Chris Kennedy’s mild hereditary tremor no big deal

My paternal grandmother and my mother both had essential familial tremor. I developed it around the same time my mother did. I saw a neurologist. When he handed me a pamphlet from the International Essential Tremor Foundation, I saw that the head of it was a distant cousin on my paternal grandfather’s side. I had a nice conversation with him and he said that he’d had it for 25 years and it had never changed.

I have stopped seeing the neurologist. Essential tremor doesn’t limit me in any way. I knit, sew, string beads and use fine motor skills in cooking tasks. This tremor should not be a factor in why people won’t vote for Chris Kennedy. There may be other reasons, but this shouldn’t be one of them.

Alice Marcus Solovy, Highland Park

How to vote for clean energy

If there ever were an opportune time to demonstrate one’s opposition to President Donald Trump’s rollback on power plant emissions, it’s now. CleanChoice Energy offers to the customers of Commonwealth Edison the alternative of getting electricity 100 percent from wind and solar.

You get the same service through the same lines. It’s a few bucks more, but I think it’s a tangible way of showing your concern, and it sends the message that people will make an economic sacrifice, albeit a small one, in the interest of a cleaner environment and perhaps the actual continuation of the world as we know it if all of those environmental scientists who our president chooses to ignore are right.

Edward S. Margolis, the Loop

Gorsuch editorial misses the point

An editorial on Tuesday endorses the confirmation of Supreme Court candidate Neil Gorsuch, who acquitted himself ably during his hearings when Democrats targeted his alleged bias in favor of corporations. Such challenges can easily be dismissed as either specious partisanship, or misreadings of the need to follow the law wherever it leads.

But none dug into a far greater worry concerning what seems to be Gorsuch’s cavalier attitude toward the sanctity of the separation of church and state. In its March 17 edition, the magazine Church & State, published by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a watchdog group, warned that in cases Green v. Haskell County Board of Commissioners (2009) and American Atheists v. Davenport (2011), Gorsuch’s dissents implied approval of displaying clearly religious content items on public property, contrary to abundant case law, and the implications of the First Amendment.

Evidently, Sun-Times editors see no danger in such an impulse in a Supreme Court Justice. But this fundamental separation tenet is a cornerstone of what made and keeps America the successful political entity it is: neutral in religious matters. If confirmed, Gorsuch would be only one of nine justices, so the practical risk is slight. Still, in full disclosure, any even-handed newspaper endorsement should include the cons as well as the pros.

Ted Z. Manuel, Hyde Park