Liberals

WASHINGTON - An experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis has caused death, strokes, nerve damage and abdominal bleeding and has no proven benefits for sufferers of the disease, the Food and Drug Administration warned Thursday. Known as liberation therapy, the treatment targets chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency - or CCSVI - a narrowing of the veins in the head and neck. It involves inserting balloons or stents into veins to widen them in an attempt to relieve the symptoms of MS. The FDA received reports in 2011 of a patient who died from bleeding in the brain after undergoing the treatment and another who was left permanently paralyzed by a stroke.

Re "A tale of two narratives," Opinion, May 6 Historian Joseph J. Ellis writes that conservatives were the central feature of the founding of the United States. But using the dictionary definition of "liberals" as being open to change and reform, it's obvious the opposite is true. The conservatives of 1776 were loyalists who fought with the British. The French, Russian and American revolutions were all the work of liberals to escape oppressive governments and to start new, democratic systems.

As the Supreme Court begins its new term Monday, its sixth with John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice, the reality is that this is the most conservative court since the mid-1930s. Since Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, conservatives have sought to change constitutional law, and they have succeeded in virtually every area. During the first years of the Roberts court, it has consistently ruled in favor of corporate power, such as in holding that corporations have the 1st Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts in independent political campaigns.

WASHINGTON - An experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis has caused death, strokes, nerve damage and abdominal bleeding and has no proven benefits for sufferers of the disease, the Food and Drug Administration warned Thursday. Known as liberation therapy, the treatment targets chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency - or CCSVI - a narrowing of the veins in the head and neck. It involves inserting balloons or stents into veins to widen them in an attempt to relieve the symptoms of MS. The FDA received reports in 2011 of a patient who died from bleeding in the brain after undergoing the treatment and another who was left permanently paralyzed by a stroke.

A few years ago Ann Coulter published a book titled "How to Talk to Liberal (If You Must). " With all due respect, Coulter, one of my favorite conservative eye-pokers, was wrong. There is no "how" in talking to a liberal. You can't talk to a liberal, period. Believe me, I've tried. I've got a liberal mother, four liberal siblings and their assorted liberal offspring, and a horde of liberal friends (I went to college and grad school). Whenever I advance to them even the mildest of challenges to liberal orthodoxies, on topics ranging from the welfare state to illegal immigration to abortion, I'm greeted with name-calling, obscenities, shout-overs and, finally, the grave-like silence of ostracism.

I recently played poker with a bunch of Republicans. My husband and I, both bleeding-heart liberals, are part owners of a cabin in the Sierra outside Fresno, a very conservative area. The Camp Sierra Assn. president has an annual poker game, and this year we, the newcomers, were invited. No one mentioned politics. We talked instead about our kids and Las Vegas and the odd warm weather. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of very good Scotch. I had fun even though I lost $4. When the game was over, we walked home with our across-the-road neighbors and invited them in for a final nightcap.

Again we have letters panning George Bush's "caring conservative" position on the death penalty (letters, April 16). Let's see. Liberals think that caring is protecting murderers. Gov. Bush thinks caring is protecting good citizens from murderers. But liberals think they're the compassionate ones. Liberal logic is something to behold. JOHN HAMAKER Laguna Niguel

For months, anxious Democrats have been asking why Barack Obama couldn't be more like Bill Clinton, their last successful president. Now Obama has gone and done something Clintonian by striking a compromise with Republicans to extend high-income tax cuts, and his own party's liberals are furiously accusing him of betraying their ideals. That should come as no great surprise. Liberals often accused Clinton of the same sin ? a bit of history many Democrats appear to have forgotten.

In 1996, Milos Forman directed "The People vs. Larry Flynt," the propagandistic film that made a "1st Amendment hero" out of the publisher of Hustler, a racist and filthy porn magazine. And yet Frank Rich of the New York Times dubbed it "the most timely and patriotic movie of the year." Even if you've never seen the movie (or read Hanna Rosin's contemporaneous debunking of it in the New Republic), it's easy to guess why the film was a favorite of people like Rich.

Liberal Democrats, part of President Obama’s core backers, continue to be unhappy with the president, according to the Gallup tracking poll released Thursday. The poll shows that support among liberal Democrats has dipped to 79%, the first time it has fallen below 80%, according to Gallup. A week before the midterm elections, Obama stood at 88% with those who called themselves liberals. The biggest blow to Obama’s liberal standing was his negotiation with Republicans that led to an agreement to extend the Bush-era tax cuts.

The most famous speech in American history begins this way: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. " Lincoln's eloquence at Gettysburg was lyrical but not historically accurate. For no such thing as a "new nation" had been proposed in 1776; only a temporary union of sovereign states, declaring their independence from Britain, then presumably going their separate ways.

Mitt Romney, who has long staked his presidential bid on his business experience, painted a rosy picture of his definition of a successful economy on Friday, arguing that the unemployment rate should be cheered only if it is below 4%, and arguing that half a million new jobs should be created every month in a true economic recovery. Those sorts of economic conditions have rarely existed in recent American history. But when Romney made his remarks in response to a new jobs report that unemployment had dipped to 8.1% and the economy added 115,000 jobs last month, they were just the latest chapter in the harsh critique that Romney has hammered throughout the campaign.

Harun Mehmedinovic remembers the hungry wild dogs clawing through the snow, trying to get to frozen bodies of victims of the siege of Sarajevo. He was 10 years old. The Bosnian war was in its second year. Less than 15 years later, the war was over, and Mehmedinovic had graduated from UCLA film school and earned a master's degree from the American Film Institute, where he wrote and directed his thesis film, "In the Name of the Son. " The 25-minute short helped the young filmmaker become the first student in AFI's history to win both its top directing prizes, the Franklin J. Schaffner Fellow Award and the Richard P. Rogers Spirit of Excellence Award.

Claremont McKenna College's exaggeration of its freshmen's SAT scores and high school rankings turned out to be so small that it had no effect on the school's position in U.S. News & World Report rankings this year, magazine officials said Thursday. As a result, the Southern California school will keep its position as the ninth-best liberal arts college in the country in this year's "Best Colleges" listings. The magazine reviewed that ranking using more accurate and reliable statistics uncovered recently by a law firm hired by the college to investigate the scandal.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Supreme Court justices strongly suggested they would uphold a provision in Arizona's tough immigration law that tells police to check whether people they stop for some other reason are in this country legally. But several justices also suggested they were troubled by parts of the law that would make it a state crime for illegal immigrants to seek work or not to carry immigration documents. The hourlong oral arguments Wednesday pointed toward a possible split decision: a partial victory for Arizona that would revive its first-in-the-nation state crackdown on illegal immigrants but weaken the impact of its law. The Obama administration won lower court rulings that blocked Arizona's law on the grounds that it conflicted with the federal government's control over immigration.

BEIJING — China has widened the daily trading range for the yuan in another small step to liberalize its currency. The move, effective Monday, allows the yuan to rise or fall in a single day as much as 1%, double the previous limit. The effort signals a willingness by China to allow its currency to move with market forces. That could help appease trading partners who have long accused Beijing of keeping the yuan artificially weak to give its exporters an advantage over foreign competitors.

Liberals, the small but often important electoral group, seem to be holding fast in their support for President Obama, according to the latest Gallup poll being circulated by Democrats. In an email to reporters Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee highlighted the poll, buried earlier this week under the crush of reporting about the debt-ceiling crisis. The poll comes amid growing media reports that liberals are becoming disenchanted with Obama, especially after what they see as the president's caving in to Republicans in the debt-limit negotiations.

CAIRO - The Muslim Brotherhood chose a religiously conservative businessman as its presidential candidate Saturday, a provocative move expected to upset liberals and deepen the ruling military's suspicion over the growing political power of Islamists in Egypt. Khairat Shater, who was jailed for years under former President Hosni Mubarak, was selected after weeks of debate over whether the organization should field a candidate in the May election. The Brotherhood, which controls the parliament, had long promised not to run a contender to allay public fear that Islamists would dominate the government.

My column this week looked at City Councilman Eric Garcetti and posed a question that I hear a lot: Is he tough enough to be mayor? He argued that he is, and I laid out both the question and his answer. Responding, a number of readers went in a different direction, asking instead whether he's liberal enough or Latino enough or capable enough to hold that office. Interestingly, readers who emailed me directly seemed to like Garcetti. One said she had known Garcetti and his father -- former Dist.