Speaker Mike Johnson is a Bible thumping hypocrite because he cannot possibly read Scripture while supporting big bad ugly policy

Republicans throw around Bible verses as a diversion to somehow give smoke and mirrors cover to their cruelty attack on the middle class.

Voters have a responsibility to reject the big bad ugly tax cuts for the rich.  Keep up the pressure by reminding the public about just how cruel, immoral and destructive the tax cuts for the rich are to our nation's health care and to the many thousands of people who will lose their jobs as a result of Republican selfish crash and burn the middle class for the purpose of giving the wealthy and super wealthy more money.  Ecclesiastes 5:10: "Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income."

Echo opinion letters published in the Seattle Times in Washington state:

Of course, tax breaks for the wealthy will come immediately, as will the end of electric-car and green-home credits.

Don’t be fooled by cuts to Medicaid that don’t phase in until after the midterms — too many GOP members of Congress know this could hurt their reelection bids. So let’s thank those who voted against this terrible bill that brings America closer to feudalism, and remind the ones who voted for it that they have until the midterms to change the terrible future this bill will bring.

We can vote accordingly, rewarding those who fought against it and ousting those who voted for it, our ultimate power in democracy!

From Willie Dickerson, in Snohomish a Seattle suberb

The selfish servility of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and other Republican senators goes beyond the “my state first” excuse for supporting President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful “Bull.” Trump has declared and demonstrated he will ignore the mandates of legislation, break the law and violate the Constitution by refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress and even claw back by rescission funds already contracted if he personally dislikes their purpose.

Promises to Murkowski for Medicaid, like all Trump promises, are meaningless. If you sell your soul to the devil, at least you should expect something in return.

From William R. Phillips, in Edmonds, in Snohomish County, Washington

Ignore history and we are condemned to repeat it in Ukraine

Maine Writer preface:  This opinion letter reinforces, in my mind, the reality of calling the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by the Russians, what it is: World War Three.  "....condemned to repeat it", i.e.,  September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland.

Putin must be stopped!  Putin must go!
Echo opinion letter published in The News-Gazette, in Champaign, Illinois.

A time for war and a time for peace.

Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Belarus, Kazakhstan and now Ukraine. Next, Moldova, the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, maybe even Germany.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a serial killer and mass murderer. He has to be stopped. If he is not stopped, his ally, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, will see the West’s passive, weak-kneed response as a green light to invade Taiwan.

Where will the U.S. fight? Will the fight be easier later, or now, when Ukrainians are putting up such stiff resistance and insist they could win with air support? I hope our government stops dithering while mass murders of civilians are growing by the day.

President Joe Biden, please send planes. There is, as the Bible says, a time for peace and a time for war. 

Ecclesiastes 3:  A time to kill and a time to heal;

                         A time for war and a time for peace

This is the time for war.

By the way, I’m a lifelong pacifist who participated in non-violent demonstrations during the 1960s with the Rev. Martin Luther King in Mississippi. If Putin had been in charge, I would be dead. Sometimes, the moral and the practical line up.

A statue of St. Michael the Archangel stands in the center of Kyiv, depicted with a shield and a sword, as the protector of the capital of Ukraine and the entire country, which is now threatened by the unprovoked invasion of Russia.

There is a moral imperative to help Ukraine, and there are plenty of reasons to believe that things will be worse for us if we don’t and Putin succeeds in crushing another country.

MAX KUMMEROW, in Urbana, Illinois

P.S. IMO The only way to stop World War Three, is to destroy Vladimir Putin.