MAILBAG:

I agree with your Sunday editorial (“Private donors could help bay project”) that private funding should be sought to help clean Newport Bay.

Let the property owners surrounding the bay and the boat owners who use the bay pay the lion’s share because they directly benefit from a healthy serviceable bay. Newport Beach sure has hot pants to assess property owners for lowering utilities in their respective neighborhoods “because these properties directly benefit,” even though funding is the city’s responsibility for public utility improvements.

I guess because wealthy campaign donors live around the bay, the city can abandon the “because these properties directly benefit” position and seek funding from those who may never have even seen the bay. Let the city raise the dock rental fees to current market value so the profitable dock sub-rental fees can at least be passed on the city to help clean the bay. Fair is fair, oops, fair is more fair for some.

DICK DE PINYA

Newport Beach

Keep Back Bay issue in perspective

I too love and revere our Back Bay, walk it almost weekly and used to bike it regularly ... because of its “healing benefits,” to borrow a phrase from the Daily Pilot mailbag (“Politicians’ hard work pays off for bay,” Friday).

But it is an estuary that wants to become a meadow, and it no doubt will become one, in the very long run.

So thanks to Leslie Daigle and Dave Kiff and all those who worked to keep finances going for the dredging, but let’s also be real when we scorn what we label as pork-barrel projects in regions we’re less familiar with.

Keeping things in perspective might just help mitigate some of our current political divisiveness.

KAREN EVARTS

Newport Beach

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Congressmen way off on torture of terrorists

Reps [John] Campbell’s and [Dana] Rohrabacher’s defense of torture is a disgrace.

How much longer will voters allow these two reactionaries to embarrass them by “representing” them in Congress?

Campbell says we tortured “only three” (a total of 183 times).

This smacks of sadism.

Oh, and that Los Angeles tower plot was foiled a full six months before Campbell insists it was uncovered by enhanced interrogations.

Enough already of the lying to justify the abandonment of our historical laws, principles and moral values.

I’m sure when we see those 90 videos of the procedure done on actual terrorists we will feel it isn’t really torture.

Oh I forgot, the CIA destroyed all of them.

As for prosecuting those who OKd all of this, we should but probably won’t.

We may deny justice here in the U.S. regarding those who committed war crimes, but I’m willing to bet that Bush, Cheney, Addington, Woo, et al, won’t be traveling outside the country much in the coming years for fear they may be arrested and put on trial.

I wonder if they wouldn’t mind being “interrogated” to see what they knew and when?

GREGG PETERSON

Newport Beach