To the editor:

In the third paragraph of the Saturday Column (Sept. 6) the columnist writes: “the Bush administration had been beaten up over the past eight years.”

I’m puzzled by the term “beaten up.” Did the columnist mean that term literally as when someone was “beaten up'” in the Abu Ghraib prison or in the holding cells of Guantanamo? Or did the columnist mean to use the term figuratively as when individuals were “beaten up” by government hiring personnel who rejected their otherwise acceptable applications for employment because the resumes weren’t ideologically pure enough?

Or was the columnist referring to the assistant attorneys general who were “beaten up” and summarily fired for not “going after Democrats”?

Oh, I know. The columnist was referring literally and figuratively to the United States of America, which was beaten up by Jack Abramoff and his thieving band of lobbyist cutthroats who plundered the nation’s treasury on Bush’s watch and made a mockery of government by the people. OK, now I understand.

Larry Day,
Lawrence