I pay my own fees.

Because I have always enjoyed the fact-filled material in your magazine, though often disagreeing with it, I have a modest bone to pick with an article in your January/February issue ("Tilting at Windmills" by Charles Peters). The "Tee fees are on us" headline implies that the golf was paid for by sources other than judges themselves. This is a flat lie. While I do not play golf, at conferences or otherwise, it is simply untrue that golf or other recreational activities were paid for, or reimbursed by, the conference sponsors.

Your error is exactly the same as if a right-wing writer saw judges attending a law school conference in New York going into a Broadway play (or a strip club) and attacked the law school and the judges for being paid for such activities. I have a number of disagreements with the other arguments and implications made in your article, but those, at least, are matters of dispute. The financing of golf (as well as the "more time spent" language, though I would assume that most readers would believe that one was stated hyperbolically) is simply untrue.

Danny J. Boggs

Chief Judge, United States Court of

Appeals for the Sixth Circuit

Kentucky-Tennessee-Ohio-Michigan

Louisville, Ky.

Charles Peters replies: I am happy to concede that judges pay for their own green fees. Unfortunately, the fact remains that most of the expenses--room, meals, and travel--of the judges who attend these conferences are often paid by groups that have an interest in litigation.