A reader writes:

I have a hard time listening to Republicans say that the Democrats cannot transcend their anger. They use stupid catch phrases like “Bush Derangement Syndrome” to discredit people (not just Democrats, according to most pundits, you too suffer from BDS, Andrew). There is a special amount of irony in the party that spent over 200 congressional hours investigating Clinton’s Christmas card list and less than 10 investigating how we got into the Iraq war accusing the opposition of being driven by blind hatred.

I now live in a country where the president and vice president have the power to detain an American citizen off of the street, send him to a secret prison, torture him, and detain him indefinitely without him ever hearing the charges against them. We have been lied into a war that was executed with criminal incompetence, our economy has been devastated because of lax oversight of banks giving out bad loans, we have lost a major city and the list goes on and on.

My anger isn’t driven by irrational hatred. In 2000, I considered myself a Republican. But now that party stands as an affront to everything that America stands for. I have every right to be angry.