Don’t give in to terrorist tactics

Cesar Lumba, Las Vegas

Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013 | 2:01 a.m.

Malcolm Telloian’s Saturday letter to the editor, “Stop Obamacare by any means,” encapsulates the Tea Party’s philosophy of “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

I am appalled by his suggestion that the shutdown happened “because the GOP and Boehner are only trying to stop this narcissistic president with the only tool left for them.”

What he means, of course, is that a government shutdown is the only tool left for Republican congresspeople in their effort to stop the Affordable Care Act.

Let me ask: I don’t like paying my taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. Perhaps 90 percent of Americans would rather not pay taxes to the IRS. Therefore, the U.S. Congress would be justified in shutting down the government unless Obama and the Senate agree to scrap the IRS?

The way to overturn a law is to pass a contrary law and for that law to be signed by the president. If the president vetoes it, he can be overridden by both houses of Congress. Holding a gun to the head of the Senate and president by shutting down the government is blatant terrorism. It is akin to the activities of the Southerners who were unwilling to acknowledge the authority of the U.S. government in the years following the Civil War.

Obama knows that terrorists are at work here. It is his duty not to bargain with the terrorists.