Oh, Mr. Lynn, once again your editorial has left me gasping for air and clawing at my desk. Well, maybe my affection for tobacco is partly to blame for the gasping, but clawing at the desk is all you! Your Dec. 31 editorial espousing the greatness of Peter Shumlin is so full of false statements and contradictions to your own writings that I barely know where to start.
Let’s go all the way back to your Nov. 6 editorial, where you lead off by stating, and I quote you, “Vermont voters sent a message to Gov. Peter Shumlin on Tuesday and it was anything but subtle. Voters don’t trust him. And for good reason.” You follow up that statement with a rather lengthy list of the governor’s failures. But now you claim he is the logical choice to tackle the problems that on Nov. 6 you stated he failed at.
But the part of your Dec. 31 editorial that puzzles me the most is your belief that we are a true democracy where only the popular vote should count, but then follow that up by using the representative republic form of government, which as you know we are, as an example of why we should follow the true democracy popular vote path. This is a very confusing contradiction.
 A legislator’s decision to follow the will of their constituents is not, as you claim, a copout, it is the bedrock of our system of government. We are a republic, not a democracy. You can’t have it both ways as your editorial implies.
And finally, let’s not discount the fact that if not for the libertarian candidate, Peter Shumlin would be cleaning out his desk, and I think that even polar opposites like you and I can agree that Feliciano did not siphon off Shumlin votes. While the people of this state did not agree on a replacement, it is clear that they do not want Peter Shumlin.
Gary Murdock
Shoreham