Congratulations to reporter Lisa Rein for presenting a balanced story about the controversy surrounding Maryland Public television's (MPT) announcement of a new 24-hour Spanish TV channel.

It is false and misleading for Maryland Delegate Pat McDonough (R) and Bob Ehrlich (R) and his wife Kendel (R) to base their opposition on a lie, i.e., that the channel is being funded by taxpayers. It is also misleading for MPT to characterize the channel as being designed exclusively for the Hispanic community (if so, it is only in their minds) when, in fact, there are thousands of non-Hispanic Marylanders who speak Spanish fluently or are studying Spanish at the high school or college level and who would be likely viewers also.

Contemporaries William Shakespeare and Miguel Cervantes are the preeminent literary exponents in English and Spanish literature and were the main co-founders of Western literature (coincidentally, they died on the same date, 23 April 1616). Not surprisingly, Spanish and English rank among the top five most spoken and most influential languages in the world.

Recognizing that we are capable of and should try to learn foreign languages does not, of course, minimize the importance of learning English, the 'official' language of the United States and the Lingua Franca of international business.

McDonough and the Ehrlichs are entitled to their opinions but they should not be based on falsehoods. Free speech does not equate with irresponsible speech. Moreover, attempting to limit other people's cultural interests in this country is plain undemocratic.

Dr. Jorge Ribas, President & CEO
Mid-Atlantic Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
(where English is the "official language")

America has received tremendous benefits from being the single-language nation that has allowed the "melting pot" vision of our nation. Moves such as this throw all of that away so that some people can feel good about supporting other cultures in this nation while actually preventing them from fully being a part of the American culture.

This will also impact the quality of life of many Americans in a negative way as they find they cannot obtain certain goods and services due to greater numbers of workers unable to speak our common tongue.

On the upside, I've pretty much quit eating at any fast food joints in the DC Metro area (as they could never get my order correct, Que?) and I'm doing virtually all of my major purchases via the internet where I can still get answers in English.

I learned to speak Spanish in junior high because I'm not ignorant, but I will have to say nothing shocked me more than stopping by a home depot one evening around 2001 and every employee in the store spoke Spanish or French and no one spoke English well enough to answer my question. No one in the store. We sat there speaking a kind of Spanglish together- three employees and I- to find the right kind of paint remover. Do you know how hard it is to describe lead paint if you don't know the word for lead? Pintura Metal? No, that's metallic paint. Pintura mineral? No that's mineral paint. When it comes to educating new immigrants to American History and the culture from Maine to Seattle, New Orleans to Miami, we cannot ever do too much. I applaud this move, but am still surprised when I can't communicate in American-Accented Catalan Spanish to a flaco from Uruguay who can't understand any dialect but their own.

Maryland Public TV needs to publish on its web site which programs are receiving taxpayer funds and how much funding.Some of their political decisions are arbitrary. For instance, they refused to allow U.S. Senate candidate Alan Lichtman take part in a "debate," of Democratic U.S.Senate candidates last year and had him arrested when he disagreed.

It's completely disingenuous to say that radio content is offered without government funding when the station it is on is funded by $10 million from the government. To say it is free is to declare that there is absolutely zero value for any other use of what the government has been paying $10 million for.

I'm quite sure that if public schools decided to allow church groups to use their auditoria for church services, and their classrooms for Sunday schools, civil liberty groups would be suing that the state was "funding" religion.

I could say that this country is going to the dogs, but that would be an improvement over the current direction it is taking. My immigrant Italian parents could hardly speak English, but pity me if I spoke Italian instead of English in the house. They knew that key to success is assimilation, and I'm the proof - a successful PhD economist one generation removed from a barber and a seamstress, neither one of whom had better than a fifth grade education from rural schools in Italy.

Too bad Ms. Rein was so sloppy as to get Ehrlich's radio station wrong. He's on WBAL, owned by Hearst in Baltimore, not WMAL, owned by ABC in Washington.

Man... if she can't even get something as critical to this story as a station's call letters right, how can we trust anything she writes? That's akin to calling the Washington Post the Washington Times, something that would NEVER be forgiven in an elite, effette, northeastern newsroom... where reporters never listen to conservative talk radio in the first place.

Dan,
Public schools do open their auditoriums to churches for services and sunday school, on Sundays because their is no regular school, and all the children there, have parents who are happy for them to learn about their faith. Also, this idea that America has always been one big melting pot where immigrants were forced to learn English is a myth. In Baltimore up until about the 30's there were German speaking public schools where immigrant children (of which Bob Erhlich's forebearers attended) were allowed to be educated in their own language. This country always allowed European immigrants to assimilate on their own time, and most immigrants after a generation or two, find it impossible to live here without learning the dominant language. And as the first poster mentioned, spanish language programming is not just for immigrants, it is a good way for people to casually learn or perfect foreign languages, of which Americans would be well served investing the time and money in learning.

"Also, this idea that America has always been one big melting pot where immigrants were forced to learn English is a myth."

No, we said that previous generations of immigrants could not count on millions in taxpayer money being spent so that they could avoid having to learn English. That you can cite a single exception to this is no reason to make it into public policy.

the metal, lead, is "plomo" in Spanish.

You're welcome.

Ivan Betancourt is also president of some republican club

God forbid these ignorant jerks should learn to speak a language other than English. In most other countries, it is routine for people to speak three or four languages. Dumb ignorant Americans insist on speaking only English.