In response to letters critical of Councilman Stan Bogosian's idea to ask the Saratoga council to pass a resolution opposing war in Iraq, I would like to point out that our appointed president is the most arrogant and dangerous president in the history of our country. He has often stated his disdain for opposing views, and showed his contempt for the international community by his unilateral abrogation of the ABM treaty, the Kyoto accords and the Cairo agreements, and his refusal to send to the UNFPA the $34 million approved by a large majority of Congress (indicating, in addition, his contempt for that body).

In this country, he would require librarians and booksellers to report on patrons' reading habits, and now immigrants and visitors to this country have been thrown in jail without recourse to counsel or even notification of their kin.

A democracy is a tenuous thing; it takes very little to tip into tyranny. Apparently, the writers and councilpersons who opposed council debate on the war issue do not understand the danger of silencing opposition—the result could be far worse than anything posed by Iraq!

—Robert Wallace, Foothill Lane


Konnyu blasts Cohn, newspaper story

I read the Cohn running for state senate "lovefeast" served up in your Feb. 19 edition of the Saratoga News and immediately felt it necessary to respond. The majority of Saratogans are registered Republicans, so when you overpraise a poisonously partisan Democratic legislator such as Assemblywoman Rebecca Cohn, you irritate us deeply.

If you bothered to really examine this neophyte legislator you would know that the most famous act of her two-plus year legislative career was to carry the infamous Intuit bag bill. A bag bill is a money-for-law bill introduced to raise campaign donations for that member and her buddies. Cohn's bill would have stopped most California no-charge 540 EZ income tax filings by computer because the taxpayer would have been forced to buy Intuit's Turbotax or a like product. Cohn got caught by the Mercury News. As the Merc wrote on July 29, 2002, "She (Cohn) introduced the bill two weeks after Mountain View's Intuit, a tax preparation software company, gave $10,000 to a group of Democratic lawmakers that includes Cohn. Cohn denies an influence."

I served six years in the state Assembly and after I left for the U.S. Congress, three of those members I served with ended up in later years in prison for much the same thing that Cohn did.

Cohn, tabbed as a loose cannon by some Democrat insiders, also got caught in another conflict of interest problem by redrawing her own 24th Assembly district. She created a weird lobster shaped reapportionment that announces, "the heck with the Constitution-required common community standard." She dumped the Saratoga-like Republican areas of Monte Sereno, Los Gatos and Almaden that she represented in 2000­02 in favor of the heavily Democrat registered lobster arm left of Berryessa and lobster arm right of south-central, mostly ethnic Democrat San Jose. The irony in all this is that Cohn is now running to again represent in the state Senate the very people she rejected, namely the folks of Monte Sereno, Los Gatos and Almaden.

Cohn's voting record has been a disaster for taxpayers. Cohn received a bottom crawling 10 percent rating from the California Taxpayer's Association for her Assembly votes in 2002. And her negative record goes on and on and on.

I hope all voters, including Cohn supporters, take a second look at Cohn during the coming campaign and reject her for the Republican plurality state Senate seat 15 as I have. The state Senate is already 63 percent (25 of 40 seats) Democrat. The last thing the people of California need is another partisan unprincipled money-grubbing Democrat lawmaker.

—Ernest Konnyu, Former Member, California Assembly, DeHavilland Court