Clarify

Criticism of the expansion of Medicare benefits that went into effect Jan. 1 rages on. Thousands of senior Americans are besieging both the House and Senate with appeals to amend or set aside the so-called catastrophic coverage and other benefits now being phased into Medicare. But we have reviewed the changes again, and we think it would be a serious mistake to abandon the program. Most of the controversy focuses on the fact that catastrophic coverage is financed by premiums and tax surcharges paid by the beneficiaries themselves.

To the Editor: Your review of "Contested Memories" ["Poles and Jews: Troubled History," Jan. 18] contained so much misinformation one doesn't know where to start. But the statement that "95% of ethnic Poles ... survived the war" is plain wrong. So, too, is the false assertion that your reviewer's figures are accepted "by all historians." Official estimates for wartime deaths among Poland's multinational population mention 3 million Jews and slightly more than 3 million Poles.

The 2nd Amendment's "right to keep and bear arms" is proving to be a right to keep a gun at home, but so far not a right to bear a loaded firearm in public. The Supreme Court breathed new life into the amendment when it struck down strict handgun bans in Washington and Chicago and spoke of the "inherent right of self-defense. " But to the dismay of gun rights advocates, judges in recent months have read those decisions narrowly and rejected claims from those who said they had a constitutional right to carry a loaded gun on their person or in their car. Instead, these judges from California to Maryland have said the "core right" to a gun is limited to the home.

Indian gambling has brought long-needed financial gains to Native American tribes as well as a measure of painful internal strife. In California, reservations where dilapidated mobile homes once dominated the landscape are now dotted with attractive new housing developments, playgrounds, and community, health and fitness centers. At the same time, according to academics and other experts on tribal affairs, gambling wealth has given new impetus to the disenrollment of thousands of California's Native Americans from their tribes by others who want to maximize their share of the money.

Employers are frequently using monitoring software to make their employees more productive at work, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, part of a series about the "Tougher Workplace. " Although the Constitution speaks of a "reasonable" expectation of privacy, this is largely not applicable at private employers. Courts are still sifting through the changes that technology has caused in the workplace and figuring out what employers can and can't do. The exchange below aims to help clarify some issues.

About 10 years after the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in August, 1968, which put an end to the "Prague Spring" that symbolized the Czechoslovak political liberalization, a special bibliography published in the United States listed more than 600 books and articles devoted to Czechoslovakia.