Response to Hypocritical ‘Speak Out’
Editor,
One of your anonymous contributors had a very hypocritical submission to Speak Out [in “The Paper”] on Sept. 17.
Under the guise of accusing David Kolbe of hypocrisy, the writer exposed his own ignorance and hypocrisy. The proposition was that complaining about candidate Nisly having an open source to a government website operated by his wife was somehow wrong, because the Obama administration’s NSA intercepts private calls and emails and somehow a candidate for the state legislature should be equally critical of the federal government as of Nisly.
First, of course, the NSA intercepts and the Patriot Act were created under the administration of George W Bush. Unfortunately Obama’s administration has continued the unconstitutional activities.
But the writer clearly did not inquire as to Mr. Kolbe’s views on this, instead wrongly assuming he was somehow in favor, apparently because he is running as a Democrat.
And of course, the existence of two wrongs – Nisly and the NSA – does not make a logical argument for hypocrisy, and demonstrates the writer’s lack of comprehension of basic logic.
If you had bothered to ask Mr. Kolbe, you would have known that as a former prosecutor and as a legal scholar, he understands the concept of probable cause, and views the NSA activities as overly broad and invasive of privacy, as do many others.
If anonymous writers are going to be running dogs for the Nisly campaign, at least they should stick to both facts and proper logic in their efforts.
As a citizen, I also have a reasonable expectation that when I access a government website my information will not be freely accessible to a partisan political candidate. I believe every right thinking citizen would agree.
Richard K. Helm
Warsaw