"Letters: Presidential Primaries and More"

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

And it's time again to read from your comments. Our presidential primary coverage has been your primary topic this week.

Patricia Cox(ph) of Kansas City, Missouri, writes: The Hillary Clinton is on the rocks take after the Iowa caucus was just as ridiculous as the overwrought rhetoric about her comeback less than a week later in New Hampshire. You really need to calm down.

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

Listener John Mesco(ph) thought we were a little too calm when it came to the vote for Republican Ron Paul. Mesco writes: Fred Thompson got mentioned with only one percent of the vote. Yet with Ron Paul at 8 percent, you didn't even mention it.

INSKEEP: Yesterday, we mistakenly said that independents will not be able to take part in the Republican primary in South Carolina next week. And that prompted a correction from Barbara Kurtz(ph), the secretary of the York County, South Carolina Democrat Party. She writes: We do not register by party in South Carolina. At times, she writes, I have voted in Democrat primaries and at other times in Republican primaries. One just can't vote in each primary in the same election cycle.

MONTAGNE: The mention of an upset in this year's college football season got one listener upset about our pronunciation. Dan Nathan(ph) cringed when he heard a winning college football team referred to as Appalachian State.

INSKEEP: Mr. Nathan says that where he lives in North Carolina, people say Appalachian, and the other pronunciation, quote, "sounds like a twisted perversion." Those of us who've lived in different parts of the eastern mountain range say it's actually pronounced different ways in different places.

MONTAGNE: So it may depend on where you live in Appalachia-lachia.

INSKEEP: And also in sports, we have a clarification to Frank Deford's commentary this week on baseball pitcher Roger Clemens. Deford spoke of a conversation that Clemens had taped with his former trainer, Brian McNamee.

In a report from Major League Baseball, McNamee said he had injected Clemens with banned performance-enhancing drugs. Deford noted that on several occasions, during the taped conversation, McNamee pleaded, quote, "What do you want me to do?"

MONTAGNE: Deford concluded, quote, "wouldn't an innocent man with the tape secretly running say just tell the truth," unquote.

While Roger Clemens never replied to McNamee's questions in those exact words, Clemens did elsewhere in that taped conversation say several times that he wanted the truth out and in one instance told McNamee, quote, "I just need you to come out and tell the truth."

INSKEEP: Here at MORNING EDITION we believe you can handle the truth, and you can always let us know what you think, and we'll try to handle it too. Go to npr.org and click on the button that says Contact Us.