Holiday newspaper causes sticker shock

To the editor:

Doing my husbandly duties this past Thanksgiving, I went out early to the store for a few forgotten dinner items and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. I was interested in the newspaper, while my wife was interested in the Black Friday advertisements.

I was shocked to find the newspaper had a $3 price, which is equal to the Sunday paper. I was expecting the usual 75-cent price for the weekday paper. Surely there was going to be a newspaper equal in content to the Sunday paper for that price.

After I returned home and delivered the grocery items, I proceeded to separate out the sale advertisements (in which I had little interest) so I could enjoy my newspaper. I was shocked to find my standard Thursday newspaper. It seems I – instead of the advertisers – had to pay for the advertisements in my paper, which seems totally backward.

I’m thinking I’ll let the wife browse Black Friday advertisements online in the future, which I think still does not incur any special added costs, and pass on my Thanksgiving Day Las Vegas Review-Journal.

LARRY MORALES

LAS VEGAS

Don’t advertisers pay?

To the editor:

I don’t think I’ve ever had someone try to charge me to receive advertising before. The $3 price on Thursday’s newspaper was ridiculous. I thought advertisers paid to get their ads to the consumer, not the other way around.

DAVID BLACK

LAS VEGAS

Editorial cartoons

To the editor:

First I eliminated my weekly subscription due to your rabid right-wing slant. Now I open my Sunday newspaper to find you have eliminated the collection of editorial cartoons on the back page of the Viewpoints section. Are you trying to get me to drop my Sunday-only subscription as well?

NANCY MENZEL

LAS VEGAS

Work card

To the editor:

It’s unbelievable that an individual needing a work card to obtain a job at 7-Eleven should have to go before a City Council for its approval. ("Worker bares her soul for job," Friday Review-Journal.) Can anyone say "Draconian"?

In a city that claims to be on top of the progressive heap, nothing smacks more of a Dark Age mentality than this. If I were a person trying to get my life back on track, I’d sure think twice before attempting to pursue my dream if it required parading my past history, soiled linens and all, in front of elected officials plus a televised audience, waiting for either a reprieve or a tumbrel.

Why does everything, nowadays, need to become yet another mortifying reality TV show?

PEGGY BOONE

FORT MOHAVE, ARIZ.

Marijuana editorial

To the editor:

Your recent (Nov. 14) thoughtful and courageous editorial support of our constitutional right to safe and legal access to medical marijuana is very timely. Our law firm is currently engaged in the Nevada Supreme Court’s review of former District Judge Donald Mosley’s order declaring the current enforcement statute unconstitutional.

The current law is a mess. The challenged law has been enforced to prevent safe and legal access to pharmaceutical-grade medicine. It has been used to prosecute and imprison those honestly attempting to provide access to patients with legitimate prescriptions. There is no legal way to get medical marijuana in Nevada, even though our Constitution supposedly grants this right.

Our constitutional amendment was ratified 12 years ago by a supermajority of Nevada voters. Meanwhile, those with serious health conditions and chronic pain have been forced to go without relief, turn to the illegal black market or seek pain management from other highly addictive prescription medications.

Something must be done. Cartels and organized crime have been the only beneficiaries to the current state of legal confusion. Thank you for speaking up.

GARY A. MODAFFERI

LAS VEGAS

The writer is an attorney with Turco, Modafferi and Draskovich, LLP.

Right to secede

To the editor:

Two letters in your Friday edition illustrate the massive ignorance and self-righteous denial that surround the issue of secession.

Secession is a natural right of all human beings. It simply means: "I no longer care to continue my association with you and will now take my leave." To outlaw secession is to perpetuate its opposite, which is involuntary servitude.

In the geopolitical arena, provisions for secession must be made or trouble erupts. The fact that the U.S. Constitution fails to so provide is the great shortcoming of that document. The unfortunate events at Appamatox Courthouse did not resolve the issue but merely put it on indefinite hold.

To argue, as did one letter writer, that good things could not be had unless secession was repressed, is ludicrous. Human beings are quite capable of cooperative, productive endeavor without being confined to a statist plantation. In fact, the net effect of statism has always been to retard the good, not advance it.

Even more amusing was the blustering of the other letter writer who wanted all us modern-day Johnny Rebs prosecuted for treason. I will worry about that opinion if and when it ever comes from people who could raise a blemish on Uncle Billy Sherman’s posterior.

Those who cannot stand dissenting opinions have power in some countries, but not in the U.S.A. That is because in the second place we have the First Amendment, and in the first place we have the Second Amendment.

DAVE HANLEY

LAS VEGAS

Leftists

To the editor:

The Nov. 21 letter to the editor from Mary Viscuglia has left me laughing. This left-wing nut Daniel Olivier should not get Ms. Viscuglia down. Mr. Olivier is only writing what most of the Left thinks in Las Vegas.

She is right on about the direction of your newspaper, but the decline to the left has been coming for much longer than three years. I’m amazed that your newspaper covers for the Greenspun family and the Sun. The Sun has a complete paper with no advertisement, and you continue to give it legs. If the Sun can’t produce a newspaper by itself in this left-wing town, why do you fuel it?

Columnist Steve Sebelius is the real turn to the left for your newspaper, and Mr. Olivier gets his kooky letters printed time to time to keep the Left happy. The comics are still good, and you keep feeding me with the 2-for-1 coupons, and I can still laugh at the wacko articles both in the Sun and the Review-Journal.

DAVE MESKER

LAS VEGAS