Donald Trump arrives for the State of the Union address on Jan. 30, 2018 .Win McNamee/Getty Images
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State of the neighbour
Re Trump Casts First Term In Optimistic Light (Jan. 31): Any disappointment I had that clouds would obscure the lunar eclipse were instantly extinguished by the spectacular conjunction of President Donald Trump's State of the Union speech on CNN and a documentary about North Korea's Kim Jong-un on PBS.
What fun: When I tired of the frenzied ululations of GOP Freedom Caucus members, I could flip to the worshipful waves of applause of thousands of Communist Party comrades. When overwhelmed by rapturous paeans to The American People, there were baroque declarations of fealty to the The Great Leader.
There were winners and losers on both sides.
The bombastic promises to build a wall to defend the U.S. against teeming hordes of aliens were pretty boring – compared to the frisson of seeing a pair of disciplined female assassins dispatch Mr. Kim's troublesome half brother with a hankie-full of the world's most potent nerve gas, right in the middle of the Kuala Lumpur airport.
Then there's the weirdo hairdos. That made me think that the two sides should consider friendly exchange visits by their hair stylists as an overture to world peace.
Greg Michalenko, Waterloo, Ont.
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Trial by jury
Re Jury Selection Is Efficient, But It's Not Fair (Jan. 31): I practised criminal law for 40 years and carried out numerous jury trials.
Legislation by the Harper government largely removed the right to a jury trial, limiting it to the most serious of charges. This is unfortunate, since the jury is our greatest protection as citizens. Judges are human and embody all the frailties which being human implies. It isn't hard to get one prejudiced, unfair or legally ignorant person onto the bench, but it is almost impossible to get 12 such people onto a jury. Juries are consistent in the attention which they pay to the evidence and tend to be scrupulously fair.
The jury wasn't designed: It is the result of hundreds of years of trial and error. Challenges, both peremptory and for cause, exist because they help secure a fair hearing for the accused person. Can anyone realistically criticize the defence in the Gerald Stanley case for believing that an Indigenous juror might vote based on his or her background of prejudice and abuse by men who looked like the accused, rather than on the evidence?
It is an exciting news bite to publicize and criticize an all-white jury in a murder trial for killing an Indigenous person, but breaking up a system which works better than any other ever invented over an unfortunate visual in a single case would be tragic.
D. Bruce McChesney, Newmarket, Ont.
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If a similar case involved a charge of murdering a young Jewish lad and the defence lawyers challenged every Jewish person on the jury panel, there would be only one word to describe their conduct.
Craig Charbonneau Fontaine, Sagkeeng First Nation, Pine Falls, Man.
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Self-destruct tactics
Re Ontario PC Interim Leader Orders Probe Of New Party Memberships During Brown's Reign (Jan. 31): The Ontario Progressive Conservative Party is looking like Donald Trump's White House staff these days. That is, madly off in all directions, to borrow an apt cliché.
The party's latest self-destruct foible is its interim leader calling for an investigation into how on Earth it managed to attract so many new members.
Actually, considering the past week's string of farcical follies, that's probably a fair question to ask. The Ontario Tories are at least showing us that they're flexible. They seem to be bending over backward to step on Tory toes, both in their caucus and among supporters, thus giving affront while stabbing themselves in the back.
Ken DeLuca, Arnprior, Ont.
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She's a great GP
Re The Feminization Of Medicine: Does It Matter? (Jan. 30): Thirty years ago, I had a conversation with my then-GP who was on the verge of retiring. Reflecting on the future of medicine, he predicted that an increasing number of women entering the field would result in a much-diminished Canadian medical system, one which would ultimately look more like that of the then Soviet Union.
In his opinion, the feminization of the medical profession would result in a lowering of both the status enjoyed by doctors and the standards expected by the public, leading in turn to a lowering of salaries and an erosion of the overall quality of those choosing to enter the field.
(I suspect this view still persists today in the minds of the older generation of doctors and medical administrators – perhaps even among members of the public.)
Needless to say, after this rather unsettling conversation, I left the practice and eventually found a wonderful new family doctor. To this day, I count myself lucky to be her patient!
Sally Cochrane, Toronto
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Hardest hit by trade
Re Progressive Trade: Myths And Reality (editorial Jan. 27): I agree that governments must drop palliative rhetoric and face reality. Global trade is not going away. Economic progress is unavoidably tied to it, so it is imperative that we legislate ways to accommodate those hardest hit by its measures if we are to avoid populist reactions such as a Brexit or a Donald Trump.
Income support during retraining and/or universal basic income must be considered.
The time to act is now.
Margarida Krause, Guelph, Ont.
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Dems aren't dead
Re Democrats Flail While Trump Flounders (Jan. 30): At a moment when the Republicans are abasing, disgracing and prostituting themselves, and possibly abetting the subversion of American democracy by a hostile power, Clifford Orwin focuses on the deficiencies of the Democrats.
Agreed: The Democratic Party needs new leadership. But its shortcomings are almost beside the point relative to the other party's abject willingness to do the bidding of the stable genius currently in the White House.
Ronald Beiner, political science professor, University of Toronto
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University of Toronto political science professor Clifford Orwin says the Democrats are going nowhere because of their lacklustre leadership and the dearth of plausible presidential candidates for 2020.
There are several very attractive potential candidates who are currently testing the waters. These include Rep. Adam Schiff, senators Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Corey Booker, and Kamala Harris.
I think the death announcement for the Dems is premature.
Manuel Matas, Winnipeg