Tom Hayden

So Tom Hayden is leaving the Legislature (Commentary, Nov. 22). Marxism is dead in the Western world and moribund nearly every where else. Hayden had become an anachronism and will be little missed nor long remembered. DEVON SHOWLEY Cypress

For Lane Kiffin and USC, fallout from the Reggie Bush scandal continues to be a pain in the asterisk.… It's somehow apt that the Trojans were asked to return the Grantland Rice Trophy after being stripped of the 2004 Football Writers Assn. of America national championship.… Grantland Rice was the legendary early 20th century sportswriter who penned these famous words: "When the great scorer comes/to mark against your name/He'll write not 'won' or 'lost'/but how you played the game.

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson's calumny of Tom Hayden is divisive, since a majority of Americans opposed the Vietnam War. Does he think this majority is also traitorous? Would he also call Soviet citizens who oppose the Afghanistan war, "traitors?" Does he believe the U.S. should have stayed in Vietnam? RALPH MEYER Santa Monica

Beyond the pale Re "The hostility follies," Opinion, March 30 Jonah Goldberg may want to paint the hostility and foolishness of the present violent opposition to President Obama and his policies as the same as the "extremist rhetoric against Republicans for eight years," but c'mon. I was strongly opposed to President George W. Bush's illegal war, torture and roughshod walk over human rights, and his egregious plundering of surpluses. But nowhere did anyone (including me)

Nancy Hill-Holtzman's so-called candidate interview with Tom Hayden (Times, May 21) sounded more like an inquisition. Maybe Ms. Hill-Holtzman thinks she writes for the Enquirer. I wonder how your paper and its readers would view a male reporter who asked a woman candidate to describe her current relationship with an ex-husband, calling it a campaign issue of "personal life and character," followed by, "What's your resistance to answering?" As a feminist I find this behavior disgusting.

Beyond the pale Re "The hostility follies," Opinion, March 30 Jonah Goldberg may want to paint the hostility and foolishness of the present violent opposition to President Obama and his policies as the same as the "extremist rhetoric against Republicans for eight years," but c'mon. I was strongly opposed to President George W. Bush's illegal war, torture and roughshod walk over human rights, and his egregious plundering of surpluses. But nowhere did anyone (including me)

Steven Edelman speaks rather vehemently and unjustifiably in attacking Assemblyman Gil Ferguson. Too often in our history have arbitrary, accusatory statements been made attacking individuals without evidence and with only partisan justification. I think this applies to Edelman's attack on Ferguson. He shows no evidence of Ferguson's being an embarrassment to his colleagues nor of his opposition to minorities. To accuse Ferguson of being a throwback to the days of Joe McCarthy is certainly irrelevant.

RECENTLY, Tom Hayden was animated. Excited, yes, but literally animated -- a computer-generated representation in the 2007 film "Chicago 10." That figurative portrayal of the 1960s' most explosive trial depicted the through-the-looking-glass realities of a time when America's basic assumptions were up for grabs. Who was more moral: a bomb-dropping president or an indicted demonstrator? What should be illegal: racism or pot smoking?

TOM HAYDEN -- co-founder of Students for a Democratic Society, member of the Chicago Seven and avatar of protest and activism, a man who visited the enemy in North Vietnam during America's war there, one whose break with his father caused them not to speak for 16 years -- is suddenly the bearer of a light spirit. Hayden, who had a heart attack a few years back, still writes and lectures, and still observes the workings of the political class.

"This is going to be painful," Tom Hayden said with a slight sigh as he settled into his seat in a darkened theater. Moments later, larger-than-life images of Robert Kennedy on the 1968 campaign trail in California filled the screen, and there was no way to avoid the feeling that the next two hours, however entertaining they might be, were going to lead to some psychic discomfort. Sure enough, at the end of the film, Hayden excused himself, eyes reddened, to duck into the men's room.

The excellent overview of the trend toward rehabilitation in prisons ("State Is Joining Shift on Prisons," March 27) still omits two crucial areas where reform is indispensable. Rehabilitation will be limited if there are no meaningful jobs and if police continue the misconduct that antagonizes so many young people. The story quotes an official who says the inefficiencies of rehabilitation programs wouldn't be tolerated at General Motors. For the record: GM's bond rating is one notch above junk, according to a news report the same day. Rehabilitation is about helping damaged human beings, not producing machines, and "inefficiencies" should be expected.

Flip to Page 131 of the new "The Sixties Chronicle" for this single sentence and you can't be sure whether you've hit the rewind button or fast-forward: "We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit." This is the opening passage from the Port Huron Statement, the 1962 Students for a Democratic Society treatise that formed the theoretical basis for much of the student protest movement of the 1960s.

Let me start by saying that I am a fanatic about my two cats, rescued from a no-kill shelter. They are my pampered babies, and neither my husband nor I have the slightest doubt that in my dotage I will be a crazy Cat Lady. Therefore, I was not pleased to read last week that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was considering repealing the state law that requires animal shelters to hold stray animals for a minimum of six business days before euthanizing them.

Re "When Deportation Is a Death Sentence," Commentary, June 28: Tom Hayden must be joking. I consider myself somewhat liberal, definitely left of center. Yet I was incredulous at Hayden's suggestion that our country should not deport criminal aliens back to Honduras or other Central American nations because it is destabilizing to their native countries and/or may result in physical danger to the deportees. If these immigrants' gangland cultures are wreaking such havoc in their native lands, I shudder to think of the havoc these same gangsters have caused throughout Southern California.

You might think police and politicians weary of gang violence and endless police crackdowns would welcome efforts by current and former gang members to negotiate truces and rein in the carnage. You might think that, but Tom Hayden says you'd be dead wrong.