Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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The July 9 front-page article "In GOP candidates, a hard turn to the right" summarized GOP candidates such as a former respiratory therapist who rallied against COVID-19 mandates, a bar owner who wouldn't shut down her bar during COVID lockdowns, and an Army vet who believes the false claims that voter fraud elected Joe Biden.

They all sound angry. I am just wondering: Are they nice? Not that that would qualify any of them for holding office. (Obviously there are many present officeholders who would never be considered nice.) But do we have to keep voting for mean people? Are those the only ones left?

Liz Streiff, Minneapolis

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The article quotes, among others, legislative candidate Bret Bussman, who says: "It just seems like the conservative Minnesota that I grew up in is not there anymore, and I hope we can take it back."

I don't know how old Bussman is — [opinion editor's note: 60] — but I grew up in Minnesota in the previous century, and these are the Republican officeholders I recall from that era:

• U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad. He was pro-choice, supported stem cell research, and worked tirelessly with U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone on mental health care and chemical dependency insurance coverage parity.

• U.S. Rep. Bill Frenzel, another moderate Republican known for working across the aisle, who later served as an adviser to President Bill Clinton.

• U.S. Sens. Rudy Boschwitz and Dave Durenberger. Boschwitz strongly supported federal food assistance programs like WIC, and voted to override President Ronald Reagan's veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, which required entities receiving federal funds to comply with civil rights legislation in all of their operations. Durenberger voted to override the same veto, and chief-sponsored the 1981 Economic Equity Act, which sought to improve the rights of women in the workplace and in military service.

• State Auditor and Gov. Arne Carlson. He worked to increase funding for K-12 education, supported light-rail transit, and signed into law the 1993 legislation banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

If Bussman thinks today's Republican politicians — many of whom attempted last year to overturn the results of a free and fair election and prevent the peaceful transfer of power — are too moderate compared to those of the past, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Anne Hamre, Roseville

The July 9 column by Jennifer Brooks ("She wanted condoms, but store clerk said no") was another appalling reminder of the ongoing, insidious, under-the-radar, "faith-based" agenda to infantilize and control women.

In summary, a Walgreens clerk not very nicely refused to ring up condoms for a woman customer, a choice sanctioned by Walgreens corporate policy allowing employees to decline customer transactions due to "moral objection." Does that clerk voice a "moral objection" and refuse to ring up condoms for men? Would that clerk have reconsidered his "moral objection" if any of the male customers had spoken up with the woman customer from their places in line? Or is the clerk's "moral objection" simply misogyny in faith's clothing?

In how many more ways can "faith" and "moral objection" within corporate policy trample civil rights? Will a bank employee be able to deny our daughters a checking account because "the husband is the head of the wife"? Will our niece's employer be able to fire her to "not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man"? Will law enforcement ignore our sister's rape because "neither was man created for woman, but woman for man"? Blessed be the fruit.

We are descending the slippery slope to theocracy. Courageous men can help banish theocracy with a transition from being "by" stander to "with" stander. If you see something, say something.

Melinda Erickson, Roseville

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I'm puzzled after reading Brooks' column. Although I don't understand why Walgreens would have on staff a clerk who refuses to ring up contraceptives based on his religious beliefs, that's really no different than when Target went through the issue of having Muslim clerks refusing to ring up a pound of bacon as their religion does not allow them to come in contact with pork. After all, isn't it my constitutional right to procure my baby back ribs?

Neal Mason, Maple Grove

Regarding the July 9 editorial "SCOTUS hurts climate change effort":

Star Tribune Editorial Board (STEB): We agree with the Environmental Protection Agency's reading of the Clean Air Act that Congress gave the EPA the authority for the actions it wants to take on carbon emissions.

Supreme Court of the United States: If an agency wants to take actions that represent a transformative expansion of its power and involve matters of great political and economic significance, Congress has to be clear in its grant of authority to the agency for those actions.

STEB: Ha, yeah right, Congress would never give the EPA this authority to deal with climate change.

Um …

Joel Boon, Shakopee

I drove to the Mall of America, parked my car and walked to the Apple Store to get my backup drive configured properly. Music blared overhead; hundreds of customers sauntered to their shop of choice. Life in America restored, yet again, to one big happy consumer experience.

After getting my computer seen to by one of the genius bar geniuses, I got back in my car to head home. I listened briefly to MPR and "All Things Considered." A journalist in Ukraine interviewed psychologists whose task it was to determine if soldiers were in fit condition to be returned to the front. The soldiers who spoke recounted their sense of helplessness with only rifles when the Russians are using airborne missiles.

I turned off the radio. I felt helpless, too. What can I do to stop the war in Ukraine? Nothing? Back at home, I continued reading a novel, "The Cellist of Sarajevo." As I read a fictionalized version of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992 to 1995, I couldn't help but compare it to what's happening in Ukraine. That complicated war between Serbs, Bosnians, Croatians and Slovenians is brought to life in the book by focusing on four people, one of them the cellist, who chooses to play his instrument for 22 days, one day for each of the people who died near his front door. The author makes me see the bombed-out apartment buildings, hear the sniper shots ricocheting at random, sense the hunger and thirst of the citizens as they attempt to find bread and water, and feel the fear as people calculate the risk of simply crossing a bridge.

How can I hear about the war in Ukraine, a war that is going on as I type these words, and do nothing? How can we do nothing? Here in the U.S., we can go shopping without a care in the world, while the war in Ukraine has moved to Page A4 of the Star Tribune. The least I can do is write this letter to the editor.

Mary E. Berg, Apple Valley