A response to a letter from Art Sandford (see "Letters"):
Art - you're back! I'm glad to see you haven't lost your funny side.
I was glad to learn that the Lampoon (Harvard's liberal magazine) actually survives; tired humor needs a dignified place to die.

But I must admit, since reading "The Breakdown of Higher Education" by John M. Ellis, (Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German Literature at U.C. Santa Cruz) Dean of Graduate Division (1977-86), author of 10 books, awarded Peter Shaw Memorial Award by National Assn. of Scholars; founded Assn. of Literary Scholars and Critics in 1993, President of California Association of Scholars in 2007-13, chairman of board since then,...) I'm no longer impressed with Harvard or the rest of the Ivies - except in science.

Art - say you didn't go there! This extraordinary little book speaks from decades of experience: "Frank Furedi reports on a survey published by the Harvard Crimson which found that "’around two -thirds of students who were surveyed had at some point chosen not to express an opinion in an academic setting out of fear that would offend others.’" "Students often report that particular courses require them to sit through their instructors' endless political rants and learn to regurgitate harebrained political beliefs in order to pass a course, something that should make any genuine academic despair." Quickly: 2016 study, found of 7,243professors, 3,623 were registered Democratic and 314 Republican, for D:R ratio of 11.5:I. Also: "...alarming evidence that the faculty hired in recent decades were doing a poor job of educating their students. Employers were finding recent college graduates to be much less able to write and reason than their predecessors, and tests in general knowledge found them abysmally ignorant of their country's history and institutions." And "...as to intellectual flexibility, it is difficult to deny that few people are less intellectually open, flexible, and curious than a radical leftist."

Dr. Ellis' book is so enlightening, Art, that I will provide it to you gratis if you will consent to a short quiz after reading it.
The Gazette may be "little known," Art, but we are known to you, a Fillmore elite, and that is sufficient recognition for me. However, "a mouthpiece for Spiny Soros" and sons? Hardley. I reserve a special vocabulary to define him, requiring a content warning.
That "last straw" was written with you and your fellow travelers in mind, Art. Rumors were circulating about you possibly secreting a copy of the great man's masterpiece, "The Art of the Deal" under your pillow. Fake news, no doubt.
"Publisher Doug" mistakenly "laments the demise of his magazine." As a friend you might tell him to switch from CNN to FOX to hear the truth, that reports of the Lampoon's death have been greatly exaggerated.
My thanks for your letter, Art. They always enliven our opinion page.

A response to Kelly Scoles' letter:
I've lived about 82 years of my 84 having heard nothing about "Juneteenth." There's a good reason for that - it has never been celebrated nationally; for another good reason, news (slavery has ended) was received by most cities and towns in America with the speed of the telegraph. By 1865 the International Telecommunication Union was formed, and in 1866 a new transatlantic telegraph cable between North America and Europe was successfully completed. The Civil War caused the telegraph to spread all over the eastern and southern U.S. The telegraph was invented by Samuel Morse in 1844. "During the war, 15,000 miles of telegraph cable was laid purely for military purposes."
The news of the end of slavery was broadcast across the world in 1865 (even by undersea cable). Did every town need to declare a separate Independence Day upon hearing the news? Of course not. We celebrate July 4th as Independence Day, in unity, for the entire country. Excuse the "S" word, but this new national holiday is a stupid idea.
A little more credit should be given to those 600,000 men who gave their lives to forcefully end slavery. The world's greatest empire, England, ended slavery by simply signing a document. "It became illegal to purchase enslaved people directly from Africa under the Abolition Act 1807. However, the condition of slavery remained legal in the British Caribbean until 1834, when the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 came into force." But the white North declared war on the southern white South to force abolition. So, the Brits halted slavery 25-years earlier than Americans, but they did it without the death of 600,000 men in four years of war. Big difference! The Civil War was our bloodiest by far. It makes sense to celebrate those who died to end slavery. It makes no sense to celebrate one group who first happened to hear of the victory. The so-called Juneteenth national holiday makes a mockery of our Independence Day, diminishing those buried in Arlington Cemetery.
Joe Biden's establishment of this odd holiday is redundant, idiotic, and disrespectful.

What I really wanted to write about this week was our deadliest enemy, China, and its most recent threat to establish a military base in Cuba. Thanks to the brilliant fiasco of the Bay of Pigs fight, April 1961, by some 1,500 Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro (take a bow CIA), that cancer only grew. Are we beginning to see the checkmate we are drifting into with China? China is on a deadly, aggressive spree. Remember the Monroe Doctrine? This looks like a job for our senile Commander in Chief, Biden, shaky US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and our Woke Bozo Brothers, General Mark Milley and Secretary of Defense, Lloyd J. Austin III. But let us not forget our Space Force. "In a significant milestone for the nation’s newest armed service, Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno became the first female officer to promote to three-star general and transfer into the U.S. Space Force during a ceremony at the Pentagon, Aug. 17."
Armagno will serve as the Director of Staff for Headquarters U.S. Space Force, where she will oversee day to day staff operations to include establishment activities for the new service. “We’re starting fresh. We’re starting a clean sheet,” Armagno said. “We’re going to be agile, we’re going to be nimble, and we’re going to bring the best of everything into the space force.”
Sounds to me like she really means to kick some ass! Hand me my old M1. They're going to need some help taking Havana!