My Rick Santorum LTE: from Scorn to Milquetoast

So my Letter to the Editor about Rick Santorum was published today in the Harrisburg Patriot-News.   But I was not happy.  

The paper changed key phrases in my letter, which I believe completely changed the tone of it.   I no longer feel that it adequately conveys my disdain for what Santorum has done.

Below the fold are my original letter as submitted to the paper, and how it was published.   What I want to know is: why was it changed?   Was it to protect the paper from libel?  Or for another reason?

Original Letter as Submitted:

Let's see if I have this straight: Rick Santorum was first elected to Congress largely because he made a big issue out of his opponent living in the Virginia suburbs of D.C. rather than in Pennsylvania.  

But after Santorum was elected to the Senate, he promptly moved his family out of our state to become a full-time resident of those very same Virginia suburbs.   He then bought a house in Penn Hills so that he could technically fulfill the residency requirement needed to represent Pennsylvania.  

But he cheated on his taxes by claiming a Homestead Exemption on the Penn Hills house, which should only be available to a person if their home is their permanent residence.  He then bilked the Penn Hills School District out of almost $100,000 in tuition for a cyber-school by claiming that his children were district residents.  And now his spokesperson is trying to cover all this up by asserting that the Santorums split their time between their $757,000 house in Virginia and the one in Penn Hills, which is actually being inhabited by another couple.  

If Rick Santorum thinks that the hard-working taxpayers of Pennsylvania are going to believe that he, his wife, and their five children are sharing a two-bedroom house in Penn Hills with two other people, he isn't just out-of-state and out-of-touch, he is also out-of-his-mind.

Actually, even this letter was an update from my original version.   The last clause of the second-to-last paragraph originally read "which they have actually rented out to another couple".   But when I discovered that there was no evidence yet if Santorum was charging this couple rent or not, I changed it to "which is actually being inhabited by another couple."   I did not want to make unsubstantiated claims in my letter.

No here is how they published my letter.   There are additional minor changes they made, but the key changes are in bold.

Rick Santorum was first elected to Congress largely because he made a big issue out of his opponent living in the Virginia suburbs of the District of Coumbia rather than in Pennsylvania.  

But after Santorum was elected to the Senate, he promptly moved his family out of our state to become a full-time resident of those very same Virginia suburbs.   He then bought a house in Penn Hills so that he could technically fulfill the residency requirement needed to represent Pennsylvania.  

But he claimed a homestead exemption on the Penn Hills house, which should only be available to a person if their home is their permanent residence.     He then got almost $100,000 in tuition from the Penn Hills School District for a cyberschool by claiming that his children were district residents.   And now his spokesperson asserts that the Santorums split their time between their $757,000 house in Virginia and the one in Penn Hills, which is actually being inhabited by another couple.  

If Rick Santorum thinks that the hard-working taxpayers of Pennsylvania are going to believe that he, his wife, and their five children are sharing a two-bedroom house in Penn Hills with two other people, he isn't just out of state and out of touch, he is also out of his mind.

Now the letters policy of the paper states that  "submissions may be edited", but I always took that to mean that the letter would be edited either for length, for clarity, or for grammar.   And there are examples of my letter being changed in each of these three ways.   My first sentence ("Let's see if I have this straight:") was cut.   I liked this sentence because I thought it conveyed my sarcasm.  "District of Columbia" was spelled out because Heaven knows someone out there might be confused as to what D.C. means.   And my overuse of the hyphen (cyber-school, out-of-state, etc.) was corrected.

But the words and phrases I have in bold I chose very deliberately.   I know claiming that Santorum "cheated on his taxes" is a strong claim.   But I believe the facts back me up:  a Homestead Exemption is available only on your permanent residence.   Not even Santorum claims that the Penn Hills house ever was his permanent residence.   And I carefully chose the word "bilked" for its meaning: "to cheat out of something valuable".   Again, calling the Senator a cheater are strong words.   But if Rick Santorum feels that I am libeling him by saying it, let him sue me.  

I was fully aware of the charges I made against Santorum.   Would the paper be responsible for libel if they printed my original letter?   Or would the responsible party be me?    Over the past several months, the Patriot-News has printed dozens of letters that have parroted the wild allegations of the Swift Boat Veterans against John Kerry.   The Patriot-News didn't seem too worried about libel then.   So why the changes in my letter?