Letters are posted as we receive them during the week, and before they are printed in the paper, so check back frequently to see new letters. If you'd like to send a letter to the editor, use this postmarks submission form, or email your letter directly to mail@austinchronicle.com. Thanks for your patience.

Dear Editor,
    Vance McDonald, what are you still doing in the U.S.? Go to Iraq and help fight against those who would enslave us! It is your duty, since you obviously have the "courage required for perpetuating a free humanity" [“Postmarks,” May 18]. Since you know the Truth, there can be no other option for you. May God go with you.

Dear Editor,
    Wild bees are disappearing off the face of our planet, and it seems that the birds are following suit with West Nile disease. Unless we are able to control the damage brought on by corporate greed, pollution, and over-use of pesticides. Unless we the people are able to control our lust for energy, then I see no future for mankind. We will die out just like the dinosaurs, and it will be our own fault.

Dear Editor,
    If reader Bruce D. Garnett believes that politicians lie [“Postmarks,” May 4], did he really expect an honest answer from them? (Bill Latham's nonanswer was the best he could hope for [“Postmarks,” May 11].) Politicians lie because We the People reward them for lying. We vote for the people who tell us what we want to hear. But, given that serious thinkers claim that everyone creates their own reality, how can anyone claim anybody is lying? The charge requires a common reality. We the People can't even agree on what scientific facts are. (Global warming, for instance.) Politicians use issues to get our votes, then dis us for being stupid enough to vote for them. They're right.

Dear Editor,
    Thank you for the excellent introduction to the joy of cooking for animals [“Kick the Can and Bag the Bag,” Food, May 11]. My great-grandfather baked pans of cornbread for his Texas ranch dogs in a wood-fired stove, and even today my 90-year-old aunt in Hyde Park always has a pressure cooker of chicken and veggies bubbling on the stove top for her pack of chihuahuas.
    I researched the pet-food business for my 1996 book, The Lost History of the Canine Race, and I found it employed tactics perfected by the tobacco industry to keep federal monitoring of their products down to a minor nuisance. When I gave a reading at Texas A&M University, the vet students told me they had no required coursework on animal nutrition. But a sales rep from a prominent national pet-food company dropped into class and gave everybody an "educational" presentation. So while it may be prudent to run home-cooking ideas by your vet, don't be surprised if some of them are at a loss for what to tell you.
    Kitchen-minded pet parents should check out the book Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Health for Dogs and Cats, a timeless work on natural animal nutrition. Also there's the riveting chronicle of one woman's quest to make the pet-food industry come clean about its products after the sudden death of her dogs, titled Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food by Ann N. Martin.

Dear Editor,
    Last summer, lung cancer took the life of Jackie Oestrike, who never smoked and led a healthy, active lifestyle. Immediately afterward, her son Brian began planning to climb Mount Everest to raise money for lung-cancer research. Nearly a year later, Brian, along with his sister Katie and climbing partner Justin Hewitt, are 20,000 feet up the mountain, poised to make a push to the summit. To donate or for more information (including Brian’s blog), your readers can visit www.lungevity.org/site/epage/42200_447.htm. All proceeds from their campaign will benefit the LUNGevity Foundation, the only organization in the country dedicated exclusively to funding lung-cancer research. Without the aid of Sherpas and planning only to use bottled oxygen in an emergency situation, their goal is to climb the mountain within their own abilities in order to celebrate the strength of healthy lungs. Let’s lend our support and wish them luck!

Dear Editor,
    It's some very strong medicine to consider the possibility that the government lied to you about what really happened on 9/11. Many people won't go so far to even look at what is becoming a mountain of evidence demonstrating that the official version is riddled with omissions and distortions. Take a look at www.patriotsquestion911.com and see if you agree with Mr. Logan's characterization [“Postmarks,” May 11] of those who question the official myth. Mr. Logan apparently thinks it is cute to engage in name-calling and abusive language regarding this topic. The families of the victims, many of whom don't align with his version of the "truth," deserve better.

Dear Editor,
    Believe it or not, I was not a political person BB (Before Bush), before the Iraq war, before Walter Reed, before the loss of more than 2,700 America service members, who are being killed 10 at a time. Before the time of hope instead of the time of fear, before the time when the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, before the time of hate instead of tolerance: the time before Bush. Our Sen. John Cornyn, who is up for re-election, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison vote in the Senate virtually in lockstep and my Rep. Michael McCaul, who also does the exact same here in Texas. I’ve been forced to get involved, because they are not doing their jobs in checking this almost-dictatorial power that they have given President Bush. Why is this failed policy being so blindly supported, and how long does it take to “liberate”? At what point does a liberator become an “occupier” because we’ve been there almost five years. We have not improved the lives of the average Iraqis. We have not restored power nor water, and if you think these are just minor points, turn off your water and power for the summer. I say if we are there as liberators, then the liberated Iraqi people have the right to ask us to leave, right? I mean if we are guests of the Iraqi people, they as the owners can ask us to leave their country. And as guests of their country – which is what a liberator is – bound by good manners and national honor, we should leave! Our policy has taken a country where there were not suicide bombings – in fact no bombing except our bombing – to a country where literally hundreds of bombings take place every single day. Bad things happen when good people stand by and do nothing.

Dear Editor,
    I was stunned to read “Attorney's Take” [“Postmarks,” May 11], about Northcross neighbors having problems with city staff exceeding authority, not following “legal duty,” and “acting on incorrect … information.” On the other side of the river, the Dawson Neighborhood Association is having the same problems with city staff and developers. Just like the neighbors at Northcross, our neighbors were not provided with the legal notice of the change. It’s a shame that neighborhoods must hire a lawyer to force city staff to obey the city of Austin’s codes and regulations.
    Fortunately, our City Council and mayor are communicating with us and are giving us their continuing support. They understand our problems.
    However, city staff has made decisions against the Dawson Neighborhood Planning Team that have no precedent in Austin’s zoning history and have never been used before. All neighborhood associations with a neighborhood plan should look closely at the chipping away of our neighborhood plan. The foundation of our plan is crumbling away. Neighborhood plans might become a thing of the past. Where’s a good lawyer when we need one?

Dear Editor,
    The first response I had to Michael King’s May 11 article [“Point Austin,” News, May 11] was to wish that I could get back the previous five minutes it took to read and ignore it. But unfortunately his naive appeasement of genocidal Islamist totalitarianism is too prevalent, so he and his fellow blame-America-first conspirators must be confronted. Indeed, Mr. King’s (and Dennis Kucinich’s) charges that Vice President Dick Cheney is worthy of impeachment must be utterly rejected. These accusations are outright lies.
    Mr. King and his childish, naive cohorts must be viewed as ambient white noise. The reality is that for the past 30 years, the followers of Islamist tyranny have been at war with the civilized world. Their bellicosity culminated in the act of terrorism, mass murder, and destruction of September 11, 2001. This was the actual beginning of their long tactical efforts to destroy civilization and enslave humanity in a nightmarish 10th century Islamist caliphate.
    Self-absorbed flower children such as Michael King and Dennis Kucinich are incapable of grasping the necessary intellectual honesty, moral clarity, and courage required for perpetuating a free humanity. They cannot accept that the U.S. was unjustifiably attacked and forced into a world war as existential as World War II. In fact, it is even more dangerous because the Islamist enemy lacks even a modicum of civility by deploying nonuniformed suicide murderers to slaughter innocent civilians. Even the Nazis and Japanese did not use such barbarous tactics.
    If America capitulates, the free world will cease to exist. The subsequent genocide, torture, and slavery that the new Islamist masters will unleash will be unmatched in history. Mr. King and Mr. Kucinich will have been unwitting accomplices. For our and their sake, we cannot allow their astoundingly ignorant and irrational conspiracies to succeed. Otherwise, evil men will surely prevail.

Dear Editor,
    Whether it's impeachment or sainthood, our departure will not end the "unbearable, undeserved, and entirely unjustifiable suffering of the Iraqi people" [“Point Austin,” News, May 11]. Our departure may very well increase that suffering. The only thing that will end is the loss of our troops, not an unworthy goal. This is not an argument to stay in Iraq. It is merely an observation that it is wholly unrealistic and just wishful thinking to link the end of their suffering with our departure. It more likely shores up the argument that we should have never gone there in the first place.

Jordan Smith,
    Thanks for writing about our shadow hearing and giving Rep. Dianne Delisi the props she deserves [“Capitol Briefs,” News, May 4]. Stickin' it to sick people – bravo indeed.
    Enjoy the rest of the session!