Going backward on voting rights

Manhattan: I do not believe what the Supreme Court just did with the Voting Rights Act. Both Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall are spinning in their graves. Men and women, black and white, Jews and Gentiles fought, were jailed and died for the right to a basic tenet of democracy — the right to vote. Thousands of young Americans have died in Afghanistan and Iraq to give the people of those countries the same right. Now the mullahs of the Supreme Court, under the leadership of the Ayatollah John Roberts, have spit on those soldiers’ graves.

The governors of Texas, South Carolina and Alabama have already pushed through restrictive actions with more to come. We have been the proponent of democracy for generations. Why should anyone believe what we say when our actions indicate otherwise? It’s time for sit-ins, protest marches and rallies again! Who knew we’d have to fight the battles of the ’60s in 2013? Claudette Mobley

Missed the point

Brooklyn: Shame on the Daily News for not displaying the triumph for gay rights by the United States Supreme Court on the front page. I was so looking forward to this cover and I am truly disappointed. As a gay American, I’ve had years of being a second-class citizen. On what was a historic day, this paper instead showed a murder by a New England Patriots football player on the cover — and not this monumental event that took more than 200 years to get right.

Jimmy B. Block

Penalty call

Middle Village: What does the acronym NFL stand for besides National Football League? Answer: National Felons League.

Gustav Abbaheusan

Rate a date I

Bronx: In Thursday’s NOW! section, it mentions that there is an app for women to rate men they’ve dated. They can list his foibles, weaknesses, virility, etc. This is different from Facebook or My Space, where you place your own info. One click and 10,000 people can know personal information that you never gave out yourself. We willingly give up more and more privacy every day. How can people complain about the government spying on us?

Bob Gomez

Rate a date II

Brooklyn: The concept of a data repository for dating habits and “ratings” of guys by the girls they dated may be a fresh app, but the concept certainly is not. Anyone who saw the 1987 movie “Amazon Women on the Moon” will remember quite well the sketch involving Rosanna Arquette and Steve Guttenberg, in which she takes his credit card, runs it through a scanner and has his entire dating history faxed over, including comments by those he dated. Robert T. Mruczek

Too sensitive

Junk mail

The third degree

Maspeth: All the talk show hosts who are outraged at the use of the N-word sound so self-righteous, as if they are all perfect humans who never made a mistake. They should look in their own lives. I’m certain they will find that at some point in their lives they did or said something of which they are ashamed. Of course Paula Deen’s use of the N-word is wrong, but to put her through the verbal wringer on the “Today” show, with experts analyzing the way she moved and the nuances in her voice, was like the sort of interrogation a criminal goes through.

Rosalind Wolf Yonkers: What a bunch of hypocrites are Walmart, The Food Network, Matt Lauer, et al. When asked if she ever uttered the N-word, Paula Deen should have fired back, “Have you?” I wonder how many of us could answer in the negative. And one more thing: If a minority had called an Italian by one of the many derogatory terms out there, do you think there would be any backlash? I think not. Michael Perillo Southampton, L.I.: To Voicer Diane Hombach: I, too, got a letter from a Voicer coward with unsigned, no return address diatribe. It was in reply to the speeches George W. Bush was making about the successes of his two wars. Four handwritten pages! Mine was postmarked in Connecticut. Scary how these nuts can find someone. Best wishes and good luck!

John Zaleski

Frisky business

Jackson Heights: While I oppose Emperor Bloomberg and Commissar Ray Kelly’s “stop and frisk” policies, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s brief seeking a federal NYPD monitor strikes me as a bad joke. First, Judge Shira Scheindlin has yet to rule on the case. Isn’t this tampering? Second, the NSA under Obama, in collaboration with federally regulated private corporations such as Verizon, regularly violates citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights through unconstitutional electronic spying. Holder himself has signed off on some of the more egregious “exigent letters” justifying and empowering this practice. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is nothing more than “stop and frisk” on a global level. How does one spell hypocrisy?

Pete Kropotkin

I spy

Jamaica: First of all, our government has gone too far with listening in on our phone calls. Well, I hope they can hear and understand mine. I’m dissatisfied with a lot of the nonsense going on in this city, nation and world.

Edna M. Crater

Zero texting allowed

Douglaston: It amazes me that at the core of nearly every recent child-abuse allegation involving public school children and teachers, we come to learn that there were “hundreds and even thousands of texts” between the adult and child. Most youth groups I know of either prohibit texting between adult leaders and their charges or, at minimum, require such communication to include the child’s parent or another responsible third party. Under these circumstances, the first text the adult sends exclusively to the child becomes a violation, regardless of the content of the message. The youth know it, their families know it and so do the adult leaders. If volunteer youth groups can develop, implement and enforce such a simple policy on text messaging involving children, why can’t the Department of Education? Thomas Tuffey

A sick policy

The American way

Brooklyn: As Bill O’Reilly said so well in your Sunday edition, volunteering is American.

Cecelia Kleinbart

Gun shy of the truth

Ozone Park: How do the nerds sitting in the seats of “no gun control” in Washington feel when so much proof is out there that guns kill people? Do they ever consider that it could happen to them? Maybe they should read Denis Hamill in the Daily News. Maybe they are ashamed and hiding their true feelings.

Josephine Ambrosio Washington: The City Council’s passage of a citywide mandatory paid sick leave bill is not a cause for celebration. A study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research — a group supportive of paid sick leave laws — found that nearly 30% of San Francisco’s lowest-wage employees reported layoffs or reduced hours at their place of work following that city’s passage of a paid leave mandate. Another survey by the Urban Institute found that some city

Hulton Archive/Getty Images employers had scaled back on employee bonuses, vacation time, and part-time help to adapt to the new law’s higher costs. It’s a helpful reminder that when it comes to business mandates, good intentions don’t necessarily lead to good policy. Michael Saltsman

research director Employment Policies Institute

Here’s looking at you

Closter, N.J.: Why does your paper always feel the need to comment on a woman’s looks? What happened at the Vectren Air Show in Dayton was awful. Would it have been any less tragic if the stuntwoman Jane Wicker wasn’t “beautiful?”

Stefanie Rosner

Street clutter

Manhattan: Are there any more things Mayor Bloomberg can put down in lower Manhattan to cause more congestion? We are up to our ears in construction, yet he goes and puts the rent-a-bikes smack in the middle of crowded Fulton St. There are street fairs, concerts, movie sets, etc. Give us a break, please.

Lorraine Fittipaldi

What’s on TV?

Bayonne: I agree with Voicer Maureen Parker about Cablevision’s new grid format. Not only is it a pain to bring up all the info about the show, but you have to read fast or else it disappears after a few seconds and you have to bring it up again.

Marsha Adamson