Objectivity

Jim Murray, next time you decide to rip into a successful athletic program ["Nebraska Ought to Be Ashamed," Nov. 9], would you please try to be a little more objective? Nebraska has one of the highest graduation rates in Division I football and consistently has more academic All-Americans than other schools. Nebraska has a clean and respected program, despite what you may feel. While no Nebraska fan is completely comfortable with Lawrence Phillips' return, we would be even less comfortable with a program that refused to give a player a second chance and dumped him like a bag of trash.

Lynne Cheney's themes in her book "Telling the Truth," and her attack on the National History Standards could easily be turned to attack her own position ("Seeking the Truth and Nothing but the Truth," Oct. 25). She complains, "In the name of group politics, students are taught fantasy rather than fact. . . . Journalists have come to disdain objectivity [and] public figures have felt less and less constrained by reality." Perhaps Cheney can explain how it came to be that until recently we have celebrated a prosperity rooted historically in free enterprise for the dominant male WASP population, ignoring its roots in the abduction and subjugation of millions of Africans as chattel slaves, the "ethnic cleansing" of the indigenous inhabitants of our territory and the global despoliation of our planet's natural resources.

Re "Young Teachers Walk Thin Line," July 3: While providing a generally upbeat view of novice teachers at LAUSD middle and high schools, the article skirted some very serious issues about teacher responsibilities. There is no "thin line" between teachers and students; it's a chasm, and bridges can't be built through friendship. New teachers soon realize this when, near the end of the semester, they must give report cards to their students. Students earning a poor grade may -- and do feel -- betrayed by the person they thought was a "cool buddy."

Environmentalists objected Tuesday to a city report that concludes that potential hazards, such as underground methane gas, could be safely mitigated at the proposed Playa Vista development on the Westside. Despite the protests from a standing-room-only crowd, the Los Angeles City Council's Planning and Land Use Management Committee recommended the report be considered by the full council next week.

The words "arbitrary" and "capricious" are too kind to describe the Congressional Research Service's decision to fire Morris D. Davis, a retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Davis' offense was to speak and write on his own time about a subject on which he is an expert: flaws in the military commission system and the appropriate way to bring accused terrorists to justice. His dismissal reflects a decision by his employers to take a legitimate principle ?

Mark Fleisher's epiphany came during an episode of "Hill Street Blues." A balding, bespectacled anthropologist at Washington State University, Fleisher was in his eighth month of field work at the Lompoc Federal Penitentiary, serving as a corrections officer or "hack" to study morale among other "hacks." That day, he had spent nine hours investigating the stabbing murder of an inmate named Juan.

Rep. Henry Waxman's article (Commentary, Sept. 24) decries the Republicans' dastardly move to establish an imperial Congress. It may hurt him to do so, but I urge Waxman to take a good long look into the records of his party's 40-year majority in the Congress. If there is a modicum of objectivity in his appraisal, he might be unpleasantly surprised. One case in point could be the chairmanship of the House Whitewater hearings in last year's 103rd Congress by his Democrat compatriot, Rep. Henry Gonzales (D-Tex.

Re "The Times (heart) Bratton," Opinion, June 3 Former Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks stated that Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky "was hired by the police union to write a report on the Rampart scandal" as a means to discredit his critics' objectivity. In fact, then-Police Protective League President Ted Hunt and I asked then-USC Law School professor Chemerinsky if he would provide an independent analysis of the Rampart Board of Inquiry report issued by then-Chief Parks.