning up and had to re-type it.
It's a letter to the editor I sent to the Des Moines Register one month ago today.
It never made the cut.

"A recent Associated Press story printed in the Register amounts to yet another sparkling example of what is wrong with reporting these days.

'Serious and charming, Bush makes his case' by Jennifer Loven appeared in the March 23 edition.

Whether or not the President is charming is clearly an opinion and belongs on the opinion page, as does the rest of the poorly-worded story..

Worse, while our nation is embroiled in two wars which have never been declared by congress(War in Iraq, War on Terror), the author chooses to focus on Bush's 'plainspoken manner' while the President, 'alternately serious and joking, charming and disarming,' 'bantered with the residents, his shoulders bouncing up and down as they do when he's pleased with his own jokes.'

If only the reporter had informed us which way his hair was parted that day, what color his tie was and whether he showed those pearly white teeth when he smiled.

After all, it's not enough to know the President is charming.

We need to know just how charming he is, for national security reasons."

-mentalgongfu