To the editor:

An open letter to Sen. Pat Roberts:

Just wanted to drop you a line to let you know that I applaud the Democratic stand in the Senate on Tuesday. Your handling of the “investigation” into the pretext for the Iraq war has been a travesty.

I realize you perhaps conflate loyalty to the Republican Party with loyalty to the republic. Never has this been a more mistaken assumption. The founders continually warned against factionalism, and the Republican Party, now controlled by a right-wing cabal that has only a narrow agenda in mind and, in my opinion, cares nothing about the welfare of our great republic, validates and epitomizes their warning.

Don’t you think that whether or not the White House lied us into war is more important than a corrupt Republican Party’s private agenda? If not, you have no business representing the people. And while you may fool most of the people some of the time, you and your party are fooling fewer and fewer people everyday. Let me remind you that while your party operatives may try to convince us that criminal behavior is simply politics-as-usual, there is an ideal toward which the founders and other clear-headed groups in our history strove and it’s a goal we cannot abandon, though we will never reach it. Public servants need to be held to a higher standard. The truth WILL out.

Doug Harvey,

Lawrence