The Thirty-Percenters. On occasion while I'm sitting high above in my ivory tower of East coast elitist liberalism, I wonder how in the world it is possible that Shrub maintains an approval rating above 30% despite all the facts indicating that he is the worst president ever.

That's why I read the Roanoke Times letters to the editor for perspective.

President is too good a Christian to lie

There have been several letters to the editor in this newspaper calling President Bush a liar. I do not believe this.

Rather, I believe the president acted on false information.

I also believe he is too much of a Christian gentleman to deliberately lie to the American people.

When the president called a news conference recently to introduce his new chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, his outgoing chief of staff, Andy Card, spoke and quoted a verse from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes.

This led me to believe that Card is a Godly and upright man, who would not have stayed on the job for five years, as he did, if he thought the president was a liar.

I also believe that Bolten would not have agreed to be the new chief of staff if he thought the president were a liar.

Robert S. McCormick Jr.

Lexington

How can you argue with that? Too good a Christian to lie. Too much of a gentleman. Well, that trumps any argument I might have to the contrary. I'll bet Robert S McCormick Jr. also thinks that Adam and Eve rode to church on dinosaurs.

In my world, this letter would be a cleverly concocted parody of the hypocrisy of the Bushco criminal enterprise. But in my world, Bush and pals would already be in leg irons breaking rocks. And since the latter is not true, the first cannot be true. Though the repeated use of the word "liar" does strike me as a bit suspicious. So maybe Mr.McCormick is a clever one. But, I think that's just the high altitude of the ivory tower clouding my judgment.