Mailbag: Irvine 11 editorials got it wrong

I invite all to view the Irvine 11 videotape to hear the hate speech directed at the speaker. I invite critics to speak to those who have, over the years, tried to hear UCI talks with Israeli or Jewish content and experienced a group of students yell out, subverting the speaker. Speakers invite the yellers to ask questions during Q & A, or attempt to answer the yelled insults with information.

The yellers show no interest in dialogue, only to shout down the speaker. Nobody shows up to stop speakers who speak from the Muslim perspective.

Freedom of speech includes me when I attempt to inform myself by hearing, for example, a secretary of state. Freedom of speech includes the exchange of ideas in a university setting, especially both sides of a debate.

Carrie Slayback

Newport Beach

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'Déjà vu all over again' on 19th

(Re. "19th Street Bridge talks revived," Oct. 2): Back on August 8, 2004, the Daily Pilot published several letters to the editor regarding a proposed OCTA study to take yet another look at building a Gisler-Garfield bridge over the Santa Ana River. Among these letters, was one from me. In that letter, I made this statement:

"How many studies does it take? My guess is that the studies will keep on coming until the bridge is approved and built, despite assurances from various city, county and transportation authority officials that "it will never happen."

I hear these assurances from city officials at public meetings about the bridge, and I read about them in the Daily Pilot. But public officials come and go, and vetoes can change to approvals as the political winds shift.

It appears it's déjà vu all over again. I truly wish I hadn't been so prescient in that letter eight years ago.

Despite the fact that this latest impromptu, and somewhat under-the-radar, study concerns the 19th Street Bridge, those in Mesa Verde had best not get too relaxed. The two river crossings have always been linked in the Orange County master plan, and in every study I've seen since the early 1990s SARX study. And just because your mayor pro tem and a city councilman live in Mesa Verde, don't think that the talks going on now will stop with 19th Street.

As long as there is even a remote chance that the Banning Ranch property could be developed and there is big money to be made, politicians in Newport Beach will always push to build the 19th Street and Gisler bridges.