From the Star Tribune Letters Page

This is a sampling of letters from readers the Star Tribune considers fit to print (authors not shown) :

A little defensive

If not for Roger Moe and Tim Penny splitting the votes of real Minnesotans, Tim Pawlenty might be making coffee and answering phones at the Taxpayers League of Minnesota.

If "no new taxes" is a core value and part of "mainstream" Minnesota, why does the governor sound so defensive about it every time he mentions it in public?

I wonder where the governor keeps all those fake Minnesotans between elections? The letter writer apparently thinks that voting against the GOP is the sole critera for being a Minnesotan. It's crap like this that almost persuades me to join the Republican party.

On our National Day of Embarrassment, each of the president's three constituencies celebrated in its own way.

The Rich were much in evidence. Though they had to pay to party, they could be sure of a good return on the investment.

The Ideologues (apart from the vice president) stayed behind the scenes. With wars to plan and peoples to free, the whole globe is their inaugural ball.

The Gullible, whom the Rich and the Ideologues manipulated yet again, watched the festivities on TV -- admiring the rhetoric, coveting the gorgeous gowns and praying to God their children will not be sent to Iraq.

Note the contempt for people who voted for Bush. In the eyes of people like the letter writer one has to be evil or stupid to vote for Bush. This by the way, is the kind of letter that is more likely to appear on the letters page than the next one, which does a nice job of trashing a key part of the Stib's 1/20 editorial about Condoleezza Rice:

Beyond Boxer and WMD

I was embarrassed to watch Sen. Barbara Boxer in the hearings for Condoleezza Rice. Not only did she appear as a petulant, bloviating, spiteful partisan, but her command of the facts was extremely lacking. This was evident when she stated that the congressional vote for war was based solely on evidence of WMD.

She did this in order to portray Rice as a liar. Either Boxer doesn't understand exactly what she voted on or she is, in fact, the liar. The resolution actually cited at least seven reasons, separate and distinct from weapons of mass destruction:

• Iraq's harboring of Al-Qaida terrorists.

• Iraq's support for international terrorism.

• Iraq's "brutal repression" of its citizens.

• Iraq's failure to repatriate or give information on non-Iraqi citizens detained and captured during Gulf War I, including an American serviceman.

• Failing to properly return property wrongfully seized during the Kuwait invasion.

• The attempted assassination of former President Bush in 1993.

• America's national security interests in restoring peace and stability to the Persian Gulf.

The last was included in the interest of fairness. I don't want to create the impression that the Strib completely ignores those who write in disagreement with the Star Tribune's positions. One is just more likely to see letters like the first two.