It just gets more and more hilarious. Here's one from Tim Blair's site ( http://timblair.spleenville.com/archives/007762.php) that's also part of the Guardian's program:

"...I would also be alarmed by your president's breathtaking disregard for the environment, demonstrated by his pulling out of the Kyoto agreement to stem global warming, a phenomenon that may well be the cause of the freak hurricanes that lashed Florida in recent weeks.

"I can see that you must be furious at the way the current administration has not only catapulted the US into a state of social decline, but has plunged your great nation into a state of perpetual insecurity. I know that you will not stand by and observe your country being hijacked by a select group of neo-conservative extremists who spread fear and loathing. I don't expect you to stand for the haughty suppression of your civil liberties threatened by the proposed Domestic Security Enhancement Act, which will enable the government to detain in secrecy anyone who supports a "terrorist" group and strip them of their citizenship."

---

Can you imagine being a voter in Ohio and getting a letter like this? I'm having trouble imagining it, but I find it extremely unlikely that these letters could possibly convince anyone in Ohio to vote for Kerry. I think the best the Guardian can hope for is to not cause huge numbers of Kerry supporters to switch to Bush.

This just shows that the Europeans, for all their alledged sophistication, have absolutely no understanding of America.

I can now see why we fled England over 2 centuries ago.

Has all of Europe gone mad?

Well, I am a real live Buckeye, from Columbus, which is about 40 miles up I-70 from Springfield, the county seat of Clark County. It would take a half hour to drive over there if weren't for having to do the orange barrel polka through Madison County, which lies between the two cities.

I am not a Clark County native, but I have spent some time over there and I do know the congressman, although he is not exactly my favorite human being.

I really don't think that you have to spend much time worrying that a few e-mails from readers of the Guardian in Old Blighty are going to overly influence the inhabitants of Clark County. They are pretty much salt of the earth types and they are not too much concerned with what folks in London, Ohio (pop. 9,000, county seat of Madison County) think, let alone with what folks in London, England on the other side of the world think.

I am much more trusting of the residents of Clark County, than I am of the readers of the Guardian or the New York Times, or the denizens of New York's Upper Left Side or California's Marin County, or any of the other self-appointed elites who sit in judgment of us fly-over people.

Relax, this is one problem that will solve itself.

I would love to be able to take a poll of people from Clark County, Ohio with this question: "Do you beleive you should have the right to shoot a burglar who has broken into your home?" I would be shocked if less than 9 in 10 believed they should have that right.

I actually got one of the addresses to save some poor soul from receiving one of these letters.

Mike: Indeed. I don't understand why the Tories haven't made self-defense a plank in their platform.

Did it ever mention that Martin was imprisoned for defending himself?

PapayaSF,

The Tories are deathly afraid of letting common folk have access to weapons. Let a butler carry a revolver? Heaven forfend!

The people who came up with this idea obviously have no clue about the glut of junk mail that has innundated American mailboxes for the past 30 or so years. Odds are their letters will be going straight from the mail box to the round file, which might be better for Kerry, since getting dead tree spam from overseas telling you to vote for him might not be the best thing for the Senator's cause in Ohio (about the only thing worse would be if the Guardian comes up with the idea of having thousands of people call Clark County homes around dinner time asking those who answer to save the world and vote for John F. Kerry).

Well, I had to look, but I was much relieved to find that even the Ohio Supreme Court (a/k/a The Seven Potted Geraniums) could not screw up the law of self-defense.

You have the right to use deadly force to defend your family and your house in Ohio. So Mike, the number should be ten out of ten.

For the insatiablely curious I present a highly edited extract of a fairly recent Ohio Supreme Court case on point:

State v. Williford (1990), 49 Ohio St.3d 247:
Williford, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of Carter. The conviction was reversed by the court of appeals and the state has appealed.

The conviction arose from an altercation between Williford and Carter, initiated by Carter. Carter, a large man, who lived on the same street as the Willifords. The month before the altercation, Williford's wife and Carter had a dispute over a dog.

On the night of November 8, 1986, Carter had been drinking. Carter and a co-worker, were driving down the street. Carter saw Williford in front of Williford's house. He stopped the van. Carter accused Williford's wife of "calling the police on me." The two men went up onto Williford's front porch.

Williford testified that Carter threatened Williford's wife, saying "I'll shut her goddamn mouth permanently." Williford ran upstairs and retrieved a .38 caliber revolver from his bedroom. He came back down and found Carter in the front room of the house. Williford displayed the gun and forced Carter out, onto the porch. When Williford asked Carter to leave, Carter grabbed his gun hand. Williford fired a warning shot. Carter shoved Williford against the porch railing. Williford testified that he shot Carter when Carter attacked his wife, who had come out onto the porch.

On cross-examination, Williford was asked, "Do you think he died from the bullet wounds you gave him to the chest when he was lying on the ground?" Williford answered, "Yes, I do."

Diana Williford, Williford's wife, testified that she saw Carter pushing Williford over the porch railing, and was afraid that Carter was breaking Williford's back. She ran onto the porch and jumped on Carter's back. Carter turned and "picked me up like I was a five pound bag of potatoes, and * * * slung me down hard." While she was trying to get away from Carter, she heard one shot, then "a couple more."

The trial judge charged the jury on murder and the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter. The judge gave the standard instructions on self-defense, but he did not instruct the jury that Williford had no duty to retreat from his home, or that there is a privilege to defend members of his family. Williford's counsel objected to the omission of the "no retreat" instruction.

The jury convicted Williford of voluntary manslaughter with a firearm specification. The court of appeals reversed and remanded for a new trial. The state appealed.

H. BROWN, J. In the instant case, we must determine whether the failure to instruct the jury on retreat and defense of family was error, and, if so, whether the errors were preserved for appeal. We answer these questions in the affirmative and affirm the decision by the court of appeals. Under Ohio law, self-defense is an affirmative defense. To establish self-defense, the defendant must show "(1) [he] was not at fault in creating the situation giving rise to the affray; (2)[he] had a bona fide belief that he was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and that his only means of escape from such danger was in the use of force; and (3) [he] must not have violated any duty to retreat or avoid the danger. " The defendant is privileged to use that force which is reasonably necessary to repel the attack. "If the defendant fails to prove any one of these elements by a preponderance of the evidence he has failed to demonstrate that he acted in self-defense."

Williford argues that there should have been a further instruction that he was privileged to defend the members of his family, and that he was under no duty to retreat from his home. Ohio law has long recognized a privilege to defend the members of one's family. ("It is conceded that parent and child, husband and wife, master and servant would be excused, should they even kill an assailant in the necessary defense of each other."); As the court of appeals stated, if Williford, "in the careful and proper use of his faculties, in good faith and upon reasonable ground believed that his wife and family were in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm . . . [he] was entitled to use such reasonably necessary force, even to the taking of life, to defend his wife and family as he would be entitled to use in defense of himself." Williford presented testimony that Carter was threatening Mrs. Williford with physical harm from the beginning of the altercation. A properly instructed jury, if it believed this testimony, could have found that Williford was acting in defense of his wife throughout the altercation. The failure to instruct on defense of family was error.

In most circumstances, a person may not kill in self-defense if he has available a reasonable means of retreat from the confrontation. However, "[w]here one is assaulted in his home, or the home itself is attacked, he may use such means as are necessary to repel the assailant from the house, or to prevent his forcible entry, or material injury to his home, even to the taking of life." Implicit in this statement of law is the rule that there is no duty to retreat from one's home.

In the instant case, there was testimony that the confrontation took place inside Williford's house and on Williford's porch. Because the jury was not instructed on this rule, it might have believed that Williford was under a duty to retreat from his home. It was therefore error for the court to fail to give this instruction.

It amazes me that anyone claiming to be civilized would consider that a man may not protect his own life or property, and at the same time have the temerity to accuse the administration of gutting human rights under the Patriot Act. Wasn't someone recently jailed in England for making a statement against Muslims or gays? England is a much scarier place from a rights standpoint than the US, by far.