Peeved by an April 9 letter to the editor that attacked OtherWords columnist Donald Kaul, The Washington Post‘s Eugene Robinson, The New York Times’ Paul Krugman, and other liberal voices, Winston-Salem Journal reader Cyclone Covey weighed in on April 19 with his own two cents. “Kaul’s March 31 column ‘Obstructionist Antics‘ ranks as enduring literature,” Covey wrote. “If columnists tend toward liberalism, it is because their close contact with world tragedies teaches there is something better than illiberalism.” On April 16, the Journal published an earlier letter by reader Dallas D. Lassen, who also defended the liberal columnists that the North Carolina newspaper publishes.

The Bloomington, IL, Pantagraph also ran a letter by an irate reader who hated that column, which predicts the GOP’s demise. “Labeling this party as anti-immigrant or anti-civil rights is extremely offensive to me,” wrote Ben Funk of Normal.

And the Springfield, MO News-Leader published another letter triggered by Kaul’s provocative commentary. “In answer to Donald Kaul’s question on whether or not we need a Republican Party, I have to ask if we need either Democratic or Republican parties,” wrote reader Chris Dalton.