Column on White House drone memo draws reader response

On March 27, reader Laurance Strait replied to a Feb. 8 column by Gateway Journalism Review publisher William H. Freivogel with this email: “The reason civil libertarians and others are upset with Obama's novel extra-judicial killing doctrine in part is in how it has been applied. Your characterization would be more persuasive to me if sitting in a café having breakfast didn't count as being an 'imminent threat' that is 'in the battlefield.' As those facts are rather well known, I don't really know how to read this post as anything but intentionally Orwellian.”

Freivogel's column begins with: “Maybe my kids are right and I'm getting more conservative as I get older. Maybe my ACLU buddies have reason to wonder if I've strayed from the path of founder Roger Baldwin. Or maybe it's been too many years since I was in the White House press room. But as I listened this week to the White House press briefing, I was irritated by the press' attitude that President Obama's decision to kill any American citizens plotting attacks on the United States was comparable to George W. Bush's authorization of the torture of captured al-Qaida operatives.”

His column also drew a response from SIU Ph.D. student James Anderson, who wrote a  response titled “Age, individual outlooks influence press opinions.”