Al Franken did not deserve this

Brooklyn: This whole Al Franken thing is a GOP hit job manufactured by Trump’s buddy Roger Stone, and the media has played right along by splashing it on front covers. If one cares to look, the initial accusation doesn’t even remotely stand up to scrutiny — and the subsequent ones were vague or anonymous. There had to be more, so Wednesday we were treated to: Al Franken grabbed my waist (good Lord, honestly?) and yet another anonymous accusation. This one: Al Franken tried to kiss me after a radio show, saying it was his “right as an entertainer.”

I guess the scriptwriter was trying to put words in Al’s mouth that sounded an awful lot like “when you’re a celebrity, they let you do it.” People warned that the GOP was going to weaponize the #metoo movement, and not a week later, they were proven right.

I am outraged by this and the Democrats’ willingness to eat their own for the sake of some moral high ground that Trump supporters and the GOP couldn’t care less about. Karen Weber Columbus, Ohio: Every time I see a news story about the current sexual scandals racking the country, it makes my blood boil. Because there, lumped in with every group portrait of these alleged predators, is Sen. Al Franken. Compared to this group, Franken doesn’t even make it to first base.

There has been nothing predatory in his actions. He wasn’t pursuing teenagers, he didn’t have any trick buttons to lock doors in his office, he wasn’t exposing himself or using his power to pressure women into having unwanted sex and on a higher plane, he wasn’t bragging about grabbing a woman’s p---y anytime he wanted to.

Call me crazy, but the scope of his supposed crimes doesn’t come close to the high standards being set by the aforementioned group.

And nothing Franken is accused of doing happened while he was a U.S. senator. His first action upon being accused was to apologize to the first woman, and then to his state, vowing to do all he could to earn back their trust. His second action was to make himself immediately available to the ethics committee and to cooperate in any way he could.

If anyone deserves a break, it’s Franken, and at the very least he doesn’t deserve to be reviled or grouped with the degenerates who richly deserve revulsion. Dave Gatliff Barnegat, N.J.: To Voicer Maureen McGuigan: When you equate your President to having any integrity, I have to say, “Here is another deplorable moron.” Herr Trump not only has no integrity, he has no moral compass, no empathy, no attention span, no accountability, and not only small hands but a very small brain. What he does have is a self-admitted predatory sexual abuser mentality. He is a racist and bigot like his father. And it shows in his offspring, especially Fredo Jr. And Fredo the third. Manhattan: Every single day of this nightmare presidency, I am reminded of Jon Stewart’s brilliant assessment: “We have never faced this before: purposeful, vindictive chaos.” It is relentless. Port Jefferson Station, L.I.: They say when God gives you lemons, make lemonade. This year we’ve seen both flooding and extreme fires in different parts of the country. As we have some of the best and smartest engineers in the world, these two problems can be dealt with. We need to establish a nationwide system of water conduits that can irrigate dry forests and the brush that fuels the flames. It would be expensive, yes, but how much are we paying in lives and insurance costs aby doing nothing now? When we have too much water, we can siphon some into huge reservoirs for storage, then use gravity (as the ancient Romans did) to deliver the water to the areas that need it. Think of the jobs this would create and the very long positive effects it would produce. Manhattan: The discussion of the tax reform bill is humorous and painful. Any politician complaining about fairness lives in a different world than the working people who pay for their salaries and extravagant retirement packages. The elephant in the room is and has always been spending. It is never talked about. Instead, divisive discussions about rich versus poor, class versus class, etc., keep us divided and confused while tax code is bought and paid for by lobbyists from politicians in power. Some of us highly paid taxpayers have to pay multiples more for the same lousy government that many pay no taxes for. Shame on you politicians! Try spending wisely as if it were your hard-earned money instead of arbitrarily confiscated wealth. Astoria: You can’t have it both ways: stretch the inherent limits of the Earth while professing to protect it too. Moreover, in a society built on fairness, you can’t tell one industry it must keep fossil fuels in the ground and then turn around and use the fuel above ground to drive another industry. Why has no one within the mighty tourism caucus revealed the amount of carbon being unleashed into the atmosphere by millions of restless, industrialized sightseers compelled to roam and consume? Perhaps because it would disrupt the age-old proclivity to annex every square inch of the planet for either profit or possession? In which case, the bromide of ecofriendly sustainability is mere REUTERS doublespeak for protecting the hidden, crinkled purse. To anyone who insists “sustainable eco-tourism” will greatly benefit the planet, I say to you it will only hasten relegating what remains of ecologically intact, wide-open spaces to a housebroken mockery of the wild — if not the entire biosphere to a fate more ominous. Bayside: My fullest kudos to Voicer Robert Abrams. I applaud the bravery of your heart-wrenching disclosures. Well, Robert, you are not alone. I too have been scoped, roped and groped by various luminaries. To wit: Mother Teresa, Fred Rogers, Shari Lewis, Pope Francis, Dick Cheney and Bozo. Excuse any redundancy. Queens Village: In two recent Daily News articles about Puerto Rico rebuilding, I read of dogs roaming with collars or without collars. Where are the rescue people for them? Where are all those big-name shelter organizations that should be there to help them? Those remaining dogs are social creatures that are trying to survive at all costs. Who’s out to save them? Bronx: Well spoken, Patrick Lynch (“On union power, it’s two-faced Bill de Blasio,” Op-Ed, Dec. 7). New York is no longer a union town. It’s been eaten up by corporate greed.